Culture of English Speaking Countries - Week 9 - Cultural Persons

Introduction: Hello and welcome to Week 9 of the course Culture of English Speaking Countries for the bachelor's in English teaching at ULACIT. This week we will discuss new topics related to our identities as cultural beings. 

Today's Goals:

• Explore the concept of public and private self and discuss to what degree your preferences are idiosynchratic or culturally informed.
• Discuss how our avowed and ascribed identities inform the ways we present ourselves to others.
• Identify cultural, social, and personal components of our identity.

Guiding Questions: 

• How does my culture influence my personal identity?
• What are my avowed and ascribed identities?
• Do I consider myself to be a "typical" Costa Rican?

Warm Up: Contrasting Values
Last week we studied Hofstede's 6 Dimensions of Culture that allow us to explore contrasting value orientations at a national level. Click your group link below and classify the values of Costa Rica in general and match them with their contrasting value pairs. When you finish, go on to pages two and three and discuss the prompts.

• 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.

• American Folktale: Last class you participated in a presentation, group discussion, and song analysis of the folktale John Henry.

• What do you remember about the story? 
• What insights about American culture were revealed through analysis of that folktale?
• Have you given any thought to the folktale analysis presentation you will share next week?

• Assignment Guidelines: CLICK HERE

• Evaluation Rubric: CLICK HERE 

• Cultural Communities: We also discussed the topic of cultural communities.
• What is a cultural community?
• What is the difference between broad and narrow communities?
• How do communities define the ways people in a culture interact and the nature of the relationships they form?

• Ethnic and Racial Diversity in the US: We finished our class by discussing an article about race and ethnicity in the US including the formation of the "dominant culture", problems of assimilation, and the "American paradox", the continued existance of racial and ethnic segregation despite public pride in being a nation of immigrants and public celebration of diversity.

• What did you learn about the formation of the "dominant culture" in the US?
• Why do you think communities in the US still tend to separate along ethnic and racial lines even while the majority of Americans agree that diversity is good and forced segregation is wrong?
• To what degree do different communities integrate or segregate in Costa Rica along ethinic or racial lines?

Theory Break: Cultural Communities

• Communities: "Communities consist of the specific groups of the culture in which members, through different kinds of interpersonal relationships, carry out practices in specific social and physical settings (Moran, 2000, p. 90)."

• Broad: Communities can be large and general.
• Nation
• Language
• Gender
• Race
• Religion
• Socioeconomic Class
• Region
• Generation

• Narrow: Communities can be much more specific.
• Workplace
• Neighborhood
• School Association
• Local Political Party
• Religious Social Club
• Sports Team
• Charity Organization
• Co-workers
• Family

• Communities and Social Institutions: "At the broadest level, the social institutions of the culture define communities and accompanying practices for everyone within the borders of the national culture. Economic, political, educational, health, and other institutions exist for members of the national culture as a whole. Accordingly, these institutions establish and maintain many practices that members of the culture need to enact in order to go about a large part of their daily lives (p. 91)."

• Community Dominance: "The social institutions of the culture and its systems tend to reflect the dominant cultural communities, that is, those groups that have the most influence (p. 91)."

• Co-Existing Communities: "Co-existing communities, in other words, are in relationship with one another in the national culture. They may be physically isolated from one another, or they may exist next to one another but be separate, with no interaction between them. They may have a harmonious collaborative relationship or they may oppose one another, possibly in open conflict (p. 93)."

• Terminology: The relationship between different cultural communites has been described using these terms: 

• Microcultures inside a Macroculture

• Co-Cultures inside a Dominant Culture

• The Macroculture or Dominant Culture can also be referred to as:

• Mainstream Culture
• Umbrella Culture
• Core Culture

• Discourses:"Linguist James Gee calls these communities Discourses as a way of emphasizing the social practices they carry out: ways of behaving, interacting, valuing, thinking, believing, speaking, and often reading and writing. Gee contentds that individuals are members of many Discourses and that each one calls for a distinct set of practices for membership, what he calls an identity kit (p. 93)."

• Interpersonal Relationships: “Communities, therefore, in physical settings and social circumstances, form a basis for relationships in the culture. The kinds of relationships that members of the culture establish and maintain are connected to the kinds of communities in which members participate. Communities exist for a wide variety of purposes and they use certain practices to achieve their respective ends, which in turn affect the kinds of relationships that are possible or expected.”

• "The important point here is that relationships are practiced according to the cultural perspectives that underlie practices in these communities. Strangers, acquaintances, friends, romantic partners, rivals, enemies, family members, and group based relationships are all defined accordingly. In simple terms, you relate to people according to the norms, the unwritten rules, of that particular community (p. 93)."

Task 2: Public or Private Self?

Ideas about what kinds of information are appropriate to discuss publicly and which are private depend both on personal and cultural factors. An exploration of this topic can help us better understand different cultural perspectives and it also helps introduce the topic of identity which will be the central focus of today's lesson. Click on your group link below and complete the quiz individually. Then compare your results with your partners.

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

Theory Break: Cultural Persons - Our Identity(ies) as Cultural Beings

• "Culture resides in persons, in individuals. Each member of a culture, like a miniscule twist in a kaleidoscope, refracts and reflects the common colored lights of their culture in a unique display, recognizably similar yet unquestionably different (Moran, p. 98).”

• “Like other aspects of culture, identity is both explicit and tacit. There are aspects of ourselves that we can describe or put into words and there are others that we cannot express, or that are simply outside of our awareness. Not until we find ourselves in situations where our sense of self – our values, beliefs, practices – is called into question do we perceive the tacit dimensions of our identity (Moran, p. 99).”

• “Identities become even more complex when persons of one culture and language enter other cultures and learn other languages. The degree to which they do or do not integrate these new ways of thinking, acting, and interacting affect their cultural identity. For those of us who are nonnative teachers, these dimensions of our identity emerge in our language classrooms (Moran, p. 103).”

• Exploring our avowed and ascribed identities: CLICK HERE

•  “When students whose first language is not English first encounter the learning of English as an additional language, they cannot really avoid the issue of learner identity (be it imposed, assumed, and/or negotiated) because they must participate in a community different than what they are used to (Farrell, p. 33).”

•  “Throughout their careers teachers construct and reconstruct (usually tacitly) a conceptual sense of who they are (their self-image), and this is manifested through what they do (their professional role identity) (Farrell, p. 34).”

• “TESOL teachers, who are often the first contacts for newcomers in ESL situations and cultural informants in EFL situations, play a key role in not only helping to construct their L2 learners’ identities but also determining how they want to construct their own identities as TESOL teachers (Farrell, p. 35).”

• "At the very least, TESOL teachers can reflect on their own L2 learning experiences as well as their intercultural experiences and identity formation and revisit their classroom teaching practices with those reflections in mind (Farrell, p. 36).”

Task 3: Exploring the Components of Identity

Koester and Lustig say that an identity is formed from the combination of cultural, social, and personal factors. Click your group worksheet to explore this topic further.

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

Task 4: Exploring Bilingual Teacher Identities

Joyce is a Costa Rican English teacher who moved to the US for several years to teach Spanish. In this recording she shares differences in how she viewed herself as a teacher and how others viewed her in both circumstances. Listen to the interview then discuss the questions.

• What aspects of Joyce's teacher identity seem to be important?
• What were some of the differences between how she viewed herself and her role as a teacher and they way that others viewed her?
• What other ideas about the topic of your teacher identity were provoked in you by this recording?

Task 5: Exploring Our Teaching Personas and Language Egos

Click the worksheet link and work with your partners to discuss the questions. You do not need to write. 

• Discussion Questions: CLICK HERE

References:

Farrell, T. (2017). Sociolinguistics and Language Teaching. TESOL Press.

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