[MUSIC] Hi, this is the course Understanding Russians and we are in week two, which is devoted to culture and its dimensions. So our topic is today, cultural aspect of intercultural communication and these are the topics that I plan to cover during this week. Definitions of culture or better say, maybe metaphors of culture. Characteristics and components of culture. Culture's dimensions. Culture's consequences. Basic values of Russian culture and mapping Russia onto the cultural orientations model. Regarding definitions of culture, we may have very different perspectives of what is the definition, because especially when we are talking about such abstract such huge notion as culture that involves so many features and so many approaches and understandings. We need to somehow differentiate this perspective, at least to figure out a few dimensions that we will be approaching it from. We may talk about culture as a structure. It means if definitions are given from that perspective, it means that we're talking about culture as a system of relations and these relations between values, behavior or between history and present state of culture will be those backbones that create our understanding of it. Culture is a function will be another approach to the same idea of speak, then we are concentrating on what function this or that objects of process in the society or in the group perform. What are they targeted at? Culture as a process as the word process says itself is about what kind of cultural movements, cultural processes, cultural goings. We are discussing trends, like in the art, for instance, in the theater or in music or how they're related to what happens in society and then there are critical approaches to culture. So, characteristic of the end of the 20th century approaches. I mentioned it last week, talking about intercultural communication theories. Where culture is viewed from the point of view, how much power it gives to this or that group and how much it determines who is the gatekeeper, who determines the way the culture may develop? The critical approach is in many cases are about power in the society, about those who have the ability to influence things. So, coming to definitions. Those that I believe will be more pertinent to our course, which is not a theoretical course. We only need this to have a language with which we can talk about communication and interaction with Russians, and understanding their culture. We can use a simple definition like is to a group what personality is to a person or we may say that culture is the way we do things around here, rather simple words, but they reflect certain very important concepts. I suggest that if you are interested to have more broad view of how culture can be defined and where the word comes from, you will check this reference that you see on this screen. In other words, we often say that culture is what expected, what is reinforced and what is rewarded by the society of the group. Actually, this means that we describe culture as the relationship between the expected behavior. The cognitive judgement that someone, some outside observer makes about this behavior and the emotion that this unexpected behavior also generates in an observer or a society that we take as an observer. Why is it so? I'll give you an example, because, one more thing to remember, probably before I give this example. One more thing that I would like to say that actually putting all these three together expected behavior, cognitive judgement about this behavior and emotion that it generates, culture is about restrictions. It tell us what actually we're not supposed to do by reinforcing, by promoting those things that are commendable that appraised by the culture. Culture is about restrictions. Recently, during the Olympics in Sochi, there was a very interesting moment at the women skating final when two young women, great athletes were competing for the golden medal. One was from Russia and other from this from South Korea, and they're representatives of very different cultures. And while watching their performances and these performances were absolutely magnificent, high-level, so technically complex. These dances took everything that these young athletes could give to the public. They were emotionally and physically exhausted after performing and the way they reacted to this exhaustion, to the completion of their performance to their flaws that they had form the audience was very different. Russian athlete was not a concealing her tears, she was almost crying. Her coaches were hugging her and kissing. And later when they were sitting watching for their jury to make their decision, a very emotional moment and emotional moments show things about us. They were also sitting very close together, touching each other, hugging and she was as I said, almost crying by trying to smile. Her Korean counterpart was much more restricted in showing her emotions. The way her coaches were embracing her or kissing her and hugging her, which also took place, of course was also much more reserved. And when they were sitting watching for the jury's decision, they were also sitting at some distance to each other. Does it mean that the Russian lady, the Russian athlete is more emotional person or that the Korean athlete didn't feel anything and it was just not very emotional and for her probably not. It was equally emotional for both of them. But in one case, the culture, the Russian culture promotes and actually praises the show of emotions, considers it to be natural and good in another cases and we know it about the Korean culture and other Southeastern Asian cultures that this demonstration, manifestation of emotions is not considered to be good and that's why people kind of conceal it. It's not a personal treat. It was a very clear difference of how culture treats one in the same situation, very emotional situation where people actually feel a lot of nervousness, a lot of excitement, but the way how they manifested is considered to be culturally bound. So, this is why we say that culture is about restrictions that imposes on human behavior. So if we continue to explore culture coming from this behavior as manifestations of certain states and emotions, we can use this metaphor of an iceberg, which is very much exploited in discussions about culture and say that the idea of iceberg is important because we know that there is something in culture that is observable, that is accessible through our observation. And something that is sort of below the water line which we don't observe directly, but we can kind of reconstruct from behavior. So on the surface above the waterline, there are observable behaviors. Below the line, we have cognitive level. Those attitudes, those ideas, those rules, norms that acquire when we get our culture into us, when we acquire it and those judgments that we make about observable behaviors and even deeper. There is this emotion level which deals with most basic things about our cultural, about our culture that we sometimes not even aware of, but that will be in the basis in the foundation of the judgments that would make those attitudes that we develop which eventually would lead to certain behaviors that will happen to us. So we already started to use the idea for metaphor, an iceberg metaphor. And indeed, when talking about culture and many other, among many other things, but especially about culture, we use a lot of metaphors. Why does it happen and what metaphors are we actually talking? We'll just link a few and I suggest that you look at the link on the screen to do some homework on studying cultural metaphors, and discussing what metaphors you like most, and why in your home assignment that you will have spelled out at the course site. So, what are the probably best well-known metaphors of culture? Screen, culture is a screen through which we get information about the world and this metaphor gives us an idea that culture not only shapes and formulates our views, our judgments, our attitudes, but it also sort of screens out certain information from the world. What we see about the world, about the physical world is also getting to us from the screen of culture. What we pay attention to and what we don't pay attention to. Another metaphor will be that culture is a program, like a computer program. That programs our mind and thus, also our behavior. Iceberg, we already discussed it. An iceberg metaphor pays attention to the idea that there are certain things in culture that are observable and certain things that are kind of below the level of observation. Another metaphor, glass dome. Culture is such a glass dome. Glass, because we don't see it, but that separates us from one another. French culture, Russian culture, Ethiopian culture. They are like glass domes that allow us to see the world, but they actually create a wall between us and the rest of the world, covering us with it. The same type of the metaphor, probably the same idea that is being expressed, but in the very different way is the metaphors islands in the ocean. Cultures are like islands separated with the ocean, so that they cannot get understand each other. This metaphors comes from the very beginning golf intercultural communication is a field in the 50s when culture anthropologist actually discovered for them the variety, the diversity, the richness of various cultures. But first, paid attention to how people from different culture would see the world in different ways and that's how this metaphor emerged as compared to the glass dome. It also adds this idea of the culture as being really separated, because you understand ocean is big and islands and small. So these metaphors not only give us definitions, but they also create certain ideas of how we'll treat culture, what theories we will develop about it and how we will process based on these cultures. They reflect the dominant paradigm, of course. And these metaphors of glass domes and islands, they really reflect the academic paradigm of cultural anthropology and the neighboring disciplines in the mid-20th century. Now in the world of multiculturalism, in the global world, we probably would use some other metaphors of culture. For instance, especially us living in big cities, traveling all around the world. Changing professions. Living in multicultural communities and families. For us, culture maybe is a backpack that we can put on in one situation and change for another backpack in another. Today, we are IT specialist working in the big company in the evening where are spending time with our group of young rock musicians. In five weeks, we'll be visiting our grandmother who is living in maybe a very small traditional place in a different part of the globe. We'll be taking different backpacks with us to fit this situations. [MUSIC]
