Components of Culture - allows the separation of “true” from “false”

1. Communication Component data.

a. Language
- defines what it means to be a human
- forms the core of all culture
b. Symbols
- form the backbone of symbolic interaction.
- condense very complex ideas and values
into simple material forms so that the very
presence of the symbol evokes the signified
ideas and values.
- anything that carries a particular meaning
recognized by people who share culture.
- vary within culture, cross-culturally and
change overtime.
b. Values - culturally defined standards of
desirability, goodness and beauty which
serve as broad guidelines for social living.
c. Accounts – how people use common
language to explain, justify, rationalize,
excuse or legitimize behavior to others and
themselves.
3. Behavioral Component (how we act)
a. Norms - rules and expectations by which a
society guides the behavior of its members.

Language is a key factor in the success of the Types of Norms

human race in creating and preserving
culture, for without language the ability to
convey ideas and traditions is impossible.
A man’s language is a reflection of the kind of
person he is, the level of education he has
attained and an index to the behavior that is
expected of him.
2. Cognitive Component
a. Ideas/ Knowledge/ Beliefs
Ideas - mental representations (concepts,
categories, metaphors) used to organize
stimulus, they are the basic units out of
which knowledge is constructed and a
world emerges.
Mores - customary behavior patterns which
taken on a moralistic value
Folkways - behavior patterns of society which
are organized and repetitive.
Law - legal
Rituals - highly scripted ceremonies or strips
of interaction that follow specific sequence
of action.
4. Material Component - human make
objects, sometimes for practical reasons and
sometimes for artistic ones.
* Material Culture - tangible
* Non-Material Culture - intangible
COMMUNICATI BEHAVIO
ON
COGNITIVE
RAL
MATERIAL

Knowledge - is a storehouse where we Language Ideas/ Norms Tools, Materials

accumulate representations, information, Knowledge
Symbols Mores Medicines
facts, assumptions, etc. /
- systematically summarizes and elaborates    & Beliefs Folkways Books
how we think the world looks and acts.
  Values Law Transportation
Beliefs - accept the proposition, statement, Rituals
description of fact as true.   Accounts Technologies
How is Culture Transmitted
1. Enculturation
2. Acculturation
3. Assimilation
Importance and Functions of Culture
1. Culture helps the individual fulfill his
potential as a human being. It helps in the
regulation of a person’s conduct and
prepares him so he can participate in the
group life.
2. Through the development of culture, man
can overcome his physical disadvantages and
allows him to provide himself with fire,
clothing food and shelter
3. Culture provides rules of proper conduct
for living in a society
4. Culture also provides the individual his
concepts of family, nation and class
FUNCTIONS OF CULTURE
Specific:
1. Trademark
2. Brings together, contains and interprets
values
3. Bases for social solidarity
4. Blueprint
5. Establish, molds social personality
6. Behavior patterns
Modes of Acquiring Culture
Imitation - observes and replicates other’s
behavior, pass on from family
Indoctrination - process of inculcating ideas,
cognitive strategies or professional
methodology.
Conditioning - methods of learning through
punishment or reward
Other Concepts of Cultural Significance
Ethnocentrism - feeling that their particular
way of life is superior and right and all other
cultures are inferior and often wrong.
- the kind of feeling is inclined to judge other
cultures in terms of values and norms of
one’s own culture.
- involves erroneous concept of customary
conventional ways of one’s culture for what
is superior and right.
Cultural Relativism - the concept refers to
the notion that each culture should be
evaluated from the standpoint of its own
standard rather than from the standpoint of
a different culture.
- norms, values and beliefs should be judge
only from the viewpoint of that culture.
Xenocentrism - belief that what is foreign is
best in terms of one’s lifestyle, products or
ideas.
Temporocentrism - belief that one’s own
time is more important than that of the past
or future.
Subculture - group or category within a
society who shares in the general culture but
who maintain distinctive ways of thinking,
acting and feeling.
- this kind of group is usually found in a big
and complex society.
Counterculture - subculture that has values
and norms that sharply contradict the
dominant values and norms of a larger
society.
Culture Universal - refers to common
cultural elements that are found within all
known societies. They are the norms, laws,
language, beliefs and values.
Culture Lag - it is the inability of a given
society to adapt immediately to another
culture as a result of the disparity in the rate
of change between the material and non-
material elements of culture.
Culture Shock - it is the experience of
disorientation and frustration that occurs
when individuals find them among those
who do not share their fundamental
premises.
Cultural Dualism - acknowledge firmly the
established influences of the east on Filipino
culture in terms of social, religious and
political values.
- the influences of the west are also
dominant.
- it gives rise to an East-West dualism in
Filipino culture.
Characteristics of Culture
1. Culture is learned
2. Culture is shared by a group of people
3. Culture is cumulative
4. Cultures change
5. Culture is dynamic
6. Cultures is diverse
7. Culture is ideational
8. Culture gives us a range of permissible
behavior patterns
Anthropologists - seeks answers to an
enormous variety of questions about
humans.
- they are interested in discovering when,
where and why humans appeared on earth,
how and why they have changed since then,
and how and why modern populations vary
in certain physical features.
- they are also interested in how and why
societies in the past and present have varied
in their customary ideas in practices.
Anthropology - “science of humanity”
Logia - study
“Anthropos” - man study of human beings,
their origin and their cultures.
- roots its observations to the origin of
humans to understand fully the societies and
cultures of the human organisms through
time.
Branches of Anthropology
 Physical anthropology - also known as
Biological Anthropology.
- deals with man’s biological foundations,
race evolution, racial classifications and
differentiation.
- it relates biology and culture, traces the
evolutionary development of man and
studies the biological variation within the
species.
- concentrates on the man’s physical
characteristics, the processes by which the
biological changes occur, and the resultant
human variations.
Subdisciplines of Physical/ Biological
Anthropology
a) Racial history - deals with the study of the
nature of races
b) Paleontology - deals with the origin of
man.
c) Human Genetics - deals with study of
various ways of inheritance that take place in
man.
2. Cultural Anthropology - also known as
Social Anthropology
- deals with one of the most significant and
revolutionary concept in the social sciences,
the concept of culture.
- humans are distinct from other animals that
they have a culture-social heritage
transmitted not biologically through the
germ cells but independency of genetic
inheritance.
Social/ Cultural Anthropologists - are also
often called ethnologists and ethnographers,
describe, analyze and attempt to account for
the wide variety of customs and forms of
social life of humans particularly of people
with primitive technologies.
Subdivisions of Cultural/ Social
Anthropology
1. Ethnography - is pure description of the
culture of a people or an ethnic group.
Ethnographer - is one type of researcher who
usually spends a year or so living with, talking
to and observing the people whose customs
he or she is studying.
2. Ethnology - an analysis, comparison and
contrast of cultures of people.
Ethnologists - seeks to understand how and
why people today and in the recent past
differ in their customary ways of thinking and
acting.
3. Archeology - branch of general
anthropology concerned with the study of
man’s culture and society in the past, as far
back in times as prehistoric times.
Remnants of the past that have organic life
which withstood the test of time and forces
of nature.
Man-made and man conceived remains of
prehistoric times that have endured through
time.
4. Linguistics - deals with the relationship
between language and culture.
- through linguistics, anthropology is able to
understand how people perceive themselves
and the world around them.
Sociology - scientific study of a society
- its origin, development, networks and
functions.
- primary purpose is to explain how different
elements in the environment affect and
influence the growth and life of a person.
- the term was first coined by French essayist
Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès in 1780.
later defined by French Philosopher and
“father of Sociology” - Auguste Comte in
1838.
Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès
Isidore Marie Auguste François Xavier Comte
Society and Individualism
Individualism - states that all values, rights
and duties come from each individual.
in this belief an individual must be politically
and economically independent with little or
no influence from the society the person is
in.
* Individualism contradicts the idea of a
society where every human being is
connected with and influenced by another.
- is the complex whole which encompasses
beliefs, practices, values, attitudes, laws,
norms, artifacts, symbols and knowledge that
a person learns and shares as a member of
society
Sir Edward Burnett Tylor, English
Anthropologist, 1871
- refer to an organization of phenomena that
is dependent upon symbols and includes acts
(patterns of behavior), objects (material
things), ideas (beliefs and knowledge) and
sentiments (attitudes and values).
- transcends among different groups,
regardless of age, gender, economic status
and affiliations - Leslie A. White (Cultural
Evolution), American Anthropologist, 1995
Allan Johnson (1996) – culture is the sum
total of symbols, ideas, forms of expressions
and material products associated with a
collective way of life reflected in such belief,
values, music, literature, art, science,
religious ritual and technology.
as a system of ideas, feelings and survival
strategies shared in a particular group.
he claims that culture is the structure that
unifies a human group and gives an identity
as a society - Richley Crapo, American
Anthropologist, 2001
Language, Culture & Society
Linguistics - the scientific study of language
- the word was first used in the middle of the
19th century to emphasize the difference
between a newer approach to the study of
language that was then developing and the
more traditional approach of philology.
- the differences were and are largely
matters of attitude, emphasis, and
purpose.
- is concerned with the nature of language
and communication.
- it deals both with the study of particular
languages, and the search for general
properties common to all languages or large
groups of languages.
Philologist - is concerned primarily with the
historical development of languages as it is
manifest in written texts and in the context
of the associated literature and culture.
Linguist - is interested in written texts and in
the development of languages through time,
tends to give priority to spoken languages
and to the problems of analyzing them as
they operate at a given point in time.
Sub areas:
1. Phonetics - the study of the production,
acoustics and hearing of speech sounds,
study of speech sounds in their cognitive
aspect.
- branch of linguistics that focuses on the
production and classification of the world’s
speech sounds.
- the production of speech looks at the
interaction of different vocal organs, for
example the lips, tongue and teeth, to
produce particular sounds.
- by classification of speech, we focus on the
sorting of speech sounds into categories
which can be seen in what is called the
International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).
The IPA is a framework that uses a single
symbol to describe each distinct sound in the
language and can be found in dictionaries
and in textbooks worldwide.
For example, the noun ‘fish’ has four letters,
but the IPA presents this as three sounds: f i
ʃ, where ‘ʃ’ stands for the ‘sh’ sound.
2. Phonology - the patterning of sounds,
study of speech sounds in their cognitive
aspects
- it includes understanding how sounds are
made using the mouth, nose, teeth and
tongue, and also understanding how
the ear hears those sounds and can tell them
apart.
- makes use of the phonetics in order to see
how sounds or signs are arranged in a system
for each language.
- in phonology, it matters whether sounds
are contrastive or not, that is, whether
substituting one sound for another gives a
different, or "contrastive," meaning.
For example in English, [r] and [l] are two
different sounds - and the words "road" and
"load" differ according to which of these
sounds is used. But in some languages, [r]
and [l] are variations of the same sound.
Phonologists - describe the contrastive
consonants and vowels in a language, and
how pronunciation is affected by the position
of the sound in the word and the sounds that
are nearby.
- they are also interested in syllables,
phrases, rhythm, tone, and intonation.
Phonemes - are considered basic units of
sounds because they are the smallest sound
units of sound units that affect meaning.
3. Morphology - the study of the formation
of words.
- is the study of the language’s smallest units
of meaning called morphemes
- prefixes, suffixes and root words
- and how these units are properly combined.
Rules for altering root words to produce such
things as plurals, past tenses and inflections
are parts of a language’s
morphological system.
looks at how individual words are formed
from smaller chunks of meaningful units
called morphemes.
For example, the English word 'untied' is
really made up of three parts, one referring
to the process of reversing an action (un-),
one indicating the action of twisting string
like things together so they stay (tie) and the
last indicating that the action happened in
the past (-d).
many languages have a much more complex
way of putting words together.
morphology interacts in important ways with
both phonology (bringing sounds together
can cause them to change) and syntax, which
needs to pay attention to the form of a word
when it combines it with other words.
4. Semantics - the study of word meanings
and word combinations, the study of
meaning.
- it focuses on the relation between words,
phrases and other bits of language and on
how these words and phrases connect to the
world.
- comprehension of written as well as spoken
language requires not only a knowledge of
specific words and their
definitions but understanding of how we use
words and how we combine them in phrases,
clauses and sentences.
5. Syntax - the study of the formation of
sentences.
- specifies how words are combined into
sentences.
- study of how phrases, clauses and
sentences are constructed and combined in
particular languages.
- writing a grammar requires defining the
rules that govern the structure of the
sentences of the language.
- such rules involve both the order of words,
and the form of words in their various
possible positions.
- there are common patterns among even
unrelated languages, and many linguists
believe this is the result of general principles
which apply to most, if not all, languages.
For example, languages where the direct
object generally follows the verb have a lot
of things in common, in contrast to the
things in common held by languages in which
the direct object generally precedes the verb.
6. Pragmatics - is concerned not only with
speaking and writing but with social
interaction and it directly addresses the issue
of effective communication.
- but it involves the study of how speakers of
a language use the language to communicate
and accomplish what they want.
- looks more at the relationship between
speaker and listener which allows
assumptions to be made about the intended
message, considering, for example, the way
context contributes to meaning.
A classic example is where someone is asked
"Do you want some coffee?" Does the reply
"Coffee will keep me awake" mean yes or
no?
- it depends whether the person wants to
stay awake - and the questioner will only
understand the intended meaning if they
know whether the person wants to stay
awake.
Linguists work in many fields:
Historical linguistics - the study of how
language changes over time.
Sociolinguistics - the study of language based
on social factors, such as region, social class,
occupation, and gender.
Dialectology - the study of language variation
based on geographic distribution.
Discourse analysis - the study of how
language is used

Computational linguistics - the application of

computational programs to model aspects of
language.

Language acquisition - the study of how

people acquire or learn a language.

Psycholinguistics - the study of how people

process language.

Experimental linguistics - the study of

theories of linguistics representation
(phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax,
and semantics) based on evidence).

Neurolinguistics - the study of how language

affects the structure and function of the
brain.

Lexicography - the compilation and study of

dictionaries with context, history, grammar,
and pronunciation in mind.

Forensic linguistics - the study of language

and the law

Corpus linguistics - the study of language

through a collection of naturally occurring