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Language
and Culture - a thesis
by Dimitrios Thanasoulas
- 1
Summary
This thesis is concerned with the contribution and incorporation
of the teaching of culture into the foreign language classroom.
More specifically, some consideration will be given to the
why and how of teaching culture. It will be
demonstrated that teaching a foreign language is not tantamount
to giving a homily on syntactic structures or learning new
vocabulary and expressions, but mainly incorporates, or should
incorporate, some cultural elements, which are intertwined
with language itself. Furthermore, an attempt will be made
to incorporate culture into the classroom by means of considering
some techniques and methods currently used. The main premise
of the paper is that effective communication is more than
a matter of language proficiency and that, apart from enhancing
and enriching communicative competence, cultural competence
can also lead to empathy and respect toward different cultures
as well as promote objectivity and cultural perspicacity.
PREFACE
I would like to express my gratitude to my supervisor, Dr.
Doreen Du Boulay for her assistance and insightful ideas,
and record my thanks to my friends Joshua Jackson and Eleni
Vassilakis, who were unstinting in their support, reading
drafts of the paper and making thought-provoking suggestions.
Nevertheless, any shortcomings or problems regarding the present
thesis remain my responsibility. Finally, I would like to
thank my family, Theodoros and Eugenia Thanasoulas, for their
emotional and financial support, and my sister Penny, who,
though she does not know it, has helped me in many ways. "She's
The One."
INTRODUCTION
Foreign language learning is comprised of several components,
including grammatical competence, communicative competence,
language proficiency, as well as a change in attitudes towards
one's own or another culture. For scholars and laymen alike,
cultural competence, i.e., the knowledge of the conventions,
customs, beliefs, and systems of meaning of another country,
is indisputably an integral part of foreign language learning,
and many teachers have seen it as their goal to incorporate
the teaching of culture into the foreign language curriculum.
It could be maintained that the notion of communicative competence,
which, in the past decade or so, has blazed a trail, so to
speak, in foreign language teaching, emphasising the role
of context and the circumstances under which language can
be used accurately and appropriately, 'fall[s] short of the
mark when it comes to actually equipping students with the
cognitive skills they need in a second-culture environment'
(Straub, 1999: 2). In other words, since the wider context
of language, that is, society and culture, has been reduced
to a variable elusive of any definition-as many teachers and
students incessantly talk about it without knowing what its
exact meaning is-it stands to reason that the term communicative
competence should become nothing more than an empty and meretricious
word, resorted to if for no other reason than to make an "educational
point." In reality, what most teachers and students seem
to lose sight of is the fact that 'knowledge of the grammatical
system of a language [grammatical competence] has to be complemented
by understanding (sic) of culture-specific meanings [communicative
or rather cultural competence]' (Byram, Morgan et al., 1994:
4). Of course, we are long past an era when first language
acquisition and second or foreign language learning were cast
in a "behaviouristic mould," being the products
of imitation and language "drills," and language
was thought of as a compendium of rules and strings of words
and sentences used to form propositions about a state of affairs.
In the last two decades, there has been a resurgence of interest
in the study of language in relation to society, which has
led to a shift of focus from behaviourism and positivism to
constructivism to critical theory (see Benson & Voller,
1997: 19-25). Yet, there are still some deeply ingrained beliefs
as to the nature of language learning and teaching-beliefs
that determine methodology as well as the content of the foreign
language curriculum-which have, gradually and insidiously,
contrived to undermine the teaching of culture.
One
of the misconceptions that have permeated foreign language
teaching is the conviction that language is merely a code
and, once mastered-mainly by dint of steeping oneself into
grammatical rules and some aspects of the social context in
which it is embedded-'one language is essentially (albeit
not easily) translatable into another' (Kramsch, 1993: 1).
To a certain extent, this belief has been instrumental in
promoting various approaches to foreign language teaching-pragmatic,
sociolinguistic, and communicative-which have certainly endowed
the study of language with a social "hue"; nevertheless,
paying lip service to the social dynamics that undergird language
without trying to identify and gain insights into the very
fabric of society and culture that have come to charge language
in many and varied ways can only cause misunderstanding and
lead to cross-cultural miscommunication.
At any rate, foreign language learning is foreign culture
learning, and, in one form or another, culture has, even implicitly,
been taught in the foreign language classroom-if for different
reasons. What is debatable, though, is what is meant by the
term "culture" and how the latter is integrated
into language learning and teaching. Kramsch's keen observation
should not go unnoticed:
Culture
in language learning is not an expendable fifth skill, tacked
on, so to speak, to the teaching of speaking, listening, reading,
and writing. It is always in the background, right from day
one, ready to unsettle the good language learners when they
expect it least, making evident the limitations of their hard-won
communicative competence, challenging their ability to make
sense of the world around them. (Kramsch, 1993: 1)
The
teaching of culture is not akin to the transmission of information
regarding the people of the target community or country-even
though knowledge about (let alone experience of)
the "target group" is an important ingredient (see
Nostrand, 1967: 118). It would be nothing short of ludicrous
to assert that culture is merely a repository of facts and
experiences to which one can have recourse, if need be. Furthermore,
what Kramsch herself seems to insinuate is that to learn a
foreign language is not merely to learn how to communicate
but also to discover how much leeway the target language allows
learners to manipulate grammatical forms, sounds, and meanings,
and to reflect upon, or even flout, socially accepted norms
at work both in their own or the target culture.
There
is definitely more than meets the eye, and the present paper
has the aim of unravelling the "mystery," shedding
some light on the role of teaching culture in fostering cross-cultural
understanding which transcends the boundaries of linguistic
forms-while enriching and giving far deeper meaning to what
is dubbed "communicative competence"-and runs counter
to a solipsistic world view. I would like to show that the
teaching of culture has enjoyed far less "adulation"
than it merits, and consider ways of incorporating it not
only into the foreign language curriculum but also into learners'
repertoire and outlook on life. The main premise of this paper
is that we cannot go about teaching a foreign language without
at least offering some insights into its speakers' culture.
By the same token, we cannot go about fostering "communicative
competence" without taking into account the different
views and perspectives of people in different cultures which
may enhance or even inhibit communication. After all, communication
requires understanding, and understanding requires stepping
into the shoes of the foreigner and sifting her cultural baggage,
while always 'putting [the target] culture in relation with
one's own' (Kramsch, 1993: 205). Moreover, we should be cognisant
of the fact that '[i]f we teach language without teaching
at the same time the culture in which it operates, we are
teaching meaningless symbols or symbols to which the student
attaches the wrong meaning…' (Politzer, 1959: 100-101).
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