LANGUAGE AND CULTURE
Language is
not just the words people speak. It is body language, dress, manners,
etiquette, ideas, the things people do – their behavior. And like language, behavior
has a grammar, an internal logic that is possible to understand and master.
Some of the
differences may seem superficial – dress, etiquette, food, hours of work. Often
it is simply a question of getting used to them, like the climate or the
plumbing, while one gets on with the business.
Some of the
differences, it is grudgingly admitted, may be an improvement. People are more courteous,
service is better, you ask for something to be done and it happens without
having to follow it up. Others can be irritating, like the conventions of
punctually. If you invite people to a party at 7 o’clock your guests will
consider it polite to turn up on the dot in Germany, five minutes early in the
American Midwest, an hour early in Japan, 15 minutes afterwards in the UK, up
to and hour afterwards in Italy and sometime in the evening in Greece. I
deliberately avoid the more emotive word “late” because there is nothing wrong
in it. It is the accepted convention.
The problems
begin when the differences interfere with getting the job done. Delivery
promises are not kept or suppliers are not flexible. There are no procedures or
there are too many procedures. People never get together and trash things out
or meetings drag on all day. Decisions are postponed or they are taken without
proper study. And so on.
When asked
how he played evil men so convincingly, the actor Vincent Price replied that he
did not play evil men. They did what seemed right to them at the time. The way
others do things is not different out of stupidity or carelessness or incompetence
or malice, although it may appear so. Most people do what seems the right thing
to do at the time. The judgement of what is right is rooted in habit,
tradition, beliefs, values, attitudes, accepted norms. In other words, the
culture to which that person belongs.
An
investigation into what lies at the heart of cultural differences leads into
history, sociology, philosophy, theology, in fact into every branch of the
humanities.
Culture has
been defined in many ways, including the following:
A collective programming of the mind. The sum total of all the beliefs,
values and norms shared by a group of people. The methods a society evolves to
solve problems. Everything we take for
granted. Patterned ways of thinking, feeling and reacting, acquired and
transmitted mainly by symbols, constituting the distinctive achievements of
human groups including their embodiment in artifacts; the essential core of
culture consists of traditional ideas and especially their attached values. In
many ways, culture could be described as the personality of society.
No comments:
Post a Comment