Transcript Looking at Interlanguage Data

Culture (Diaz-Rico)

Culture: Def. circa 1990s
The explicit and implicit patterns for living… the dynamic system
of commonly-agreed-upon symbols and meanings, knowledge,
belief, art, morals, law, customs, behaviors, traditions and/or
habits that are shared and make up the way of life of a people.

Culture: Def. circa 2009
(add to above) …as negotiated by individuals in the process of
constructing a personal identity… A response to multicultural
contexts we live in nowadays…new contexts which call for new
identities and generate new meanings.
Intercultural Competence (CATESOL)

IC research looks at culture-specific behaviors and
the cumulative effect of miscommunication between
people perceiving and interpreting specific
behaviors differently.

IC knowledge helps teachers and students withhold
premature, biased evaluations of unfamiliar
behaviors and build awareness and appreciation of
other beliefs, attitudes, and behavioral norms.

Students of all cultures prefer specific teaching
styles and learning behaviors. Knowledge of IC
helps instructors make informed choices.
Developmental Model of
Intercultural Sensitivity (Bennett)
Denial---->Defense--->Minimization--->|||| (breakthrough)
<---------Ethnocentric Stages------------>||||
||||---->Acceptance--->Adaptation--->Integration
||||<-------Ethnorelative Stages----------->
• Ethnocentric people unconsciously experience their
own cultures as central. Cultural differences seen as
implicit or explicit threats.
• Ethnorelativists unconsciously recognize that all
behavior exists in a cultural context and seek out
cultural differences as a way of enriching their own
experiences and as a means to understand others.
Ethnocentric Stage 1: Denial
 No "cultural difference”, no alternatives to own
experience. Strangers exist as simpler forms of being,
to be tolerated, exploited, or eliminated. People can
stay in denial their whole lives, as long as they live in
isolation, or by maintaining separation.
•
Expressions of denial can appear thoughtless, but
benign, as though ignorance were harmless. People
have difficulty differentiating cultures, lumping all
Africans, Asians, etc., together.
Ethnocentric Stage 2: Defense
• More adept at perceiving cultural differences, yet other
cultures stereotyped. One's culture still experienced
as the only true reality. The world is organized into "us"
and "them”: denigration of "them”, superiority of "us.”
• Polarization of discussions of cultural difference;
experience other cultures as attacks on one’s "values.”
“Others” may be acknowledged while continuing to
avoid contact.
Ethnocentric Stage 3: Minimization

Threatening differences are subsumed into alreadyexisting, familiar categories.

Still lacking cultural self-awareness, base cultural
knowledge on categories derived from own culture.

Minimizers act "nice”; motivated to include culturally
different people into their activities ("melting pot”); yet
failing to perceive that institutions fashioned in their
own culture's image may hinder the achievement of
those culturally different.
Ethnorelative Stage 1: Acceptance

Discovery of own cultural context, acceptance of
existence of different cultural contexts. Acceptance
does not mean agreement but judgment is not
ethnocentric.

Curiosity about cultural differences, seeking out
information and initiating contrasts with own culture.
Ethnorelative Stage 2: Adaptation

Shift of cultural frames of reference to interpret and
evaluate situations from more than one perspective.

Intentional change of behavior to communicate more
effectively in another culture. Conscious act needs
awareness of one’s culture and intercultural empathy.

Someone raised in two cultures does not necessarily
possess the ability to understand him/herself or
generalize cultural empathy to a third culture.
Ethnorelative Stage 3: Integration

Shift in cultural perspective becomes normal part of
self. Identity becomes more fluid. “Move around
cultures," no longer completely at center of any.

Positive attitude toward intercultural activities.
Increased sophistication in intercultural ethics, deeper
crosscultural interpretation, intercultural mediation.

"Who are you?” likely to elicit a long story, filled with
examples of intercultural experience.
Developmental Model of
Intercultural Sensitivity (Bennett)
• Goal: integration. Nonlinear process, back-and-forth.
• Cultural mistakes painful.
• Need to convert pain to awareness, embarrassment and
anger to growth.
• Teachers especially vulnerable as cultural mediators and
socializers.
• The more experiences emotionally, the more theory is
needed!
Intercultural Competence

“The ability to perform effectively and appropriately
with members of another language-cultural
background on their terms. Competence is abstract
and cannot be witnessed directly... In this view, one
monitors competence by observing performance,
rather than only talking about it in abstraction.”
Alvino Fantini