2.1 Defining culture and Culture
2.2 Cultural awareness
2.3 Intercultural communication
2.4 A review of research
2.5 References

2.1 Defining culture and Culture

When language teachers are asked about what culture means to them, they most frequently answer by listing subjects such as literature, geography and arts. Although these subjects are all extremely important ingredients, it seems that there are other equally significant components of culture that should find their way into second and foreign language classrooms.

Subjects like literature, geography, history and arts are often placed under the umbrella term "civilization" or "big C" culture as opposed to the category of "little c" culture (Halverson, 1985) which includes elements that are perhaps less visible and less tangible and have no traditional subjects assigned to them in schools. However, Bennett (1997) rightfully claims that "to avoid becoming a fluent fool, we need to understand more completely the cultural dimension of language." (p.16).

What do we mean by culture then in language education? Hofstede (1994) sees culture as "the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one group or category of people from another" (p.5). In his pyramid model, he differentiates three levels of "the software of the mind": universal, cultural and personal. He admits that trying to establish where exactly the borders lie between human nature and culture and between culture and personality is a challenge.

Bowers (1992) believes that culture is an inherited wealth in which we share memories, metaphors, maxims and myths. Alptekin's (1993) definition also reinforces the idea that culture consists of more than just "civilization". He claims that our socially acquired knowledge is "organized in culture-specific ways which normally frame our perception of reality such that we largely define the world through the filter of our world view" (p.136).  Similarly, Kramsch (1998) defines culture as a world view, i.e. "a common system of standards for perceiving, believing, evaluating, and acting" (p. 10).

The iceberg analogy of culture based on Brembeck (1977) in Levine and Adelman's cross-cultural communication textbook (1993) compares the notion of culture to an iceberg only the tip of which is visible (language, food, appearance, etc.) whereas a very large part of the iceberg is difficult to see or grasp (communication style, beliefs, values, attitudes, perceptions, etc.). The items in the invisible body of the iceberg could include an endless list of notions from definitions of beauty or respect to patterns of group decision-making, ideals governing child-raising, as well as values relating to leadership, prestige, health, love, death and so on.

Tomalin and Stempleski (1993) referring to Nemetz-Robinson's model (1985) present culture as a notion consisting of three elements. The first element "products" includes literature, folklore, music and artifacts. The second element "behavior" refers to customs, habits, dress, foods and leisure. The third element called "ideas" includes beliefs, values and institutions.

The tripartite classification of the components of culture suggested by Holló and Lázár (2000) divides the notion of culture into three different groups of elements: civilization (1), behavior and speech patterns (2), and discourse structures and skills (3). The first group includes history, geography, literature, values, customs, institutions and the like, the second group 'behavior and speech patterns' contains all the functions and speech acts as well as body language, and ways of socializing, while the third group of 'discourse structures and skills' consists of logic, figures of speech, mediation, linking and connecting ideas as well as developing and supporting arguments in written and spoken texts (pp. 4-6).

Although there are often no visible boundaries between universal, cultural and personal qualities, Edward T. Hall (1959) went a long way to map out culture more than four decades ago. Hall's book The Silent Language treats culture in its entirety as a form of communication. It sketches in "the biological roots from which most if not all of culture grew and outlines the ten basic foci of activity that combine to produce culture" (p. 28). With Hall's map of culture we can systematically examine one hundred examples of human activity, and compare them across cultures. The comparisons generated by this map become an effective tool for sensitizing students and trainees to their own cultures, for it helps them discern specific learned behaviors that they have internalized, now take for granted, and often assume to be universal.

These definitions of culture all suggest that the cultural elements to be included in language education cover much more than the traditional list of compulsory facts about the civilization of one or two of the target cultures. In this guide, therefore, 'culture' will be used as a collective noun referring to both facts about civilization and information about beliefs, customs, social practices, values and behavior. Within this larger concept, civilization or achievement culture will be referred to with the commonly used term of "big C" culture, and the other elements from beliefs to behavior will be called "little c" culture (Halverson, 1985) for the sake of clarity and simplicity.

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