Chapter 6: Cultural Practices

Practices...

Something I would never do is rope swing or walking on a tightrope  I think it is a really difficult and dangerous action, even though many people find it interesting.

The fact of being dangerous is one the reasons why people like it. People who practice rope swing are people searching for the edge. I would say they're daredevils! 

This is a practice that's becoming kind of popular nowadays. A few month ago a famous man became popular around the world for walking on a tightrope across the Grand Canyon. His name is Nik Wallenda. He holds seven Guinness World Records for various acrobatic feats, but is best known as the first person to walk a tightrope stretched directly over Niagara Falls.

Nik Wallenda

I would never do what Nik has done. For doing something like that you must have the courage and practice a lot because your life depends on how will you act while doing this. 

Interesting practices...

Western Wall

A few months ago I read about something that I found really interesting. The Jewish people and the practice of praying in the famous Western Wall. But why do they do it? What does it mean?

The Western Wall is located in the City of Jerusalem. It is maybe the most sacred site to the Jewish people.

It has been a site for Jewish people to pray and pilgrimage for a long time.

There are also some practices "inside this practice". 

They have specific practices about this product. For example:
Not all members of the Jewish community can pray in the same area. 
They believe that women should not  pray there or they should be separated from men while praying. 

Papers placed on the wall.

Another tradition inside the one of praying at the Western Wall is placing notes on the wall. It's the practice of placing slips of paper containing written prayers to God into the cracks on the Western Wall. Over a million notes are placed each year in what has become a custom.

Check out this video with interesting facts about the wall... 

Chapter 5: Cultural Products

CULTURAL PRODUCTS

Products are the visible dimension of culture, in other words, they are the Gateway to the new culture, the new way of life. They are the first things that greet our senses when we enter the culture and the differences stand out. We can see, hear, feel, smell or taste these cultural products that are creations of the members. However, some of them cannot be tangible and are ideational products like laws, economics, religion or art. 

Cultural products are classified into four categories based on increasing complexity: artifacts, places, institutions and art forms. 

Artifacts

Are the individual objects created or adopted by the members of the culture.

Euro (Currency used in Europe).

Places

Also known as physical settings. They are cultural products too. They encompass the use or interpretation of the physical features of natural environment.

Central Park (New York).

Institutions

Are created to deal with “the business of living”. These institutions are formal, organized systems that define and regulate the practices of members of the culture.

St. Basil 's Cathedral (Moscow, Russia). 

Art forms

Are complex products that pervade the culture and exist beyond particular social institutions. Include language and its creative manifestations. Reflect the esthetic outlook, sensibilities and philosophy of the culture. 

Some examples of cultural products are:

Kippah

A kippah, kippa or kipa , is like a cap usually made of cloth. Jewish men wear this cultural product as a requirement that is held by some orthodox people.

Chinese tea 

Chinese tea is a beverage from the leaves of tea plants. This is a traditional product in China. People in China drink tea throughout the day, including during meals, as a substitute for plain water for health or simple pleasure. We can see how products are also related to the other four dimensions, in this case the product is used for practices. 

Ritsurin Garden

In Japan, the garden has the status of artwork. The Ritsurin Garden  is one of the most famous and most beautiful historical gardens in Japan. The garden is situated in the city of Takamatsu and is considered one of its main attractions. 

Indian Sari

A sari is a strip of cloth, worn by women in the Indian Subcontinent. The sari is usually worn over a petticoat called lehenga and with a blouse known as a choli. (You can click on the blue words to know more about other products used with the sari).

This product represents the Indian culture. It is also related with cultural practices. There are different kinds of draping which means it has different meaning depending on the culture. 

Great highland bagpipe and Kilt. 

The Great Highland Bagpipe is a type of bagpipe native to Scotland. It has achieved widespread recognition through its usage in the British military and in pipe bands throughout the world. This product is a very good representation of Scottish culture.  Whenever you see one of this instruments you will think about Scotland. 

This product is very popular in areas with Scottish and Irish emigrant populations like England, USA, Canada, New Zealand, Australia or South Africa.

Listen to this sample of bagpipe music!

Chapter 4: Language and culture.

Are language and culture related?

Language and culture are clearly related, fused and one reflects the other. We can study culture from 5 dimensions and language is present in all of them. Language is a window to the culture.

1. Language and cultural products

The members of a culture use language to manipulate or interact with the cultural products. We use language to describe products, make comparisons. Language is actually a cultural product.

2. Language and cultural practice

During cultural practices people talk and it requires the participation of language. The interaction with people will require of speaking and listening or reading and writing.

3. Language and cultural perspectives

Language is used to name and understand perceptions, values, attitudes and beliefs that govern our way of life. We use language to make tacit perspectives implicit for example the use of idioms and common phrases may have a special meaning according to the cultural perspectives.

4. Language and cultural communities

We can see variations in forms, use and meanings when we situate language in specific communities or groups. Communities adapt the language describe and carry out particular practices and products associated with their group and its activities. Communities also define norms for language use and an appropriate use of language is essential. 

For example English words may have different meaning depending on the culture, in this case American or British.

WORD	AMERICAN MEANING	BRITISH MEANING
Casket	The type of coffin with upholstery and a half-open lid, any coffin.	A small box, as for jewels, particularly an antique.
Crisp	A term to sunburning.	Fried potato slices with salt, sometimes with flavour (US: potato chips).
DI	Drill instructor (military).	Detective inspector (police).
First floor (of a building)	The floor at ground level (often, but not always, the same floor as a building's lobby) (UK: ground floor).	The floor above ground level (US: second floor).
Football	(usually) Association football (US: soccer).	American football.

Examples of language inside culture.

Language is an important aspect to take into account when talking about culture. We use language to participate and it has some functions like socializing, establishing relationships, influencing people, giving and responding to feedback, arguing or avoiding trouble. 

Some examples of language inside culture are:

• For instance in Costa Rica the use of the phrase "Pura Vida" has a cultural meaning, someone who doesn't know about Costa Rican culture will not get the real meaning of this phrase. The same with the popular word "mae".

• When we take some words from another language it affects our culture, for example nowadays we use many words that are use in English and that makes us get closer to the English culture.

Similarities and differences between Spanish and English. 

We can compare both languages and find many similarities and differences, for example:

Similarities: 

• Both languages have subject – verb- object structure.
• Both have common background (Indo-European).
• Words that end in –tion in English end in –ción in Spanish.
• Both languages have the same or similar words like: chocolate, capital, alcohol, vanilla/vainilla, special/especial, ecology/ecología, etc.
• Some prefixes means the same, for example: super-, anti-, bi-, etc. 

Differences:

• English alphabet has 26 letters while Spanish has one more including “Ñ”.
• English the letter H is pronounced while in Spanish is a silent letter.
• Quotation marks vs. dashes
• Spanish does not have Consonant digraphs: sh, th, wh, p
• Initial sounds: kn, qu, wr, sk that don't exist in Spanish.
• Spanish words have masculine and feminine articles and adjectives, English does not.
• Spanish exclamation/question marks at the beginning of the sentence.
• Adjectives come after noun in Spanish while in English adjectives come before noun.

Advice for North American people!

If a North American wants to learn Spanish, I would recommend the next things:

• He/she should learn a little bit about about culture at the same time he is learning grammar.

•  Should look for a native speaker so that he could practice what he has learned.

• Go to a country where Spanish is the main language

• Learn the most common idioms (Check out this video)

• And maybe the most important: analyze and think about the "five dimensions"  to analyze how culture and language are related. 

Chapter 3: Defining culture

In order to understand a culture we can study it using “The five dimensions of culture” that includes:

Products: Are all the artifacts produced or adopted by the members of the culture. It includes tangible objects like plants, animals, tools, clothing, written documents, buildings; still perceptible as written and spoken language, music and complex institutions like family, education, economy, politics and religion.

Practices: Are the actions and interactions the members of the culture carry out. Include language and other forms of communication, self-expression as well as actions associated with social groups and use of products.

Perspectives: represent the perceptions, beliefs, values and attitudes.

Communities:  include the specific social context and groups in which members carry out cultural practices. It refers to contexts like language, gender, race, religion, socioeconomic class, political party, social club, sports team, charity organization, coworkers or family.  They coexist by separation, cooperation, collaboration or conflict.

Persons: the individual members who embody the culture and its communities in unique ways.

Culture in TV show "Modern Family: Election Day" 

According to the five dimensions of culture we can analyze the following aspects:

Products: In this episode we can see many products, for example related to the campaign we can see flags, ballots, etc.

Election Day: Cam and Mitchell campaign. (video)

Spoken language is also part of the products, in this case we can see the use of spoken language when they the 2 guys are telling people to vote for Claire, when Claire’s family call people and we can also appreciate the use of some idioms.

We also see complex institutions of family, education and politics.

Practices: in order to win the campaign Claire had to call people and told them why they should vote for her, go to a radio program, interviews, etc.

Haley is worried because she hasn't been accepted into college. In this culture teens are supposed to go to college right after high school.

Voting is an important practice for adults including senior citizens.

Drinking alcohol is something common when you feel sad about something, in this case when Claire got a call and realized that she had lost the elections she looks for something to drink thinking that doing that she will feel better.

Phill goes and tries to help old people who can not go by themselves to vote, so he offers his car and he will take them to the voting center. 

Perspectives: we appreciate that they believe in a democratic system, they have democratic values, Claire expects to win but in the end she didn't.

It is mentioned that politicians never do what they promise.

Communities: We have different kind of member in this community.

There are women and men. We see children, teens, adults and old people. The Latin culture is represented by Gloria. They have local political parties (Claire’s and others). We also see a gay couple.

Persons: Too many people participate during the show and all of them are different because of gender, age, profession, ethnicity, etc. and all of them are an important member of the culture. We can appreciate both individual (each person) and collective (Claire’s team) culture.

Election Day: The Family Supports Claire (video)

Personal opinion 

I think this is a good method to understand a new culture because it includes all the things that could explain the reasons of why that culture is like that. Understanding a new culture is a very complex thing, especially if the culture has many different aspects from our culture.

We may not understand the reasons of why people do some things depending on their culture because we have a different one, we think differently and sometimes things from other cultures may look kind of crazy or incomprehensible for us but if we take the time to learn the reasons of why those persons think like that or act in a different way, we will be able to understand and learn more about that culture.

Before reading this chapter I wouldn't had been able to answer a question like “How could we understand a culture?” because it is a complicated question that requires analysis but now that I've read about this 5 dimensions it looks simpler.  These five aspects include everything we should know when learning about a culture and they are interrelated so that we have to learn about all of them because, for instance, I couldn't understand the practices if I don’t know anything about persons.

With this five aspects we can understand any cultural phenomena. We could even investigate about our own culture and learn or understand a lot of things we ignore, including simple things we live in our daily lives as the example of the drive through restaurants or in our work place or school.