 Let me ask you a couple questions If I were to ask you, what would you call or what do you call a carbonated beverage lots of sugar? Comes in a can a lot of times. What would you call that just in general not a brand name or anything like that? But what would you call something like that? Hopefully you said pop if you said soda then you may be a communist But we'll dig into that a little later But hopefully you said pop right because that's the appropriate name for something like that Okay, moving on. What's on what's something you would say to somebody who sneezes and you hear somebody sneeze would you say? God bless you. Go zoom tight Stop sneezing on me. What is it that you would say to that person? One more have you ever been to a tractor pull and have you ever participated in a tractor pull or even just gone to watch one? And or are you wondering what on earth is a tractor pull and why would they be doing that? These are all things that could be related to culture All examples of different cultures what we call something how we respond to somebody when they sneeze Whether or not you enjoy tractor pulls are all indicative of a particular culture in a lot of ways, right? so Culture is something that is so critically important to the area of communication and And we want to discuss that and explore that but it's also something that is oftentimes Misunderstood so I want to explore the roots of culture and then how it it impacts communication as a result So first of all, let's define culture to be clear culture is the learned and shared set of symbols language Values and norms used to distinguish one group of people from another So there are a couple of important things here We're gonna break this definition down a little bit But I want you to get that seared in your memory the learned and shared set of symbols language values and norms Used to distinguish one group of people from another so to start with we need to to clarify that culture is learned and shared Culture is not something that is is Genetically defined. It's not something you're born with or born into Culture is something that is taught our we learned call our carts we learned our culture from our family from our community from our friends from You know a lot the the societal norms of where we live And then we share those as well with with our family with our community with the people around us That the the culture is something though that is learned and shared. It is not a genetic predisposition Not something handed down Through DNA or anything like that is something that is learned and shared And what is it that we are learning and sharing? That's these components of culture that we mentioned in that definition starting with Symbols so for example if we just take American culture for example that we're just gonna look at American culture some of the common things that typify American culture and As far as symbols that represent America or that are important in American culture first We have the flag some tremendously important represents a lot of ideas for different people I mean in truth, it's just it's some fabric right that's colored in a particular way and in a particular pattern But but it represents so much more than it carries So much more in terms of symbolism for those of us who share in that American culture It's a really important symbol another symbol is baseball the idea of baseball or sometimes football I would but baseball's long been America's pastime And so baseball is something that is that is prototypically American and and something that we cling to as Representing America and then apple pie and what's better than apple pie, but baseball and the flag as well, right? So American is apple pie American is baseball American is the flag. So these are all symbols that represent Not only just the United States as a country, but represent our values represent things that are important to us represent Our lifestyle and so forth. So these are symbols that would be important to us in American culture As far as a language if we were looking at American culture Primarily is English although we know that a variety of languages are spoken all across the country Because we have people from all over the world that come to to reside here in in the United States But but our primary language here in the United States if not officially, but effectively is English So we share that language. We also share a variety of values things that that we Again, if even if we don't demonstrate them perfectly in the United States There are things we aspire to right these values that we cling to that we that we say are American this is what defines the United States and defines Americans things like liberty freedom and independence, right? Those are values the things that we value greatly here in the United States or liberty or freedom and our independence We value the idea of justice, right? theoretically equal justice and in equity injustice and justice is blind, but but we you know value a fair shaking court and and you know a Jury of our peers and and a fair judicial process and we value equality Again, we this is something we're aspiring to still I think there's a lot of Arguments we may that we are not a society of equality and there's that that's a fair argument But it's something that we value something that we aspire to is equality and Independence and freedom based on not on religion or gender on on race or creed or nationality and things But that that we value a fair and equitable shot of opportunity for everyone There are also norms here in the United States just like there aren't any other culture There are things that we consider to be Norms on typical behaviors or or you know Standard ways of doing things So for example one norm in the United States is that we eat meat and specifically we eat meat Typically that comes from either cows or pigs That's our primary source of meat when there are others right and there's we different kinds of meat But by and large the vast majority of me and we are meat-eating culture and the vast majority that meat comes from cows and pigs We also drive on the right-hand side of the road not everywhere in the world does that but in our Country the norm is that we drive on the right-hand side of the road We also live a Lot of times in single-family homes With larger yards than other places in the world where space is more of a consideration So families might live in an apartment or a flat we have you know much more of our citizens The citizenry lives in our population lives in single-family homes with a decent-sized yard attached to that's sort of the norm For a neighborhood in the United States as well So again those are just examples of what would make some of the things that would define American culture, but every Country every organization every community has its own culture every family has their own culture that we could point to as well different symbols language values norms and so for example symbols I could be anything this representative of an important to that culture In you know if you were in a motorcycle club, it would be the maybe the colors on the vest right if you were I used to play darts competitively and some are some you know was Important status symbol to have a nice case for your darts That's how people knew if you were serious or not. Yeah, that that case Was it was an important symbol a work? It may be who gets to carry the radio or the clipboard or whatever That might be symbolic for you in your workplace Language is also different for every culture and again. Let's just say that you're in the United States And so you speak English Let's say your company a primary language your company's English, but then every company's going to have its own little jargon Right the different language that they use in terms of jargon in terms of acronyms and things like that So every culture is going to be different regarding language in that way Organizations and groups will have different values and spouse different values and they'll have different norms different ways of doing things so every culture Is defined by these four things and has its own set of symbols language values and norms So we tend to think of culture though as as kind of this one big thing that we are part of one culture Like I'm American and that's my culture, right? So that's that's it, but that's not really Nearly specific enough we all have a series and a set of co-cultures really that exist within us So I am an American. I'm also a Midwesterner. I'm from Indiana. I'm from a small town. I play darts I love music specifically. I love hard rock and heavy metal music and I love Reading and I love Doing different things like that. So those are all different co-cultures for me And they set me apart from other people that distinguish me from other people from that collection of Co-cultures that I have right so we are not just one culture We are a set of Co-cultures and we all have a bunch of different co-cultures and we can demonstrate this too by looking at the world for example We tend to say you know We look at the world the United States is different than the rest of the world in many ways, right? Again, those things we just went through the symbols language values and norms tend to be a slightly different Maybe maybe very different and maybe just a little bit different than depending on where in the world You're talking about but we're different so the United States has its own culture We have its culture American culture and that makes sense and that's true But that doesn't you know come nearly close enough to narrowing it down enough though, right? I mean we we do have an American culture as opposed to other countries But still within that we have different regions of the United States different areas And even if something as simple as I mentioned before if you're in a part of the country that Properly calls those kinds of carbonate beverages pop Then you're part of that culture But if you mistakenly call it soda then you aren't part of a totally different culture, right? That's a cultural thing or you know the tractor pull culture if you're part of that then you know That's that's prevalent in in one part of the country probably not so much in other parts And so forth, you know, I'm from Indiana There aren't a lot of surfing opportunities for example in Indiana So surfing is not as much of a culture here in Indiana as would be in some place Where you live on the coast and have the opportunity to do that more so So different regions of the United States and you can get even more specific and talk about how the states have their own culture And how communities and one community that next has its own culture and so forth You have a different culture than your neighbor and it gets even more and more specific and the truth is that Each of us if we think about what our interests are what our activities are our hobbies Each of those represents a culture and probably a culture within that culture again I love music and I specifically love the hard rock heavy metal classic rock those types of music Anything with a hard-driving guitar and so that's a different culture within music So that's a co-culture within a co-culture within a co-culture so so we can get more and more specific with this Right, so we all have these different co-cultures And what that does though is again cultures help us distinguish one group of people from another So we use this to distinguish one group of people from another not and I need to be clear on this not in a sense of Better or worse or right or wrong But just as different to distinguish them as different from one group to another When we do this when we when we have our different co-cultures when we think about our co-cultures It creates what we call in groups and out groups and very simply in groups and out groups have to do with Who we would call us and who we would call them So in groups for me are things that I mentioned You know hard rock music is an in-group for me Darts are an in-group for me being a band parent is an in-group for me or has been over the years when our kids were in Band those are those are groups that I would all refer to as us Because I'm a part of that group. So that's an us group for me which makes it an in-group for me other groups people You know a group that enjoys Country music isn't really my thing some of it's okay, but it's not really my thing So people enjoy country music. That's sort of a them thing for me It's a they or them and and that's an out group for me. It's not something that I'm interested in as I mentioned surfing I don't serve I've never been surfing don't would know the first thing about it That's an out group for me. Again, not that there's anything wrong with any of that It's just you know when we talk about us or them We're breaking it down into in groups and out groups in groups or those Co-cultures to which we belong out groups are other co-cultures to which we did not belong So culture again and just defines helps us define and distinguish one group from another So culture is the learned and shared set of symbols Language values and norms that help us to distinguish one group from another That's how we define culture very specifically. I Want to take a minute to dispel some myths about culture and to talk about the ways we don't define culture So if we're talking about culture being undefined things that are not true about culture culture is not a matter of ethnicity race or nationality As we've talked about in great detail culture is something that is learned and shared You don't learn ethnicity race and nationality. Those are things that are you know passed down through DNA genetics or based on where you were born things you have no choice over and And so you're not learning and sharing those things. Those are things that are imparted in different ways So culture explicitly is not ethnicity race or nationality now having said that however It's important to note that even though they are not ethnicity race or nationality it is possible that The culture follows those things very carefully or very closely follows behind those things right closely at times because You tend to be around people who have a similar ethnicity race or nationality and so of course those are the people who are Teaching you and sharing things about culture with you. In fact, it is so common when when you know For example people come to the United States. It's not at all uncommon in fact It's very common for people to kind of congregate with people Who come from a similar background who share that ethnicity race or nationality to the extent that you know We look at places like New York City And if we look specifically at the highlighted portion of the map here of New York City in this this lower section here We see that that it's so prevalent that you end up with neighborhoods called Chinatown Little Italy little India places like that where where those congregations of people who come from those similar cultures have gathered and it's not their culture is not defined Explicitly by their ethnicity their race or their nationality But it is does trail their culture does trail those things because people Share things with the people who are around them and they learn things from people who are around them So you do have that that sort of connection, but it's not explicitly culture Right, so culture is not ethnicity race nationality. Although it can very tightly trail those things and be connected to those things in in some way Culture is also different from this idea of ethnocentrism Ethnocentrism has to do with the belief that your culture is inherently superior to another culture or to other cultures period And so as we mentioned earlier culture is not about better or worse, right or wrong It's just about different different cultures are different and that's the end of it It's not that they're better or worse But ethnocentrism does take that next step and say that well our culture is Superior our culture is obviously better the culture that I belong to is, you know objectively superior to yours And that's an issue. We don't want to fall into And it does happen just like it does everywhere else in the world It does happen in the United States where people will oftentimes look at the world and say well Obviously the United States is the best America is the best. So everybody else. This is kind of here to Serve us and to supplement our needs and why don't they want to be more like us? but So we have this ethnocentric view that can come out in Americans at times and We want to be cautious to avoid that and not think of other cultures as better or worse, but just different And I'm one of the more prevalent examples of this though is we look at the map for example This is probably a map that you grew up with in your classrooms and things It's called the Mercator projection map. It was developed a long time ago and is a very ethnocentric representation of the world And this map what was created by Europeans basically and so Europe takes not only the central place in the world and the central place in the map But it's also disproportionately large to where it is in actuality So the map we've been looking at probably our entire lives is not actually accurate And we know now obviously we have satellite technology and things. It's very easy to to check this but the mercator map represents an ethnocentric view very Eurocentric view of the world as opposed to one of the newer versions of of map is called the gulp or The gulp heater's projection map and so it looks like this though where things are in their proper Proportions as you can see Europe is still in the center, but it's it's much smaller than it was the mercator projection map as is north america Africa is much larger than it was represented in the mercator map as is south america and just by comparison for example Here you have the the two laid on top of one another the blue is the gulp heater's map the more accurate The proportion of the world that that map represents and then the yellow is the mercator You can see how disproportionate it is in terms of the size of the different places And we could get into the idea that not only is Europe in the center of the world, but The westernized quote-unquote westernized societies are on the top as opposed to the bottom And so that may place people psychologically at a belief that those those places on the bottom aren't as important Are they they're they're beneath the other places? So some people would say well not only we need the gulp heater's projection map But we need to turn it upside down. How does that affect your brain thinking about the world that way? In order to provide some Social equality for people who live in those other parts of the world And avoid that ethnocentric view But that's a discussion probably a longer discussion for a different day, but just to give you an idea of how Entrenched these things can become in our societies So quickly want to take a look at some of the ways that culture can affect communication some of the different ways And these are broad strokes and and I'm just going to kind of push through these a little bit but The first is that culture can affect communication in the way that we view Our place in it in a sense right individual versus group mentality Are we in a society like the united states that values individual achievement that values individual contribution individual success individual pursuit of opportunity Or are we in a part of the world that values more of that group Cohesiveness the group stability and don't upset the fruit basket type mentality Again, neither one is better or worse. They both have different Pros and cons associated with them But but there is a very different mentality in different parts of the world here. It's what we call individualistic versus collectivistic Cultures and the united states is very much an individualistic culture Let's have different Methods for paying attention to context or different levels to which we pay attention to context In communicating specifically so in the united states. We are what's called a low context culture meaning we rely heavily on the literal Words that are used right yes is yes and no is no We don't meet around the bush, you know as much things like that We just take people if there were to expect people to Express themselves accurately in that way and other cultures that would be considered really rude to to be so forthright and to be so blunt So they they do beat around the bush a little more and soften things up a little bit And they're what's called a high context cultures They pay attention more to nonverbals in a way that this is going to affect the person's quote-unquote face, right and and so That attention to context whether it's a low or high context culture is different in different parts of the world And in different cultures. There's also this deference to power or authority United states This is what's called a low power distance culture We are a low power distance culture meaning that we may have respect for that that position That the authority that position for example, we may have regard for the person who's the president of the united states But that doesn't mean that that that we totally feel like we're beneath them or that they're somehow better than us Inherently or that we couldn't just talk to them as a person Whereas people in high power distance cultures may feel that way may feel like these this person is above me in society So i'm not really even allowed to talk to them or I have to show them a greater Regard or respect just because of their place in society We don't really have that As much here in the united states we have that low power distance culture where everybody's kind of equal And you can get there if you can if you can get there you can achieve it if you can but But it's not that way everywhere This comfort with ambiguity What we call uncertainty avoidance In the united states we are not very comfortable with ambiguity. We like clarity. We like Precision in our language in our communication Other cultures as I've said are more ambiguous. They are they leave more uncertain And and they're comfortable with that and they they don't necessarily avoid that uncertainty like we do We like to have again that clarity that clarification here in the united states We are we're very low on the scale of uncertainty avoidance um Achievement versus nurturing What does the society prize what do they kind of preach so to speak to that they're The people that are part of that culture part of that society united states give more very Achievement oriented the individualistic achievement oriented as opposed to nurturing And allowing people to kind of fund their own way we push achievement here And then our view of time just the way that we treat time and the way that we view time United states were what's called a monochronic Culture meaning we we see time as a very specific Specifically measured quantitative type of thing time as money time as a resource We start meetings on time when we end them on time. We don't go over. You keep me late. That sends a signal, right? And other cultures it's just not viewed that way. There's a much more fluid view of time there what's called poly chronic And uh, just a different view and relationship with time I mean, there's the same amount of hours in the day, but they just view it differently have a different perspective on on what that represents, I guess Just some major ways. These are just some of the significant ways that culture Impacts communication, but the truth is that culture is is a part of every communication experience every communication scenario It's really this undercurrent and it infuses everything and so Culture it's just a really critical aspect of communication if we're going to be effective communicators period Then we need to also really be effective intercultural Communicators, so If you have any questions about culture and communication, I hope that you'll bring those to me the email Let me know and not happy to discuss it with you in that way and in the meantime I hope that you will have a renewed understanding or an appreciation for the impact in the the role of culture in communication and the attention that should be paid To culture as an aspect of communication as we engage with others