Culture of English Speaking Countries - Week 6 - Introduction to Cultural Perspectives

Introduction: Hello and welcome to Week 6 of the course Culture of English Speaking Countries for the bachelor's in English teaching at ULACIT. This week we will begin our exploration of the topic of cultural perspectives.

Today's Goals:

• Identify the underlying values represented in common sayings and proverbs.
• Distinguish the features of perceptions, beliefs, values, and attitudes.
• Compare traditional American and Costa Rican values and beliefs.

Guiding Questions: 

• How are cultural perspectives represented in the language we use?
• How can we categorize types of cultural perspectives?
• What are some of the core values in US culture and how do they appear in attitudes and practices?

Warm Up: Values in Langauge

Values are one form of cultural perspectives and they are often explicity demonstrated in the language se used everyday. Click your group link below to explore the values behind common sayings and proverbs.

• Group 1: CLICK HERE
• Group 2: CLICK HERE
• Group 3: CLICK HERE
• Group 4: CLICK HERE

Task 1: Group Recall

Let's take a moment together to recall the topics we explored last week.

• Traditional Remedies:
• We talked about remedies as a combination of cultural products, practices, and perspectives. Have you though of any other examples this week?

• Cultural Places:
• What is a cultural place?
• How do products, practices, perspectives, persons, and communities intersect in a cultural place?
• What ideas have you thought of regarding your upcoming cultural place podcast?

• Cultural Practices:
• Operations: These are ...
• Acts: These are ...
• Scenarios: These are ...
• Lives: These are ...

Task 2: Exploring Cultural Perspectives

For homework this week you read Chapter 7 Cultural Perspectives in the Moran book and completed a study guide. Open your study guide and respond to the following prompts with your partners. 

• What are cultural perspectives?

• The author says perspectives are the "hidden dimension" of culture meaning that they are typically difficult to identify. However, they can also be explicit. In what ways can perspectives be tangible?

• What does the following statement mean to you and how is it related to the topic of cultural perspectives?

• "If you want to know about water, don't ask a fish."

• The author divides perspectives into four categories. What do they mean?

• Perceptions
• Beliefs
• Values
• Attitudes

• What is the difference between emic and etic perspectives?

• The chapter finishes with a review of three ways of looking at culture. Look at the pictures below and state what they mean to you.

Click the Pictures to See the Full Size View

Theory Break: Perspectives

• “Perspectives are the explicit and implicit meanings shared by members of the culture, manifested in products and practices. These meanings reflect members’ perceptions of the world, the beliefs and values that they hold, and the norms, expectations, and attitudes that they bring to practices. To name the perspectives that underlie practices is to answer the question, “Why do the people of this culture do things in the way they do (p. 74)?”

• Perceptions: What we perceive, what we ignore; what we notice or disregard

• Beliefs: What we hold to be true or untrue

• Values: What we hold to be right/wrong, good/evil, desirable/undesireable, proper/improper, normal/abnormal, appropriate

• Attitudes: Our mental and affective dispositions - our frame of mind, our outlook - charged with feeling or emotion

• “Understanding perspectives, in my opinion, represents the most challenging aspect of teaching culture. The task, simply put, is to identify the perceptions, values, beliefs, and attitudes of the culture. However, culture consists of numerous communities, all coexisting under the same umbrella of national culture…some of them are in opposition – sometimes in open conflict… Given shifting points of view, how can language teachers hope to offer accurate explanations of cultural perspectives (p. 83).”

• It boils down to this: Culture perspectives depend on your point of view. Given shifting points of view, how can langauge teachers hope to offer accurate descriptions of cultural perspectives (Moran, p. 83)?"

• "The working solution I propose is to present alternative vewpoints as part of knowing why, or discovering interpretations. In simple terms, these can be defined respectively as culture as a unified whole culture as distinct communities, and culture as competing communities (p 84)."

• Functionalist: Takes the broad view of culture, most often at the national level, using the nation as the focal point.

• Interpretive: Does not address the notion of a national culture community. All culture, in the interpretive view, is local.

• Conflict: Accepts that each community has its own perspectives but does not assume harmonious relationships among them, rather, they are in competition, struggling for influence, power, or control over the core institutions of society.

Task 3: Values in American Culture

For your Culture Learning Journal this week you were asked to read a chapter called "Traditional American Values and Beliefs". Click the link below and follow your teacher's instructions.

• Group Link: CLICK HERE

Task 4: Exploring Emic and Etic Perspectives on Costa Rican Values

As a final task, let's complete a brief reading on the topic of fatalism and discuss to what degree you think fatalism is represented in the cultural perspectives and practices of Costa Rica and the United States.

• Group Link: CLICK HERE

References:

Kearny, M., Crandall, J., & Kearny, E. (2005). American Ways: An Introduction to American Culture (3rd ed.) Pearson Education, Inc.

Moran, P. (2001). Teaching Culture: Perspectices in Practice. Heinle, Cengage Learning.