Communication and Culture as Yin and Yang

Rogelio O. Ticoy, Jr.

This paper analyzes Stanley Baran’s perspective on the interconnectedness of communication and

culture, written to offer my students—taking up the course, Introduction to Mass Communication and

Information Technology— understanding how communication and culture work as dynamic duo.

First off, to understand what culture is, it is a must to know how significantly the process of

communication relates to it. Previously, in my Introduction to Mass Communication and Information

Technology class, we have expanded the definition of communication from interpersonal communication

to mass communication. The former as simply the transmission of a message from a source to a receiver,

to the latter as the process of creating shared meaning between mass media and their audiences. Then

another definition authored by a media theorist, James W. Carey emerged, viewing communication from a

cultural perspective as follows: Communication is a symbolic process whereby reality is produced,

maintained, repaired, and transformed. According to Baran (2012), this definition asserts that:

A. communication and reality are linked;

B. communication informs the way how we perceive, understand, and construct our views of

reality and the world;

C. communication is that sacred ceremony that draws persons together in fellowship and

commonality;

D. communication is the foundation of culture; and,

E. communication maintains culture.

Communication relates to culture, and it relates inseparably. Through our interaction—what we

talk about, how we talk to one another, and how we feel about them—a culture or a reality is created. The

continuous practice of these by the interacting members of the society leads to a shared understanding of

what is agreed upon as accepted or unaccepted; right or wrong; attractive or unattractive; moral, immoral,

or amoral. By agreement, we mean what is popular to many. Hence, the so-called dominant or mainstream

culture—the ones that constitute the so-called realities. And as people constantly interact with one another,
they constantly talk, think, behave, and judge according to these realities. Conformity maintains and

perpetuates these realities; deviation breaks them. Hence, the approval or condemnation by the general

public of the act or of the actor himself/herself who may posit to patronize or challenge the status quo.

Misbehavior or disconformity often calls for a repair or correction of the viewed violation; in some other

instances however, it challenges, alters, and eventually leads to the creation of a new reality or culture.

So, what now is culture?

Let’s start with a reflection. Recently, I stumbled upon a post of my student on Facebook. It was

about her mother’s birthday celebration. She shared how grateful and happy she was to have a mother like

her. And maybe the shout-out on Facebook, “Mom, I love you!”, somehow justified the love. That instance

I reference back as I am writing this introduction to the concept of culture. For what reason, I dunno. It just

pops up in my head like a bubble escaping through an impermeable, cohesive body of water. In my head:

“Maybe this can help me structure my point on culture.”

And so, there it goes.

We all can identify to that post. Maybe, because we all are sons or daughters to our own mothers.

We all love the idea that we belong to a family. And just by the thought of having one, it feels incredibly

empowering. It feels like we own something, no matter how we-suck a loser we are in life. We have a

family, and it’s ours—the ultimate place we can always go home to, any time the world bangs its doors in

our face close. It is at home that we first experience love, respect, and acceptance. It is at home that we

learn our concept of almost everything. We believe, follow, or do what our parents say, do, or teach us.

Thus, the birthing of a culture.

Then, this sense of kinship expands and grows bigger as we go out of the house and play with our

neighbors. We develop that sense of community with them. We share our family-learned beliefs, traditions,

practices, and behaviors with one another consciously or unconsciously. We co-exist despite our

differences; and in our midst of constant interaction, the exchange of beliefs, traditions, practices, and
behaviors inevitably becomes an integral part of our rubbing of elbows, scratching of backs, patting of

shoulders, and getting of each other’s back. In the process, another culture is created. And the ripple of

influence expands to a wider spectrum, as people interact with one another in a bigger scale of an assembly

of people – in school, at a party, at work, or over the social media, or on TV. We flock or commune with

people we identify ourselves with in language, skin color, origin, values, food, clothes, or even music.

Hence, our cultural identity as a member of a community, school, an organization, region or as a citizen of

a nation or of the world at large. Hence, the definition: Culture is the learned behavior of members of a

given social group. This definition has expanded further into the following definitions by anthropologists

and experts as follows:

A. Culture is the learned, socially acquired traditions and lifestyles of the members of a society,

including their patterned, repetitive ways of thinking, feeling, and acting. (Harris, 1983)

B. Culture lends significance to human experience by selecting from and organizing it. It refers

broadly to the forms through which people make sense of their lives, rather than more narrowly

to the opera or art of museums. (Rosaldo, 1989)

C. Culture is the medium evolved by humans to survive. Nothing is free from cultural influences.

It is the keystone in civilization’s arch and is the medium through which all of life’s events

must flow. We are culture. (Hall, 1976)

D. Culture is historically transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in symbolic forms by means

of which people communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and attitudes

toward life. (Geertz, as cited in Taylor, 1991)

So, how then communication and culture a yin and yang?

Culture is socially constructed and maintained through communication. It is learned—the very

basic argument shared by all the definitions of culture—and it is learned through communication. The

creation and maintenance of culture occur through communication. When we talk to our friends; when

parents raise a child; when religious leaders instruct their followers; when teachers teach; when
grandparents pass on a recipe; when politicians campaign; when media professionals produce content that

we read, listen to, or watch, meaning is being shared and culture is being constructed and maintained.

Baran, on the dynamics of culture, explained:

“Culture serves a purpose: to help us categorize and classify our experiences; it helps

define us, our world, and our place in it. Hence, culture limits and liberates us. A culture’s

learned traditions and values are the patterned, repetitive ways of thinking, feeling, and

acting. It limits our options and provides useful guidelines for behavior. Culture provides

information that helps us make meaningful distinctions about right and wrong, appropriate

and inappropriate, good and bad, attractive and unattractive, and so on.”

How does it do this?

Through communication, we are informed of what our culture expects of us. Those expectations

qualify the limiting effects of culture as either negative or positive.

Through a lifetime of communication, we have learned to automatically just do what is expected

of us in those situations. Our responses or reactions become instinctive, as we continuously and repetitively

observe these practices in our daily interactions with people. This justifies how culture’s limiting effects

can lead to positive results. However, when we are unwilling or unable to move past patterned, repetitive

ways of thinking, feeling, and acting or when we entrust our learning to teachers whose interests are selfish,

narrow, or otherwise not consistent with our own, culture’s limiting effects can lead to negative results. Let

me quote Stanley Baran et. al for an example: People’s perception of “thinness” in the culture of beauty.

“How many women endure weeks of unhealthy diets and succumb to potentially

dangerous surgical procedures in search of a body that for most is physically

unattainable?”
 “Why, by the time they enter first grade, do more than 40% of girls say they are happier

when on a diet, and by their 17th birthdays do 78% say they hate their bodies (Miller,

2007)?”

“Why do 7 million girls and women suffer from clinically diagnosed eating disorders?”

How do these situations come about?

Stanley Baran explained:

“Think back of the stories you were told and the television shows and movies you watched

while you were growing up. The heroines (or, more often, the beautiful love interests of

the heroes) were invariably tall, beautiful, and thin. The bad guys were usually mean and

fat.”

As one 10-year-old girl explained to Courtney Martin (2007) author of Perfect Girls, Starving

Daughters; cited by Stanley Baran in Mass Communication et. Al. (2011):

“It is better to be pretty, which means thin and mean, than to be ugly, which means fat

and nice. That’s just how it is.”

This limiting effect of culture is destructive. Humans as we are, we long for acceptance, validation,

and praises. So, when a society says “This is what’s beautiful and sexy,” anyone who doesn’t fit and look

the part is viewed and treated otherwise. So, we all try to look the part to fit in, by all means, because we

all want to be liked. And in the process, we lose our sense of self and individuality. We become slaves to

the culture created only by a certain few. We become part of the culture; we propagate the same mentality;

we bully and discriminate others who are of different size, color, and looks. And if this is how culture limits

us, it limits us negatively.

But in the event that human rights, diversity, and equality are discussed, celebrated, fought for, and

protected in a forum via the mass media, a liberating culture is created. So, when a gay-right celebrity

advocate champions a fight against gender discrimination or a political figure campaigns for an
environmental protection and preservation, such initiative by these famous and powerful figures promotes

and creates quite a culture of acceptance, tolerance, respect, empathy, voluntarism, and heroism among

their empire of followers. Hence, the culture created liberates.

Culture needs not only limit, because in this time and space, everything can be contested. Anyone

willing can challenge and change the status quo—imposed patterns of the dominant or mainstream

culture—and create new patterned, repetitive ways of thinking, feeling, and acting: a new culture. Hence,

the liberation.

Culture differentiates as well as unites us; it defines our realities and shapes the way we think, feel,

and act. We are defined by our culture. And the definition identifies who or what we think we are and how

we feel about ourselves. Americans are Americans; Filipinos are Filipinos; Tagalogs are Tagalogs; Warays

are Warays; Cebuanos are Cebuanos. Women are women; men are men; gays are gays, lesbians are lesbians.

Rich are rich; poor are poor. We label people by race, color, language, hair, status in life, job, or by gender

and sexuality. And attached to these labels are stereotypes that conjure bias, discrimination, and

expectations. We assign roles and adhere to them; we think, talk, and act the part.

And within a culture, there are other smaller bound culture or co-culture deduced into groups.

Among Filipinos for example, the Warays, Cebuanos, Kapampangans, Ilocanos, Tagalogs, among others

cluster themselves distinctly as a region. Among the Warays, the Leytenos and the Samarnons further divide

themselves into teams of different Waray tribes. Among the LNU populace, each college or program; each

organization, class, or section, groups themselves exclusively from the rest. While this unites us, it also

differentiates us subsequently. And when differentiation leads to division, problems arise. Hence, the

crucial role of communication in producing, maintaining, repairing, and transforming these bound culture

differences into a unified, functioning, and cohesive society. If only we communicate more with our hearts:

Yes! Unity in diversity is real.

Baran, Stanley J. (2012). Introduction to Mass Communication Media Literacy and Culture. McGraw-Hill.; Baran, Stanley J. (2011). Introduction to Mass Communication Media

Literacy and Culture. McGraw-Hill.