Various definitions of culture

• Culture into language learning

• Understanding different cultures
• Approaches to culture
• Social phenomena:
• Exists in groups, interactions
• Cognitive approach:
• Culture is learned in inidividual bases.
• It is not anything in the outer world.
• Mental reflection of this real like language
• Symbolic approach
Culture is like language. National language is part of culture.
Everything that we experience is a form, organization,
patterns of behaviour
Writing letters
Organization patterns of our behaviour
Freedom of speech
Cultural beliefs (logic, things being right or wrong)
Cultural beliefs are accepted by all the people belonging to a
particular culture
There is no right or wrong

• Example: red belt

In Russian national culture people use flowers on different
occasions
Festive, wedding number of flowers is odd
Funeral the number of flowers even

We are used to this

We follow this pattern
Our parents follow
Something accepted
Something accepted thinking in that culture
Example: wearing black in funerals
Black color is used for tragic events
Weddings????
Bride is in White groom is in black
Bride/ groom contrast
Happy/ tragic

Very difficult to trace the origins of such beliefs

• Good , desirable
• Bad, undesirable

• Cultural values meaning of the previous organizations of

culture.
Meaning of all the cultural forms
Cultural values
Universal scale describing the meaning of different cultural
values

Not in every culture people distinguish between alive and

dead.
Not in every culture people distinguish between love and
hatred.
Specific to some of the cultures
But in every culture people demonstrate their attitude to
nature social environment broad terms)
Every culture has an attitude to time and space
Communication patterns
Power
Power distance
Individual/collective
Nature of this individual
What is big or small, what is left, what is right is different