Language ideology (also known as linguistic ideology) is, within anthropology (especially linguistic anthropology), sociolinguistics, and cross-cultural studies,
any set of beliefs about languages as they are used in their social
worlds. Language ideologies are conceptualizations about languages,
speakers, and discursive practices. Like other kinds of ideologies,
language ideologies are influenced by political and moral interests, and
they are shaped in a cultural setting. When recognized and explored, language ideologies expose how the
speakers' linguistic beliefs are linked to the broader social and
cultural systems to which they belong, illustrating how the systems
beget such beliefs. By doing so, language ideologies link implicit and
explicit assumptions about a language or language in general to their
social experience as well as their political and economic interests.
Applications and approaches
Definitions
Scholars have noted difficulty in attempting to delimit the scope, meaning, and applications of language ideology. Paul Kroskrity, a linguistic anthropologist,
describes language ideology as a "cluster concept, consisting of a
number of converging dimensions" with several "partially overlapping but
analytically distinguishable layers of significance", and cites that in
the existing scholarship on language ideology "there is no particular
unity . . . no core literature, and a range of definitions." One of the broadest definitions is offered by Alan Rumsey, who
describes language ideologies as "shared bodies of commonsense notions
about the nature of language in the world." This definition is seen by Kroskrity as unsatisfactory, however,
because "it fails to problematize language ideological variation and
therefore promotes an overly homogeneous view of language ideologies
within a cultural group." Emphasizing the role of speakers' awareness in influencing language structure, Michael Silverstein
defines linguistic ideologies as "sets of beliefs about language
articulated by users as a rationalization or justification of perceived
language structure and use." Definitions that place greater emphasis on sociocultural factors include Shirley Heath's
characterization of language ideologies as "self-evident ideas and
objectives a group holds concerning roles of language in the social
experiences of members as they contribute to the expression of the
group", as well as Judith Irvine's definition of the concept as "the cultural system of ideas about social and linguistic relationships, together with their loading of moral and political interests."
Critical vs. neutral approaches
The basic division in studies of language ideology is between neutral and critical approaches to ideology. In neutral approaches to language ideology, beliefs or ideas about a
language are understood to be shaped by the cultural systems in which it
is embedded, but no variation within or across these systems is
identified. Often, a single ideology will be identified in such cases.
Characterizations of language ideology as representative of one
community or culture, such as those routinely documented in ethnographic research, are common examples of neutral approaches to language ideology.
Critical approaches to language ideology explore the capacity for
language and linguistic ideologies to be used as strategies for
maintaining social power and domination. They are described by Kathryn Woolard and Bambi Schieffelin as studies of "some aspects of representation and social cognition, with particular social origins or functional and formal characteristics." Although such studies are often noted for their discussions of language politics and the intersection between language and social class,
the crucial difference between these approaches to language ideology
and neutral understandings of the concept is that the former emphasize
the existence of variability and contradiction both within and amongst
ideologies, while the latter approach ideology as a conception on its own terms.
Areas of inquiry
Language use and structure
Many
scholars have argued that ideology plays a role in shaping and
influencing linguistic structures and speech forms. Michael
Silverstein, for example, sees speakers' awareness of language and their
rationalizations of its structure and use as critical factors that
often shape the evolution of a language's structure. According to Silverstein, the ideologies speakers possess regarding
language mediate the variation that occurs due to their imperfect and
limited awareness of linguistic structures, resulting in the
regularization of any variation that is rationalized by any sufficiently
dominant or culturally widespread ideologies. This is demonstrated by such linguistic changes as the rejection of "he" as the generic pronoun in English, which coincided with the rise of the feminist movement in the second half of the twentieth century. In this instance, the accepted usage of the masculine pronoun as the
generic form came to be understood as a linguistic symbol of patriarchal
and male-dominated society, and the growing sentiment opposing these
conditions motivated some speakers to stop using "he" as the generic
pronoun in favor of the construction "he or she." This rejection of
generic "he" was rationalized by the growing desire for gender equality and women's empowerment, which was sufficiently culturally prevalent to regularize the change.
Alan Rumsey also sees linguistic ideologies as playing a role in
shaping the structure of a language, describing a circular process of
reciprocal influence where a language's structure conditions the
ideologies that affect it, which in turn reinforce and expand this
structure, altering the language "in the name of making it more like
itself." This process is exemplified by the excessive glottalization of consonants by bilingual speakers of moribund varieties of Xinca, who effectively altered the structure of this language in order to make it more distinct from Spanish. These speakers glottalized consonants in situations in places more
competent speakers of Xinca would not because they were less familiar
with the phonological rules of the language and also because they wished
to distinguish themselves from the socially-dominant Spanish-speakers,
who viewed glottalized consonants as "exotic."
Ethnography of speaking
Studies
of "ways of speaking" within specific communities have been recognized
as especially productive sites of research in language ideology. They
often include a community's own theory of speech as a part of their
ethnography, which allows for the documentation of explicit language
ideologies on a community-wide level or in "the neutral sense of
cultural conceptions." A study of language socialization practices in Dominica,
for example, revealed that local notions of personhood, status, and
authority are associated with the strategic usage of Patwa and English
in the course of the adult-child interaction. The use of Patwa by children is largely forbidden by adults due to a
perception that it inhibits the acquisition of English, thus restricting
social mobility, which in turn has imbued Patwa with a significant measure of covert prestige and rendered it a powerful tool for children to utilize in order to defy authority. Thus there are many competing ideologies of Patwa in Dominica: one
which encourages a shift away from Patwa usage and another which
contributes to its maintenance.
Linguistic ideologies in speech act theory
J. L. Austin and John Searle's speech act theory
has been described by several ethnographers, anthropologists, and
linguists as being based in a specifically Western linguistic ideology
that renders it inapplicable in certain ethnographic contexts. Jef Verschueren characterized speech act theory as privileging "a
privatized view of language that emphasizes the psychological state of
the speaker while downplaying the social consequences of speech," while Michael Silverstein argued that the theory's ideas about
language "acts" and "forces" are "projections of covert categories
typical in the metapragmatic discourse of languages such as English." Scholars have subsequently used speech act theory to caution against
the positioning of linguistic theories as universally applicable, citing
that any account of language will reflect the linguistic ideologies
held by those who develop it.
Language contact and multilingualism
Several
scholars have noted that sites of cultural contact promote the
development of new linguistic forms that draw on diverse language
varieties and ideologies at an accelerated rate. According to Miki
Makihara and Bambi Schieffelin, it becomes necessary during times of
cultural contact for speakers to actively negotiate language ideologies
and to consciously reflect on language use. This articulation of ideology is essential to prevent misconceptions
of meaning and intentions between cultures, and provides a link between
sociocultural and linguistic processes in contact situations.
Language policy and standardization
The
establishment of a standard language has many implications in the
realms of politics and power. Recent examinations of language
ideologies have resulted in the conception of "standard" as a matter of
ideology rather than fact, raising questions such as "how doctrines of linguistic correctness and
incorrectness are rationalized and how they are related to doctrines of
the inherent representational power, beauty, and expressiveness of
language as a valued mode of action.".
Language policy
Governmental
policies often reflect the tension between two contrasting types of
language ideologies: ideologies that conceive of language as a resource,
problem, or right and ideologies that conceive of language as pluralistic phenomena. The linguistic policies that emerge in such instances often reflect a compromise between both types of ideologies. According to Blommaert and Verschueren, this compromise is often
reinterpreted as a single, unified ideology, evidenced by the many European societies characterized by a language ideological homogenism.
Ideologies of linguistic purism
Purist language ideologies
or ideologies of linguistic conservatism can close off languages to
nonnative sources of innovation, usually when such sources are perceived
as socially or politically threatening to the target language. Among the Tewa,
for example, the influence of theocratic institutions and ritualized
linguistic forms in other domains of Tewa society have led to a strong
resistance to the extensive borrowing and shift that neighboring speech communities have experienced. According to Paul Kroskrity
this is due to a "dominant language ideology" through which ceremonial
Kiva speech is elevated to a linguistic ideal and the cultural
preferences that it embodies, namely regulation by convention,
indigenous purism, strict compartmentalization, and linguistic indexing
of identity, are recursively projected onto the Tewa language as a
whole.
As defined by Rosina Lippi-Green,
standard language ideology is "a bias toward an abstract, idealized
homogeneous language, which is imposed and maintained by dominant
institutions and which has as its model the written language, but which
is drawn primarily from the spoken language of the upper middle class."
According to Lippi-Green, part of this ideology is a belief that
standard languages are internally consistent. Linguists generally agree, however, that variation is intrinsic to all spoken language, including standard varieties.
Standard language ideology is strongly connected with the concepts of linguistic purism and prescriptivism. It is also linked with linguicism (linguistic discrimination).
Literacy
Literacy
cannot be strictly defined technically, but rather it is a set of
practices determined by a community's language ideology. It can be
interpreted in many ways that are determined by political, social, and
economic forces. According to Kathryn Woolard and Bambi Schieffelin, literacy
traditions are closely linked to social control in most societies. The typical European literacy ideology, for example, recognizes literacy solely in an alphabetic capacity.
Kaluli literacy development
In the 1960s, missionaries arrived in Papua New Guinea and exposed the Kaluli to Christianity and modernization, part of which was accomplished through the introduction of literacy. The Kaluli primers that were introduced by the missionaries promoted Westernization, which effectively served to strip the vernacular language of cultural practices and from discourse in church and school. Readers written in the 1970s used derogatory terms to refer to the
Kaluli and depicted their practices as inferior, motivating the Kaluli
to change their self-perceptions and orient themselves towards Western
values. The missionaries' control of these authoritative books and of this new
"technology of language literacy" gave them the power to effect culture
change and morph the ideology of Kaluli into that of modern
Christianity.
Orthography
Orthographic systems always carry historical, cultural, and political meaning that are grounded in ideology. Orthographic debates are focused on political and social issues rather
than on linguistic discrepancies, which can make for intense debates
characterized by ideologically charged stances and symbolically
important decisions.
Classroom practice/second language acquisition
"Language
ideologies are not confined merely to ideas or beliefs, but rather is
extended to include the very language practices through which our ideas
or notions are enacted" (Razfar, 2005). Teachers display their language ideologies in classroom instruction
through various practices such as correction or repair, affective
alignment, metadiscourse, and narrative (see Razfar & Rumenapp,
2013, p. 289). The study of ideology seeks to uncover the hidden world of students and
teachers to shed light on the fundamental forces that shape and give
meaning to their actions and interactions.
Many organisms contain genetic material (DNA) which is inherited from two parents. Normally these organisms have their DNA organized in two sets of pairwise similar chromosomes. The offspring gets one chromosome in each pair from each parent. A set of pairs of chromosomes is called diploid
and a set of only one half of each pair is called haploid. The haploid
genotype (haplotype) is a genotype that considers the singular
chromosomes rather than the pairs of chromosomes. It can be all the
chromosomes from one of the parents or a minor part of a chromosome, for
example a sequence of 9000 base pairs or a small set of alleles.
Specific contiguous parts of the chromosome are likely to be inherited together and not be split by chromosomal crossover, a phenomenon called genetic linkage. As a result, identifying these statistical associations and a few
alleles of a specific haplotype sequence can facilitate identifying all other such polymorphic sites that are nearby on the chromosome (imputation). Such information is critical for investigating the genetics of common diseases; which have been investigated in humans by the International HapMap Project.
Other parts of the genome are almost always haploid and do not undergo crossover: for example, human mitochondrial DNA is passed down through the maternal line and the Y chromosome
is passed down the paternal line. In these cases, the entire sequence
can be grouped into a simple evolutionary tree, with each branch founded
by a unique-event polymorphism mutation (often, but not always, a single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP)). Each clade under a branch, containing haplotypes with a single shared ancestor, is called a haplogroup.
Haplotype resolution
An organism's genotype may not define its haplotype uniquely. For example, consider a diploid organism and two bi-allelic loci (such as SNPs) on the same chromosome. Assume the first locus has alleles A or T and the second locus G or C. Both loci, then, have three possible genotypes: (AA, AT, and TT) and (GG, GC, and CC), respectively. For a given individual, there are nine possible configurations (haplotypes) at these two loci (shown in the Punnett square
below). For individuals who are homozygous at one or both loci, the
haplotypes are unambiguous - meaning that there is not any
differentiation of haplotype T1T2 vs haplotype T2T1; where T1 and T2 are
labeled to show that they are the same locus, but labeled as such to
show it does not matter which order you consider them in, the end result
is two T loci. For individuals heterozygous at both loci, the gametic phase is ambiguous - in these cases, an observer does not know which haplotype the individual has, e.g., TA vs AT.
Locus 1
Locus 2
AA
AT
TT
GG
AG AG
AG TG
TG TG
GC
AG AC
AG TC or AC TG
TG TC
CC
AC AC
AC TC
TC TC
The only unequivocal method of resolving phase ambiguity is by sequencing.
However, it is possible to estimate the probability of a particular
haplotype when phase is ambiguous using a sample of individuals.
Given the genotypes for a number of individuals, the haplotypes can be inferred by haplotype resolution or haplotype phasing
techniques. These methods work by applying the observation that certain
haplotypes are common in certain genomic regions. Therefore, given a
set of possible haplotype resolutions, these methods choose those that
use fewer different haplotypes overall. The specifics of these methods
vary - some are based on combinatorial approaches (e.g., parsimony), whereas others use likelihood functions based on different models and assumptions such as the Hardy–Weinberg principle, the coalescent theory model, or perfect phylogeny. The parameters in these models are then estimated using algorithms such as the expectation-maximization algorithm (EM), Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC), or hidden Markov models (HMM).
Microfluidic whole genome haplotyping is a technique for the physical separation of individual chromosomes from a metaphase cell followed by direct resolution of the haplotype for each allele.
Gametic phase
In genetics, a gametic phase represents the original allelic combinations that a diploid individual inherits from both parents. It is therefore a particular association of alleles at different loci on the same chromosome. Gametic phase is influenced by genetic linkage.
Unlike other chromosomes, Y chromosomes generally do not come in pairs. Every human male (excepting those with XYY syndrome)
has only one copy of that chromosome. This means that there is not any
chance variation of which copy is inherited, and also (for most of the
chromosome) not any shuffling between copies by recombination; so, unlike autosomal
haplotypes, there is effectively not any randomisation of the
Y-chromosome haplotype between generations. A human male should largely
share the same Y chromosome as his father, give or take a few
mutations; thus Y chromosomes tend to pass largely intact from father to
son,
with a small but accumulating number of mutations that can serve to
differentiate male lineages.
In particular, the Y-DNA represented as the numbered results of a Y-DNA genealogical DNA test should match, except for mutations.
The UEP results represent the inheritance of events it is
believed can be assumed to have happened only once in all human history.
These can be used to identify the individual's Y-DNA haplogroup,
his place in the "family tree" of the whole of humanity. Different
Y-DNA haplogroups identify genetic populations that are often distinctly
associated with particular geographic regions; their appearance in more
recent populations located in different regions represents the
migrations tens of thousands of years ago of the direct patrilineal ancestors of current individuals.
Y-STR haplotypes
Genetic results also include the Y-STR haplotype, the set of results from the Y-STR markers tested.
Unlike the UEPs, the Y-STRs mutate much more easily, which allows
them to be used to distinguish recent genealogy. But it also means
that, rather than the population of descendants of a genetic event all
sharing the same result, the Y-STR haplotypes are likely to have spread apart, to form a cluster of more or less similar results. Typically, this cluster will have a definite most probable center, the modal haplotype (presumably similar to the haplotype of the original founding event), and also a haplotype diversity
— the degree to which it has become spread out. The further in the
past the defining event occurred, and the more that subsequent
population growth occurred early, the greater the haplotype diversity
will be for a particular number of descendants. However, if the
haplotype diversity is smaller for a particular number of descendants,
this may indicate a more recent common ancestor, or a recent population
expansion.
It is important to note that, unlike for UEPs, two individuals
with a similar Y-STR haplotype may not necessarily share a similar
ancestry. Y-STR events are not unique. Instead, the clusters of Y-STR
haplotype results inherited from different events and different
histories tend to overlap.
In most cases, it is a long time since the haplogroups' defining
events, so typically the cluster of Y-STR haplotype results associated
with descendants of that event has become rather broad. These results
will tend to significantly overlap the (similarly broad) clusters of
Y-STR haplotypes associated with other haplogroups. This makes it
impossible for researchers to predict with absolute certainty to which
Y-DNA haplogroup a Y-STR haplotype would point. If the UEPs are not
tested, the Y-STRs may be used only to predict probabilities for
haplogroup ancestry, but not certainties.
A similar scenario exists in trying to evaluate whether shared
surnames indicate shared genetic ancestry. A cluster of similar Y-STR
haplotypes may indicate a shared common ancestor, with an identifiable
modal haplotype, but only if the cluster is sufficiently distinct from
what may have happened by chance from different individuals who
historically adopted the same name independently. Many names were
adopted from common occupations, for instance, or were associated with
habitation of particular sites. More extensive haplotype typing is
needed to establish genetic genealogy. Commercial DNA-testing companies
now offer their customers testing of more numerous sets of markers to
improve definition of their genetic ancestry. The number of sets of
markers tested has increased from 12 during the early years to 111 more
recently.
Establishing plausible relatedness between different surnames
data-mined from a database is significantly more difficult. The
researcher must establish that the very nearest member of the
population in question, chosen purposely from the population for that
reason, would be unlikely to match by accident. This is more than
establishing that a randomly selected member of the population is
unlikely to have such a close match by accident. Because of the
difficulty, establishing relatedness between different surnames as in
such a scenario is likely to be impossible, except in special cases
where there is specific information to drastically limit the size of the
population of candidates under consideration.
Diversity
Haplotype
diversity is a measure of the uniqueness of a particular haplotype in a
given population. The haplotype diversity (H) is computed as:
where is the (relative) haplotype frequency of each haplotype in the sample and is the sample size. Haplotype diversity is given for each sample.
History
The term "haplotype" was first introduced by MHC biologist Ruggero Ceppellini during the Third International Histocompatibility Workshop to substitute "pheno-group".
Humans acquire culture through the learning processes of enculturation and socialization, which is shown by the diversity of cultures across societies.
A cultural norm codifies acceptable conduct in society; it serves
as a guideline for behavior, dress, language, and demeanor in a
situation, which serves as a template for expectations in a social
group. Accepting only a monoculture
in a social group can bear risks, just as a single species can wither
in the face of environmental change, for lack of functional responses to
the change. Thus in military culture, valor
is counted as a typical behavior for an individual, and duty, honor,
and loyalty to the social group are counted as virtues or functional
responses in the continuum of conflict. In religion, analogous attributes can be identified in a social group.
Cultural change,
or repositioning, is the reconstruction of a cultural concept of a
society. Cultures are internally affected by both forces encouraging
change and forces resisting change. Cultures are externally affected via
contact between societies.
Organizations like UNESCO attempt to preserve culture and cultural heritage.
Description
Pygmy music has been polyphonic well before their discovery by non-African explorers of the Baka, Aka, Efe,
and other foragers of the Central African forests, in the 1200s, which
is at least 200 years before polyphony developed in Europe. Note the
multiple lines of singers and dancers. The motifs are independent, with
theme and variation interweaving. This type of music is thought to be the first expression of polyphony in world music.
In the humanities,
one sense of culture as an attribute of the individual has been the
degree to which they have cultivated a particular level of
sophistication in the arts, sciences, education, or manners. The level of cultural sophistication has also sometimes been used to distinguish civilizations from less complex societies. Such hierarchical perspectives on culture are also found in class-based distinctions between a high culture of the social elite and a low culture, popular culture, or folk culture of the lower classes, distinguished by stratified access to cultural capital. In common parlance, culture is often used to refer specifically to the symbolic markers used by ethnic groups to distinguish themselves visibly from each other, such as body modification, clothing or jewelry. Mass culture refers to the mass-produced and mass-mediated forms of consumer culture that emerged in the 20th century. Some schools of philosophy, such as Marxism and critical theory, have argued that culture is often used politically as a tool of the elites to manipulate the proletariat and create a false consciousness. Such perspectives are common in the discipline of cultural studies. In the wider social sciences, the theoretical perspective of cultural materialism holds that human symbolic culture arises from the material conditions of human life, and that the basis of culture is found in evolved biological dispositions.
When used as a count noun, a "culture" is the set of customs, traditions, and values of a society or community, such as an ethnic group or nation, and the knowledge acquired over time. In this sense, multiculturalism values the peaceful coexistence and mutual respect between different cultures inhabiting the same planet. Sometimes "culture" is also used to describe specific practices within a subgroup of a society, a subculture (e.g., "bro culture"), or a counterculture. Within cultural anthropology, the ideology and analytical stance of cultural relativism
hold that cultures cannot easily be objectively ranked or evaluated
because any evaluation is necessarily situated within the value system
of a given culture.
Etymology
The modern term culture is based on a term used by the ancient Roman orator Cicero in his Tusculanae Disputationes, where he wrote of a cultivation of the soul or cultura animi, using an agricultural metaphor for the development of a philosophical soul, understood teleologically as the highest possible ideal for human development. Samuel von Pufendorf
took over this metaphor in a modern context, meaning something similar,
but no longer assuming philosophy was humanity's natural perfection.
This use, and that of many writers, "refers to all the ways in which
human beings overcome their original barbarism, and through artifice, become fully human".
Edward S. Casey wrote, "The very word culture meant 'place tilled' in Middle English, and the same word goes back to Latin colere, 'to inhabit, care for, till, worship' and cultus,
'A cult, especially a religious one.' To be cultural, to have a
culture, is to inhabit a place sufficiently intensely to cultivate it—to
be responsible for it, to respond to it, to attend to it caringly."
... originally meant the cultivation of the soul or mind,
acquires most of its later modern meaning in the writings of the
18th-century German thinkers, who were on various levels developing Rousseau's criticism of "modernliberalism and Enlightenment". Thus a contrast between "culture" and "civilization" is usually implied in these authors, even when not expressed as such.
In the words of anthropologist E. B. Tylor,
it is "that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art,
morals, law, custom and any other capabilities and habits acquired by
man as a member of society". Alternatively, in a contemporary variant, "Culture is defined as a
social domain that emphasizes the practices, discourses and material
expressions, which, over time, express the continuities and
discontinuities of social meaning of a life held in common.
The Cambridge English Dictionary
states that culture is "the way of life, especially the general customs
and beliefs, of a particular group of people at a particular time." Terror management theory
posits that culture is a series of activities and worldviews that
provide humans with the basis for perceiving themselves as "person[s] of
worth within the world of meaning"—raising themselves above the merely
physical aspects of existence, in order to deny the animal
insignificance and death that Homo sapiens became aware of when they acquired a larger brain.
The word is used in a general sense as the evolved ability to categorize and represent experiences with symbols and to act imaginatively and creatively. This ability arose with the evolution of behavioral modernity in humans around 50,000 years ago and is often thought to be unique to humans. However, some other species have demonstrated similar, though less complicated, abilities for social learning. It is also used to denote the complex networks of practices and accumulated knowledge and ideas that are transmitted through social interaction and exist in specific human groups, or cultures, using the plural form.
The Beatles
exemplified changing cultural dynamics, not only in music, but fashion
and lifestyle. Six decades after their emergence, they continue to have a
worldwide cultural impact.
Cultural invention
has come to mean any innovation that is new and found to be useful to a
group of people and expressed in their behavior, but which does not
exist as a physical object. Humanity is in a global "accelerating
culture change period," driven by the expansion of international
commerce, the mass media, and above all, the human population explosion, among other factors. Culture repositioning means the reconstruction of the cultural concept of a society.
Cultures are internally affected by both forces encouraging
change and forces resisting change. These forces are related to both social structures and natural events and are involved in perpetuating cultural ideas and practices within current structures, which themselves are subject to change.
Social conflict and the development of technologies can produce
changes within a society by altering social dynamics and promoting new cultural models and spurring or enabling generative action. These social shifts may accompany ideological shifts and other types of cultural change. For example, the feminist movement
involved new practices that produced a shift in gender relations,
altering both gender and economic structures. Environmental conditions
may also enter as factors. For example, after tropical forests returned
at the end of the last ice age, plants suitable for domestication were available, leading to the invention of agriculture, which in turn brought about many cultural innovations and shifts in social dynamics.
Turkmen woman, on a carpet at the entrance to a yurt,
in traditional clothing. Sense of time is dependent on culture. A 1913
photo, but can be difficult to date for a viewer, due to the absence of
cultural cues.
Cultures are externally affected via contact between societies, which
may also produce—or inhibit—social shifts and changes in cultural
practices. War or competition over resources may impact technological
development or social dynamics. Additionally, cultural ideas may
transfer from one society to another, through diffusion or
acculturation. In diffusion,
the form of something (though not necessarily its meaning) moves from
one culture to another. For example, Western restaurant chains and
culinary brands sparked curiosity and fascination to the Chinese as
China opened its economy to international trade in the late
20th-century. "Stimulus diffusion" (the sharing of ideas) refers to an element of one
culture leading to an invention or propagation in another. "Direct
borrowing", on the other hand, tends to refer to technological or
tangible diffusion from one culture to another. Diffusion of innovations theory presents a research-based model of why and when individuals and cultures adopt new ideas, practices, and products.
Acculturation
has different meanings. Still, in this context, it refers to the
replacement of traits of one culture with another, such as what happened
to certain Native American tribes and many indigenous peoples across the globe during colonization. Related processes on an individual level include assimilation and transculturation.
The transnational flow of culture has played a major role in merging
different cultures and sharing thoughts, ideas, and beliefs.
Early modern discourses
German Romanticism
Johann Herder called attention to national cultures.
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) formulated an individualist definition of "enlightenment" similar to the concept of bildung: "Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-incurred immaturity." He argued that this immaturity comes not from a lack of understanding,
but from a lack of courage to think independently. Against this
intellectual cowardice, Kant urged: "Sapere Aude" ("Dare to be wise!"). In reaction to Kant, German scholars such as Johann Gottfried Herder
(1744–1803) argued that human creativity, which necessarily takes
unpredictable and highly diverse forms, is as important as human
rationality. Moreover, Herder proposed a collective form of Bildung: "For Herder, Bildung was the totality of experiences that provide a coherent identity, and sense of common destiny, to a people."
Adolf Bastian developed a universal model of culture.
In 1795, the Prussian linguist and philosopher Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835) called for an anthropology that would synthesize Kant's and Herder's interests. During the Romantic era, scholars in Germany, especially those concerned with nationalist
movements—such as the nationalist struggle to create a "Germany" out of
diverse principalities, and the nationalist struggles by ethnic
minorities against the Austro-Hungarian Empire—developed a more inclusive notion of culture as "worldview" (Weltanschauung). According to this school of thought, each ethnic group has a distinct
worldview that is incommensurable with the worldviews of other groups.
Although more inclusive than earlier views, this approach to culture
still allowed for distinctions between "civilized" and "primitive" or
"tribal" cultures.
In 1860, Adolf Bastian (1826–1905) argued for "the psychic unity of mankind". He proposed that a scientific comparison of all human societies would
reveal that distinct worldviews consisted of the same basic elements.
According to Bastian, all human societies share a set of "elementary
ideas" (Elementargedanken); different cultures, or different "folk ideas" (Völkergedanken), are local modifications of the elementary ideas. This view paved the way for the modern understanding of culture. Franz Boas (1858–1942) was trained in this tradition, and he brought it with him when he left Germany for the United States.
English Romanticism
British poet and critic Matthew Arnold viewed "culture" as the cultivation of the humanist ideal.
In the 19th century, humanists such as English poet and essayist Matthew Arnold
(1822–1888) used the word "culture" to refer to an ideal of individual
human refinement, of "the best that has been thought and said in the
world". This concept of culture is also comparable to the German concept of bildung: "...culture being a pursuit of our total perfection by means of getting to know, on all the matters which most concern us, the best which has been thought and said in the world".
In practice, culture referred to an elite ideal and was associated with such activities as art, classical music, and haute cuisine. As these forms were associated with urban life, "culture" was identified with "civilization" (from Latin: civitas, lit. 'city'). Another facet of the Romantic movement was an interest in folklore, which led to identifying a "culture" among non-elites. This distinction is often characterized as that between high culture, namely that of the ruling class, and low culture.
In other words, the idea of "culture" that developed in Europe during
the 18th and early 19th centuries reflected inequalities within European
societies.
British anthropologist Edward Tylor was one of the first English-speaking scholars to use the term culture in an inclusive and universal sense.
Matthew Arnold contrasted "culture" with anarchy; other Europeans, following philosophers Thomas Hobbes and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, contrasted "culture" with "the state of nature". According to Hobbes and Rousseau, the Native Americans
who were being conquered by Europeans from the 16th centuries on were
living in a state of nature; this opposition was expressed through the
contrast between "civilized" and "uncivilized". According to this way of thinking, one could classify some countries
and nations as more civilized than others and some people as more
cultured than others. This contrast led to Herbert Spencer's theory of Social Darwinism and Lewis Henry Morgan's theory of cultural evolution.
Just as some critics have argued that the distinction between high and
low cultures expresses the conflict between European elites and
non-elites, other critics have argued that the distinction between
civilized and uncivilized people is an expression of the conflict
between European colonial powers and their colonial subjects.
Other 19th-century critics, following Rousseau, have accepted
this differentiation between higher and lower culture, but have seen the
refinement and sophistication
of high culture as corrupting and unnatural developments that obscure
and distort people's essential nature. These critics considered folk music
(as produced by "the folk," i.e., rural, illiterate, peasants) to
honestly express a natural way of life, while classical music seemed
superficial and decadent. Equally, this view often portrayed indigenous peoples as "noble savages" living authentic and unblemished lives, uncomplicated and uncorrupted by the highly stratified capitalist systems of Western culture.
In 1870 the anthropologist Edward Tylor (1832–1917) applied these ideas of higher versus lower culture to propose a theory of the evolution of religion. According to this theory, religion evolves from more polytheistic to more monotheistic forms. In the process, he redefined culture as a diverse set of activities
characteristic of all human societies. This view paved the way for the
modern understanding of religion.
Petroglyphs in modern-day Gobustan, Azerbaijan, dating to 10,000 BCE and indicating a thriving culture
Although anthropologists worldwide refer to Tylor's definition of culture, in the 20th century "culture" emerged as the central and unifying concept of American anthropology,
where it most commonly refers to the universal human capacity to
classify and encode human experiences symbolically, and to communicate
symbolically encoded experiences socially. American anthropology is organized into four fields, each of which plays an important role in research on culture: biological anthropology, linguistic anthropology, cultural anthropology, and in the United States and Canada, archaeology. The term Kulturbrille, or 'culture glasses', coined by German American anthropologist Franz Boas, refers to the "lenses" through which a person sees their own culture. Martin Lindstrom asserts that Kulturbrille, which allow a person to make sense of the culture they inhabit, "can blind us to things outsiders pick up immediately".
The sociology of culture concerns culture as manifested in society. For sociologist Georg Simmel
(1858–1918), culture referred to "the cultivation of individuals
through the agency of external forms which have been objectified in the
course of history". As such, culture in the sociological
field can be defined as the ways of thinking, the ways of acting, and
the material objects that together shape a people's way of life. Culture
can be either of two types, non-material culture or material culture. Non-material culture refers to the non-physical ideas that individuals
have about their culture, including values, belief systems, rules,
norms, morals, language, organizations, and institutions, while material
culture is the physical evidence of a culture in the objects and
architecture they make or have made. The term tends to be relevant only
in archeological and anthropological studies, but it specifically means
all material evidence which can be attributed to culture, past or
present.
Cultural sociology first emerged in Weimar Germany (1918–1933), where sociologists such as Alfred Weber used the term Kultursoziologie ('cultural sociology'). Cultural sociology was then reinvented in the English-speaking world as a product of the cultural turn of the 1960s, which ushered in structuralist and postmodern approaches to social science. This type of cultural sociology may be loosely regarded as an approach incorporating cultural analysis and critical theory. Cultural sociologists tend to reject scientific methods, instead hermeneutically
focusing on words, artifacts and symbols. Culture has since become an
important concept across many branches of sociology, including
resolutely scientific fields like social stratification and social network analysis.
As a result, there has been a recent influx of quantitative
sociologists to the field. Thus, there is now a growing group of
sociologists of culture who are, confusingly, not cultural sociologists.
These scholars reject the abstracted postmodern aspects of cultural
sociology, and instead, look for a theoretical backing in the more
scientific vein of social psychology and cognitive science.
Nowruz is a good sample of popular and folklore
culture that is celebrated by people in more than 22 countries with
different nations and religions, at the 1st day of spring. It has been
celebrated by diverse communities for over 7,000 years.
Early researchers and development of cultural sociology
The sociology of culture grew from the intersection between sociology (as shaped by early theorists like Marx, Durkheim, and Weber)
with the growing discipline of anthropology, wherein researchers
pioneered ethnographic strategies for describing and analyzing a variety
of cultures around the world. Part of the legacy of the early
development of the field lingers in the methods (much of cultural,
sociological research is qualitative), in the theories (a variety of
critical approaches to sociology are central to current research
communities), and in the substantive focus of the field. For instance,
relationships between popular culture, political control, and social class were early and lasting concerns in the field.
In the United Kingdom, sociologists and other scholars influenced by Marxism such as Stuart Hall (1932–2014) and Raymond Williams
(1921–88) developed cultural studies. Following nineteenth-century
Romantics, they identified culture with consumption goods and leisure
activities (such as art, music, film, food, sports, and clothing). They saw patterns of consumption and leisure as determined by relations of production, which led them to focus on class relations and the organization of production.
In the UK, cultural studies focuses largely on the study of popular culture; that is, on the social meanings of mass-produced consumer and leisure goods. Richard Hoggart coined the term in 1964 when he founded the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies or CCCS. Cultural studies in this sense, then, can be viewed as a limited
concentration scoped on the intricacies of consumerism, which belongs to
a wider culture sometimes referred to as Western civilization or globalism.
Cultural studies is concerned with the meaning and practices of everyday life. These practices comprise the ways people do particular things (such as watching television
or eating out) in a given culture. It also studies the meanings and
uses people attribute to various objects and practices. Specifically,
culture involves those meanings and practices held independently of
reason. Watching television to view a public perspective on a historical
event should not be thought of as culture unless referring to the
medium of television itself, which may have been selected culturally;
however, schoolchildren watching television after school with their
friends to "fit in" certainly qualifies since there is no grounded
reason for one's participation in this practice.
In the context of cultural studies, a text includes not only written language, but also films, photographs, fashion, or hairstyles: the texts of cultural studies comprise all the meaningful artifacts of culture. Similarly, the discipline widens the concept of culture. Culture, for a
cultural-studies researcher, not only includes traditional high culture (the culture of the ruling social groups) and popular culture,
but also everyday meanings and practices. The last two, in fact, have
become the main focus of cultural studies. A further and recent approach
is comparative cultural studies, based on the disciplines of comparative literature and cultural studies.
Scholars in the UK and the US developed different versions of
cultural studies after the 1970s. The British version of cultural
studies had originated in the 1950s and 60s, mainly under the influence
of Richard Hoggart, E. P. Thompson, and Raymond Williams, and later that of Stuart Hall and others at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies. This included overtly political, left-wing views, and criticisms of popular culture as "capitalist" mass culture; it absorbed some of the ideas of the Frankfurt School critique of the "culture industry"
i.e. mass culture. This emerges in the writings of early British
cultural-studies scholars and their influences: see the work of Raymond
Williams, Stuart Hall, Paul Willis, and Paul Gilroy.
In the United States, Lindlof and Taylor write, "cultural studies [were] grounded in a pragmatic, liberal-pluralist tradition." The American version of cultural studies initially concerned itself
more with understanding the subjective and appropriative side of
audience reactions to, and uses of, mass culture; for example, American cultural-studies advocates wrote about the liberatory aspects of fandom.
Some researchers, especially in early British cultural studies,
apply a Marxist model to the field. This strain of thinking has some
influence from the Frankfurt School, but especially from the structuralist Marxism of Louis Althusser and others. The main focus of an orthodox Marxist approach concentrates on the production of meaning. This model assumes a mass production of culture and identifies power as residing with those producing cultural artifacts.
In a Marxist view, the mode and relations of production form the economic base of society, which constantly interacts and influences superstructures, such as culture. Other approaches to cultural studies, such as feminist
cultural studies and later American developments of the field, distance
themselves from this view. They criticize the Marxist assumption of a
single, dominant meaning, shared by all, for any cultural product. The
non-Marxist approaches suggest that different ways of consuming cultural
artifacts affect the meaning of the product.
This view comes through in the book Doing Cultural Studies: The Story of the Sony Walkman (by Paul du Gay et al.), which seeks to challenge the notion that those who produce commodities
control the meanings that people attribute to them. Feminist cultural
analyst, theorist, and art historian Griselda Pollock contributed to cultural studies from viewpoints of art history and psychoanalysis. The writer Julia Kristeva
is among influential voices at the turn of the century, contributing to
cultural studies from the field of art and psychoanalytical French feminism.
Petrakis and Kostis (2013) divide cultural background variables into two main groups:
The first group covers the variables that represent the "efficiency orientation" of the societies: performance orientation, future orientation, assertiveness, power distance, and uncertainty avoidance.
The second covers the variables that represent the "social
orientation" of societies, i.e., the attitudes and lifestyles of their
members. These variables include gender egalitarianism, institutional
collectivism, in-group collectivism, and human orientation.
In 2016, a new approach to culture was suggested by Rein Raud, who defines culture as the sum of resources available to human beings
for making sense of their world and proposes a two-tiered approach,
combining the study of texts (all reified meanings in circulation) and
cultural practices (all repeatable actions that involve the production,
dissemination or transmission of purposes), thus making it possible to
re-link anthropological and sociological study of culture with the
tradition of textual theory.
Super culture
A super culture is a collection of cultures and/or subcultures, that interact with one another, share similar characteristics and collectively have a degree of sense of unity. In other words, Super-culture is a culture encompassing several subcultures with common elements. Examples include:
List of Super-cultures:
Rave - In modern society, rave is described as a culture closely defined as a super culture.
Steampunk - it is fast becoming a super-culture rather than a mere subculture.
Cognitive tools suggest a way for people from certain culture to deal with real-life problems, like Suanpan for mathematical calculation.
Starting in the 1990s, psychological research on culture influence began to grow and challenge the universality assumed in general psychology. Culture psychologists began to try to explore the relationship between emotions and culture,
and answer whether the human mind is independent from culture. For
example, people from collectivistic cultures, such as the Japanese,
suppress their positive emotions more than their American counterparts. Culture may affect the way that people experience and express emotions.
On the other hand, some researchers try to look for differences between
people's personalities across cultures. As different cultures dictate distinctive norms, culture shock is also studied to understand how people react when they are confronted with other cultures. LGBT culture is displayed with significantly different levels of tolerance within different cultures and nations. Cognitive tools may not be accessible or they may function differently cross culture. For example, people who are raised in a culture with an abacus are trained with distinctive reasoning style. Cultural lenses may also make people view the same outcome of events
differently. Westerners are more motivated by their successes than their
failures, while East Asians are better motivated by the avoidance of
failure.
Culture is important for psychologists to consider when
understanding the human mental operation. The notion of the anxious,
unstable, and rebellious adolescent has been criticized by experts, such
as Robert Epstein, who state that an undeveloped brain is not the main cause of teenagers' turmoils. Some have criticized this understanding of adolescence, classifying it
as a relatively recent phenomenon in human history created by modern
society, and have been highly critical of what they view as the infantilization of young adults in American society. According to Robert Epstein and Jennifer, "American-style teen turmoil
is absent in more than 100 cultures around the world, suggesting that
such mayhem is not biologically inevitable. Second, the brain itself
changes in response to experiences, raising the question of whether
adolescent brain characteristics are the cause of teen tumult or rather
the result of lifestyle and experiences." David Moshman has also stated in regards to adolescence that brain
research "is crucial for a full picture, but it does not provide an
ultimate explanation".
Anarchist poster reading "No Culture, No Future!", 5 December 2024
In the 21st century, the protection of culture has been the focus of
increasing activity by national and international organizations. The United Nations
and UNESCO promote cultural preservation and cultural diversity through
declarations and legally-binding conventions or treaties. The aim is
not to protect a person's property, but rather to preserve the cultural
heritage of humanity, especially in the event of war and armed conflict.
According to Karl von Habsburg,
President of Blue Shield International, the destruction of cultural
assets is also part of psychological warfare. The target of the attack
is the identity of the opponent, which is why symbolic cultural assets
become a main target. It is also intended to affect the particularly
sensitive cultural memory, the growing cultural diversity and the
economic basis (such as tourism) of a state, region or municipality.
Tourism is having an increasing impact on the various forms of
culture. On the one hand, this can be physical impact on individual
objects or the destruction caused by increasing environmental pollution
and, on the other hand, socio-cultural effects on society.
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