CULTURE

DEFINITIONS

1. John Donne (1924)

“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the
continent, a part of the main; ... any man’s death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to
know for whom the bell tolls’ it tolls for thee.”

2. Larson & Smalley (1972:39)

Culture is a “blueprint” that “guides the behaviour of people in
a community and is incubated in family life. It governs our
behaviour in groups, makes us sensitive to matters of status,
and helps us know what others expect of us and know how far
we can go as individuals and what our responsibility is to the
group”.
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3. Hofstede (1984:31)
“…collective programming of the mind which
distinguishes the members of one human group from
another”

4. Spivak (1990:123)
Definition which focuses on social inequality and
social conflict and defines culture as “the site of a
struggle, a problem, a discursive production, an
effect structure rather than a cause”.
 DEFINITIONS

5. Adaskou et al. (1990:3-4)

(i) The aesthetic sense/culture with a capital C/the achievement
culture (e.g., architecture, cinema, literature, media, music);

(ii) The sociological sense/culture with a small c (e.g., the way of life
in the target community, the organization and nature of family, of
home life, sense of interpersonal relations, material conditions,
work and leisure, customs and institutions);

(iii) The semantic sense (conception and thought processes);

(iv) The pragmatic/sociolinguistic sense (i.e., ‘appropriacy’ in language

use, the social skills which make it possible for the language
learners to interact successfully with the members of the target
language community as required by the setting, audience, purpose
and genre).
Four different senses of culture
Aesthetic Sense
(Media, cinema,music and literature, cultural figures, popular)
Expressive products such as music, literature, art or music
Sociological Sense (Family, education, work and leisure,
traditions)
Refers to the structure and nature of family, home,life,
interpersonal relations.
Sociological Sense
(Family, education, work and leisure, traditions)
Refers to the structure and nature of family,
home,life, interpersonal relations.
Celebrations, daily life and routines, values and
beliefs, customs, traditions
A language is associated with the customs, rituals, traditions
and institutions of a country such as religious or educational
practices, home or family life conventions.

Customs, traditions, celebrations and festivals, values and

beliefs, daily life and routines.
Semantic Sense
Conceptual system embodied in the language covering many
areas such as food, clothes and institutions.
Cultural references in the meanings of words, idiomatic
expressions are the most common examples of semantic
culture that can be encountered in the language teaching
materials.
Pragmatic Sense
The background knowledge social skills and paralinguistic
skills that in addition to mastery of the language code, that
make possible successful communication.Nonverbal
communication norms in eye contact, gestures, conversational
norms and patterns in a variety of situations such as greeting,
thanking, complimenting, apologizing or requesting.
Manners, use of space, politeness