教 学 程 序 教学的基本内容 (1) 时间安排教学方法 15 mins: Warm up Warm-up Activities Look at some pictures and try to identify what cultural differences are displayed. Left: Westerners Right: Chinese a. b. 15 mins: c. d. e. f. Group study 10 mins: Explanation g. h. I. The Nature of Culture 1. Definitions of Culture (1) Scholars give various definitions of culture from different perspectives. “Culture is the arts and other manifestation of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively.” -----Concise oxford Dictionary (2) Culture may be classified by three large categories of elements: -- Artifact (which include items ranging from arrowheads to hydrogen bombs, magic charms to electric lights, and chariots to jet planes) -- Concepts (which include such beliefs or value systems as right or wrong, God and man, ethnic, and the general meaning of life) -- Behavior (which refers to the actual practice of concepts or beliefs) (3) At the most rudimentary, culture consists of two levels: a level of values, or an invisible level and a visible level of resultant behavior or artifacts of some form. 10 mins: Group study 20 mins: Explanation 3. Characteristics of Culture ? Culture influences biological processes: e.g. Sneezing; food culture; sleeping ; giving birth ? Culture is transmitted from generation to generation: ‐ For cultures to exist and endure, they must ensure that their crucial messages and elements are passed on (through communication). ‐ Some of the behaviors a culture selects to pass on are universal and others are unique. ‐ Each individual is heir to a massive “library” of cultural information collected. ? Culture is selected: ‐ Each culture represents a limited choice of behavior patterns from the infinite patterns of human experience. ‐ What a culture selects to tell each succeeding generation is a reflection of what that culture deems important. ‐ The notion of selectivity suggests that cultures tend to separate one group from anther. ? Culture is ethnocentric: ‐ Ethnocentrism is a universal tendency for any people to put its own culture and society in a central position of priority and worth. ‐ It leads to a subjective evaluation of how another culture conducts its daily business. ? Cultures are interrelated wholes: ‐ Cultures are coherent and logical systems. ‐ You touch a culture in one place and everything else is affected. – Hall (1977) ? Culture is subject to change: ‐ History abounds with examples of how cultures have changed because of laws, shifts in values, natural disasters, wars , etc. ‐ Technology promoted cultural change. (e.g. e-mail) ‐ Although cultures change, most change affects only the surface structure of the culture. The deep structure resists major alterations. ? Culture is like an iceberg: ‐ a greater part of culture is hidden under the water, such as views, attitudes, preference, love and hatred, customs and habits. They are out of our awareness, which makes the study of culture difficult. In order to truly understand a culture, we must explore the behaviors below the waterline. ? Culture is like an onion: ‐ The skins of an onion - symbols that represent the most superficial and the easiest to perceive by an outsider and the least important to an insider. ‐ The second skin of the onion is heroes-the kind of people you worship. ‐ The third skin is rituals-collective activities that are considered socially essential within a culture. ‐ The core of culture-values, which are the deepest manifestation of culture and the most difficult to understand by an outsider. II. The Basics of Cultural Values 1. Definition of Value (1) Oxford Dictionary: one’s principles or standards or one’s judgment of what is valuable or important in life. (2) Hofstede: values are a broad tendency to prefer certain states of affairs over others. (3) Kluckhohn: values are a conception, explicit or implicit, distinctive of an individual or characteristic of a group, of the desirable which influences the selection from available modes, means, and ends of action. 2. Priorities of Cultural Values (1) Values can be divided into three types: ? Universal values Universal values are values common to all people. e.g. a desire to live a happy life is a universal value, as everyone wants to live happily ? Cultural-specific values ? Peculiar expression or deviation of individuals within culture. These are aspects of subjective culture. So we say, although each of us has a unique set of individual values, there also are values that tend to permeate a culture. These are called cultural values. Therefore, values tend 10 be broad-based, enduring, and relatively stable. (2) Priorities of Values Values can be classified as primary, secondary, and tertiary. What do you value most? How do your priorities influence your day-to-day activities, especially those relating to your business work'' Begin answering these questions by choosing from the following 20 values that are common to most international cultures, but their importance varies from culture to culture; (1) group harmony, (2) competition. (3) seniority, (4) cooperation, (5) privacy, (6) 5 mins: Explanation 10 mins: Group study 5 mins openness, (7) equality (8) formality (9) risk-taking (10) reputation (11) freedom (12) family security (13) relationships (14) self-reliance (15) time (16) group consensus (17) authority (18) material possession(19) spirituality (20) group achievement. Assignment: 1. Preview Part 3. 2. Review the terms and key points in this part.