Module 4. Life and culture

Unit 1. Defining Culture

Lead-in.

Ø What do you think about the importance of learning about other cultures in today’s multicultural Global Village?

Ø What do you think Global Village is ?

Ø What is culture? Can you give any definitions on the spot?

Ø What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear the word “CULTURE”? Music? Art? Literature? Cultural patterns of behavior?

Ø Are beliefs and values shared by people belonging to one and the same cultural community? Anything else?

Ø What does this word mean personally to you?

Reading and vocabulary

WHAT CULTURE IS

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The quotations reflecting different points of view on what culture is are presented in this part. While reading try to identify the key words, related to the concept “culture”, paying attention to the word combinations in bold. Compare your list with your partners’ lists and decide what should be included into this list by all means. Ground your decision.

“What is culture? I believe, it is the way of life of a particular society or group of people, including patterns of thought, beliefs, behavior, customs, traditions, rituals, dress, language, as well as art, music and literature”. (Elizabeth Primrose)

“Culture is the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one group from another”. (Geert Hofstede)

“Very often when we use the word "culture", we mean the customs, beliefs, art, music and add the other products of human thought which were made by a particular group of people at a particular time”. (Adam Cotte)r

“Culture, the acquainting ourselves with the best that has been known and said in the world, and thus the history of the human spirit”. (Matthew Arnold

“Culture is the shared set of assumptions, values, and beliefsof a group of people by which they organize their common life”. (Gary Wederspahn)

“Culture is the system of information that codes the manner in which the people in an organized group, society or nation interactwith their social and physical environment”. (Psychology textbook)

“Culture consists in patterned ways of thinking, freezing and reacting. The essential core of culture consists of traditional ideas and especially their attached values”. (Clyde Kluckhohn

“Culture consists of concepts, values, and assumptions about life that guide behaviorand are widely shared by people”. (Richard Brislin)

“Culture is an integrated system of teamed behavior patterns that are characteristic of the members of any given society. Culture refers to the total, way of life for a particular group of people. It includes what a group of people thinks, says, does and makes — its customs, language, material artifacts and shared systems of attitudes and feelings”. (Robert Kohls)

“Culture refers to the experience, knowledge, values, and behaviors of any one group of people”. (Carol Archer)

“Culture is a complex concept, with many different definitions, But, simply put, "culture refers to a group or community with which we share common experiences that shape the way we understand the world. It includes groups that we are born into, such as gender, race, or national origin. It also includes groups we join or become part of. Jot example, we can acquire a new culture by moving to a new region, by a change in our economic status, or by becoming disabled. When we think of culture this broadly, we realize we all belong to many cultures at once. In a world as complex as ours, each of us is shaped by many factors, and culture is one of the powerful forces that acts on us. In other words, culture is central to what we see, how we make sense of what we see, and how we express ourselves”. (Marcelle E. DuPraw and Marya Axner)

“Culture is but the fine flowering of real education, and it is the training of the freezing, the tastes and the manners that makes it so”. (Minnie Kellogg)

“Culture is everything. Culture is the way we dress, the way we carry our heads, the way we walk, the way we tie our ties— it is not only the fact of writing books or building houses”. (Aime Cesair)

“Culture is to ''know the best that has been said and thought in the world."(Matthew Arnold)

Read the following interpretation of the concept “culture”. It is given in one of the Russian reference books. Compare with the definitions above. Point out differences and similarities.

Культура (от латинского слова «CULTURE» -возделывание, почитание, воспитание, образование, развитие) – исторически определённый уровень развития общества, творческих сил и способностей человека, выраженный в типах и формах организации жизни и деятельности людей, в их взаимоотношениях, а также в создаваемых ими материальных и духовных ценностях.

(Популярный энциклопедический словарь.- М.:Научн, изд-во: Большая Российская энциклопедия, 1999)