2.1 Defining
culture and Culture
2.2 Cultural awareness
2.3 Intercultural communication
2.4 A review of research
2.5 References
2.2 Cultural awareness and the process of acculturation
As soon as second and foreign language learners become aware of cultural differences in areas other than civilization, they may be tempted to start examining their own norms, values and attitudes. As Hall (1959) said "culture hides much more than it reveals, and strangely enough, what it hides, it hides most effectively from its own participants" (p.39). Louise Damen (1987) refers to Hall when she says that cultural awareness involves uncovering and understanding one's own culturally conditioned behavior and thinking, as well as the patterns of others. Thus, the process involves not only perceiving the similarities and differences in other cultures but also recognizing the givens of the native culture or, as Hall says, our own 'hidden culture' (1959).
Damen (1987) explains that "culture learning is a natural process in which human beings internalize the knowledge needed to function in a societal group. It may occur "in the native context as enculturation or in a non-native or secondary context as acculturation" (p.140). As we grow up, we build our cultural identity and way of life with our own cultural beliefs and values which we instinctively and naturally believe to be right and powerful. "Acculturation, on the other hand, involves the process of pulling out of the world view or ethos of the first culture, learning new ways of meeting old problems, and shedding ethnocentric evaluations" (pp. 140-141).
Schumann's (1978) acculturation model was further developed by Brown (1993), and the stages of acculturation according to him are the following:
- Euphoria, meaning the initial happiness about the new and exotic foreign culture
- Culture shock, consisting of a series of intercultural misunderstandings and culture bumps and leading to irritability or even depression
- Culture stress, or anomie, encompassing feelings of not belonging anywhere
- Near or full recovery as a person now familiar with two or more cultures (p. 171).
The stages of acculturation lead the learner along a bumpy road. A culture bump occurs when a person from one culture finds himself or herself in a strange and uncomfortable situation when talking to people of a different culture. The cause is usually a difference in behavior (Archer, 1986). Nemetz-Robinson (1985) suggests that "cultural misunderstandings are a function of perceptual mismatches between people of different cultures: mismatches in schemas, cues, values and interpretations" (p. 49).
Culture shock refers to phenomena ranging from mild irritability to deep psychological panic and crisis when a person is learning a second language in a second culture. Culture shock is associated with feelings of estrangement, anger, hostility, indecision, frustration, unhappiness, sadness, loneliness, homesickness, and even physical illness (Brown, 1993). It seems that all learners of second and foreign languages need to struggle through the different stages of the acculturation process with varying degrees of difficulty in order to acquire intercultural communicative competence.
next chapter: 2.3 Intercultural communication
