Culture As A Result of Language

             Heine (2012) explains that humans have such developed cultural learning skills as a result of two key capacities. Humans have a theory of mind, meaning that they are able to consider the perspectives of others and that they have the ability to communicate through the use of language. Humans are able to learn and pass on culture so easily because of language. Language provides a very efficient way to learn culture, because of language we can express thoughts, we can clarify them and explain them.  Having a theory of mind and the ability to use language appear to be what separates humans from other primate species.

            Although I have never travelled abroad (I have only been to a few provinces in Canada and a few states in the USA) I still feel as though different situations that I have experienced are reflective of different cultures. Last spring break I participated in a Service Learning Immersion Experience to Ottawa, where I lived in a L’Arche Community for a week. While in Ottawa I lived in a French home with 5 core members who were all non-verbal.  Although this is not a huge difference for me as I am bilingual, the difficulty was in attempting to communicate in ways other than words. We did find other ways of communicating, for example through signs, tone and gestures, but I can see why it is so easy to pass culture down when you can use language. Some of the members did use sign language and were able to communicate amongst themselves.

            Having language provides an important way of learning cultural believes. My career goal is to become a teacher, and being from New Brunswick, the only bilingual province, it only makes sense that I may potentially teach a French class. By teaching French, as it is my second language I would most likely only pass on the rules that create the language and be leaving behind the cultural aspects of the language. Although it is mandatory for students in the New Brunswick school system to learn some level of French they may not be exposed to the culture of the language simply due to a lack of teachers who are French. 

Same Sport Different Culture and Cultural Persistence

                While reading through Chapter 3, on cultural evolution I was particularly interested in how culture persists. Heine (2012) explains how one could test cultural persistence. It was looked at in relation to subjective-well being, this refers to how satisfied one is with their own life. The researchers went ahead and tested different nationalities to see the levels of subjective well-being. Then by testing American’s of descent of these other countries they could see whether the cultural influence of subjective well being persisted. So for example if they tested someone of France, they would then test a French American. The results from their study suggested that culture does in fact persist.  This seems very interesting to me that if my level of subjective well-being was reflective of the culture in which I belong to, that if I were to move somewhere else in the world it would most likely remain around the same level. When I consider my subjective well-being I see it as a reflection of the culture I belong to. I feel as though I was brought up into a very privileged culture, my parents did everything for me that they could and provided me with many opportunities, such as attending university. With all the experiences that I’ve had to date I would consider my subjective well-being to be very high. I am very content with the opportunities I have received.  I find it hard to believe that if I were to go to some part of the world that is very underprivileged and experiencing tough times, whether from natural disaster or war that my level of subjective well being would remain high in generations to come.

           

            I found particularly interesting the comparison of baseball in Japanese culture and in American culture. The game is the same, the rules are the same but how they play the game is reflective of their cultural beliefs.  For example the Japanese belong to a collectivist culture. The collectivist beliefs are evident in the game in that they Japanese tend to play the game with much more sacrifices of the individual for the better of the team, for example sacrifice bunt hits. If leading in a game the Japanese will try not to raise the score too high to avoid making the other team look poorly. This story about how culture persists seemed to be very applicable to my cultural self.  I always grew up playing sports and it was a big part of my life. I was very competitive; I would always due whatever it took to win.  The way my teams played was primarily reflective of individualistic cultures, such as the Americans in the baseball story but there were some similarities to the Japanese cultures. Our practice times resembled the American’s, we would only practice a few hours a day as opposed to the Japanese who spent the majority of the day practicing. We always had very sportsmanlike coaches who would want to make sure we played a clean game as well as never beat a team by an embarrassing amount. Sports can be a key way in which cultural persistence is demonstrated. It seemed as though in my days of playing sports that there was both individualistic and collectivist trends to our team.

How Other Cultures Are Viewed

            Throughout the time I’ve spent in this course learning about culture and other courses that touch on similar topics, what I seem to have learned the most about is how as individuals we see and perceive other, very different cultures. What I have come to notice the most is how subjective our observations tend to be when looking at other cultures, we tend to be very ethnocentric in what we see. I somewhat feel as though when looking at other cultures we tend to learn about our own culture as well. For example when observing other cultures in their day to day practices we tend to compare their activities to a standard, and the standard is our own cultural practices. Our own cultural influences are of a very individualistic culture and thus it can be hard to understand why certain collective cultures do certain things, such as arranged marriages, and how the family, not the individual, usually decides access to education.

            I came across an article for another class, “The Body Ritual of the Nacirema,” this article was a satire about Americans. It was reported from a very objective bias, one who had no previous understanding of the culture would be able to understand the rituals of the Americans. When learning about other cultures I find it crazy how I could be part of a culture as small as my family and then a culture that is larger than our nation, and the individualistic culture.

            Being brought up in a culture that is individualistic, I learned rules and traits of the culture before I would have even understood what culture is. For example from a very young age I was always put into activities that would increase my talents and skills. By doing this I was improving myself in a very individualistic way, these skills would be seen as a way to set myself apart from others when looking for a job or trying out for a team. If I had been raised in a collectivist group I most likely would not have had access to these kinds of activities, I would have spent my time helping out my family and doing things for the collective goal. When we are born in to a society we instinctively become part of a preexisting culture.

           Culture is also learned from a young age via cultural learning. Many times humans can be caught imitating others as a form of learning. The advantage humans have over other animals with regards to imitating is whom they choose to imitate. For example humans are very good at seeing who has skills that are respected amongst others. When I was young this seemed to be the best, most effective way of learning. I would imitate others in my life when learning how to talk and learning the meaning of symbols in our culture. 

Pluralistic Ignorance

           When explaining the concept of pluralistic ignorance in the text, Heine  (2012) uses the example of Princeton University Students and drinking. The students reported that they believed that most other students were more comfortable with high levels of alcohol consumption than they themselves were comfortable with.  The tendency for people to misinterpret ones thoughts into believing what they think the norm is, is pluralistic ignorance. When learning about this concept it seemed relevant to my culture, both in my hometown and here at StFX. When I first began to consider what culture is, I had a very limited view and I usually associated culture with nationality. Although nationality is a culture there are many subcultures and other cultures within a nation.

 Pluralistic ignorance in my mind appears to be most prevalent in high school. At least in my high school it seemed that way and could be applied to nearly any social situation. The reason that pluralistic ignorance seemed to have such an effect on students was the element of social desirability.  People would think that others would think more positively of them if they were to do what they believed was the most socially accepted thing.  Like I said this seemed extremely relevant in high school. I know myself at that age, I wanted to fit in and was scared to do what others thought was wrong. So by doing that I would go to parties with my friends that would make me feel uncomfortable. When learning about pluralistic ignorance I started to question some of the decisions I made in the past. For example if I was uncomfortable going to some of these parties, were my friends uncomfortable as well? Were we all going thinking everyone else wanted to go and be there?  Pluralistic ignorance can cause certain culture rules, to persist. If no one wants to speak out and say that they are uncomfortable with some of the decisions that are being made people are going to continue to participate in these actions are thus reinforce that it is considered acceptable in society.

Like we discussed as a class, pluralistic ignorance can be associated with hooking up. It appears that this is more where it fits in with my culture of students at StFX. Pluralistic ignorance could potentially cause a culture to follow norms and standards, which no one in the culture is comfortable with, or agrees with. Being part of a very individualistic culture this seems to surprise me. If our culture is so centered on the self, why do we participate in activities that seem to be uncomfortable, just so others will think more highly of us? It seems that as we get older, and this was mentioned in the discussion, that we start to focus less on what others seem to think of and more on a collective goal.