1. Compare and contrast the following conceptions of culture.

Which of the definitions or

elements in the definitions do you feel are the most useful and why? Are there aspects that

you disagree with?

i. ‘Culture is the fabric of meaning in terms of which human beings interpret their

experience and guide their action’ (Geertz 1973: 24).

ii. ‘Culture is a verb’ (Scollon et al. 2012: 5).

iii. Culture is ‘the totality of communication practices and systems of meaning’

(Schirato and Yell 2000: 1)

iv. ‘Culture is the collective programming of the human mind that distinguishes the

members of one human group from those of another. Culture in this sense is a

system of collectively held values’ (Hofstede 1981: 24).

v. Culture is ‘the shared patterns of behaviors and interactions, cognitive constructs,

and affective understanding that are learned through a process of socialization.

These shared patterns identify the members of a culture group while also

distinguishing those of another group’ (Center for Advanced Research on

Language Acquisition (CARLA), University of Minnesota, n.d.).

vi. Culture is ‘the membership in a discourse community that shares a common social

space and history, and a common system of standards for perceiving, believing,

evaluating, and acting’ (Kramsch 1998: 127).

vii. Culture is ‘the process by which people make sense of their lives, a process

always involved in struggles over meaning and representation’ (Pennycook 1995:

47).

viii. Culture is ‘the unwritten rules of the social game’ (Hofstede n.d.).
 ix. Culture is ‘the social cement of all human relationships; it is the medium in which

we move and breathe and have our being’ (Scovel 1994: 205).

2. What are the limitations of the ‘culture as nation’ perspective? What are the implications for

intercultural communication research and practice?

3. If you think of a tree as a metaphor for culture, what elements can you see (e.g., the

branches)? What elements are invisible?

4. Identify a situation you are familiar with and give an example of a cultural script that is

associated with it. Have you ever been to another cultural context, where a different cultural

script was more widely followed?