1.
WHAT IS THE CULTURE?
Culture is internal, collective, NOT a product. It is acquired rather than taught, it is an unconscious process.
It is possible to tell something about the ICEBERG THEORY ( it tells that what is under the water is learnt unconsciously, the
upper part is what everyone knows)
GEERT HOFSTEDE explains the culture through this theory. HE talks about 6 cultural dimensions. He made a distinction between
countries because he realized through a survey he made that people that came from the same nation answered in a similar way.
Accoding to Hofstede, the top elements are easy to acquire, the bottom ones are elements that are hard to acquire (if you’re not
immersed in the culture) es. Importance of the time, space, friendship..
Esempio:
Tip (superficie) of ICEBERG:
1. Titles – in italiano tendiamo a dare titoli alla gente importante, in inglese no
2. Geograpgical features : winds, plains, hills, si possono riferire alla forma e al territorio
Collectivism and individualism countries where somehow people are connected and help each other. I cinesi sono molto
collettivisti. Sometimes collectivism can be negative because the population could be a collectivity without autonomy.
LANGUAGE AS A LINGUISTIC PRODUCT = the linguistic product of a specific cultural group has to be interpreted taking into account
the context of culture, that is to say the setting, the scene where an action or a text has been ‘produced’ and the context of
situation, that is to say who has produced what and how.
you can’t understand the meaning of a text if you don’t know:
CONTEXT OF CULTURE: who produced the text.
FEATURES OF THE TEXT: author and participants.
WHAT IS THE TEXT ABOUT?
WHY THE TEXT HAS BEEN WRITTEN.
If it hasn’t a communicative AIM, it’s not a text!
MEANING OF THE TEXT = not given by a single word, but need to take into account:
1. Co-text (linguistic environment that surrounds the word)
2. Context (wider environment in which the text takes place)
THEORY OF CONTEXT = Malinowski (that influenced Firth and Halliday). He says that the meaning is based on a:
1. CONTEXT OF CULTURE – the living environment in which the text is produced
2. CONTEXT OF SITUATION – the situation in which the text is produced
He understand this theory thanks to the ethnological work in the Tobriand Islands. He had to translate texts from Kiriwinian to
English in order to make them accessible to the British culture, then he realized that the two cultures were too different, so some
words were not translatable and he changed and explained them.
However, he added an extended commentary to the translated text. If he didn’t write the commentary taking into account the
context of situation, it wouldn’t be intelligible. One of the context of situation was for example the Tobriand fishing expedition,
when they shouted instructions and used technical words. It almost was a competition.
LANGUAGE IN ACTION = language is not an isolated phenomenon. It was language in action and the message was clear only to
those who knew what was going on. For this reason when he accounted for those situations he realized that it was necessary to
provide not only the description of what as happening, but also of the total cultural background. (The solution was: writing an
Extended commentary to the translated text, which ‘placed the text in its living environment)
MALINOWSKY focused on the nature of the meaning of particular words, insisting on the fact that all words are functionally
defined and not only words, but all the possible utterances in a language. The meaning are so learned only by active experience and
never by explanation or paraphrase.
He also mentioned the narrative use of the words. Due to the fact that The islanders used to gather around and tell stories, there
are 2 different context of situations.
1. The situation of the moment of narration
2. The situation created by the stories themselves.
Malinowski says that the words of a tale are significant because of previous experience of the listeners, and their meaning depends
on the context of situation referred to.
The meaning depens on:
1- The context of culture
2- Many implication: equivalent words and concepts may have different meaning across languages and cultures (we know
that we are observing the phenomenon pf the lack of significance, but it also depend on the immediate situation) close
