7.

Culture and community in everyday discourse

- how the term culture is used in everyday discourse

- the studies that describe intercultural communication: linked to studies of how individuals and social
or cultural groups define themselves and others
- 2nd text: result of an ethnographic research in west London (Southall)
- the 1st text begins with a letter in Sweden describing the current society as a multicultural inferno
- culture seems to be used everywhere, not just among the well-educated
- culture in the past: positive term; nowadays: negative, e.g.: culture war, culture shock
- it has changed because: the interfaces between cultures became prominent in human experience
- cultural study: not only a summarizing label for inquiries which we consider cultural; but also a
study of popular theories, prototheories and quasitheories of culture
- culture shock: emotional and intellectual unease that appears in encounters with unfamiliar
meanings and practices
culture shock prevention industry: practitioners: interculturalists -> trying to teach sensitivity toward
cultural diversity through lectures -> they may seem a little trite; sometimes exaggerating cultural
differences
- but it can be helpful: they make it visible how persistence and change in culture depend on human
activity
- we tend to speak of culture in the plural form as they were entities existing side by side, each of us
identified with one of them
- we can of course consider that number of people share the same experiences, beliefs, ideas and
values, but they share different parts of their cultural repertoires with different people
- some people value these personal repertoires more than others
- some identifies themselves in collective terms more strongly than others
- some refuses to categorize themselves in any form
- which means that now there are many way of being more or less Christian or Muslim etc. and at the
same time some number of other things
- the 2nd text begins with the authors migration to Britain at age 21
- he was disturbed how immigrants were portrayed in the British media
- e.g.: whatever an Asian said/reported/interpreted, it was because of his ethnic identity or the culture
of his community
- even their children appeared in print as second generation immigrants/Asians
- children of white immigrants were thought to be between two cultures
- the question: why not across two cultures? Which cultures are involved? (British and some other
cultures from their parents?)
- it seemed regional origin, religion, language and nationality could define a culture
- he thought he could find answers by doing fieldwork: rented a house in Southall, lived there for 6
years, got involved in the life of the suburb -> his aim was to live locally, find local things to do,
socialize locally
- he kept a dairy to write fieldwork notes there and also a personal diary to avoid confusion
- adult Southallians: assumed that community was a matter of birthplace, e.g: he is an Asian, but born
in Africa so Id say he is an African
- they regarded themselves as members of several communities at once, each with its own culture (of
course few of them said: I am a Muslim and nothing else)
- culture and community can be the same in one context and different in another, making identity the
question of context.