Culture Compare and Contrast Two

Culture

Compare and contrast two different definitions of culture. Which one do you subscribe to? Explain why one definition that you have selected better explains "the culture."

Perhaps the best definition of culture is that culture is "symbolic communication" (Choudhury 2009). Some of the tools used in symbolic communication include the "skills, knowledge, attitudes, values, and motives" of a particular group (Choudhury 2009). Inherent in this definition is the idea that the "meanings of the symbols are learned and deliberately perpetuated in a society through its institutions" (Choudhury 2009).

This suggests that culture is a kind of language, but a language in an unwritten and physical as well as a written sense. For example, in Japan, individuals from that culture collectively respect a greater physical distance between individuals when they first meet than is observed in the United States. This physical distance is 'understood' because the practice of respecting physical distance is instilled in individuals from birth through indirect observation and direct instruction. Also, in a high-context culture like Japan there is more acceptance of hierarchy, more deference to protocol, and greater formality between individuals personally and professionally in most arenas. Bowing rather than shaking hands underlines this greater sense of distance, formality, and respect. To transgress these rules and to try to use other symbolic means of communicate means to be either deliberately rude or to be misunderstood -- to be 'lost in translation' in a cultural sense of practice.

In the more informal and low-context culture of United States, closer physical contact and more intimate exchanging of personal information is accepted between strangers. If individuals violate these rules of symbolic communication -- for example, if a Japanese subordinate playfully jokes with his or her boss, or a person in an American office never volunteers personal information about his or her personal life, that person may be viewed as possibly 'suspect' or strange.