A.
Introduction
1.
Background
Nowadays, culture is the most important
thing that we should know. However, many people especially student do not know
how important study culture. In this paper, we tried to describe and discuss
what really culture is and why culture should be though in school particularly
to college student like us.
Many years ago, culture has been one of
the most important things to learn about. The methodological separation for the
purpose of inquiry has contributed an artificial independence to these
concepts. Anthropologists have traditionally been concerned with that which is
collective, is shared; and educational psychologists have focused on the
individual and the psychological processes through which individual learning
takes places. Let us begin with some familiar ideas about culture and see how
they affect notions about what is shared in the name of culture is learned for
acquired.
2.
Statement
of problem
a. What
is culture?
b. What
is a teacher definition of culture?
c. What
is a behaviorist definition about culture?
d. What
is a functionalist definition about culture?
e. What
are benefits and inadequacies of behaviorist and functionalist definition?
f. What
is a cognitive definition about culture?
g. What
is a symbolic definition about culture?
3.
Objective
of paper
The objective of this paper is to discuss
what culture and definitions of it is according to:
a. A
behaviorist definition
b. A
functionalist definition
c. Benefits
and inadequacies of behaviorist and functionalist definitions
d. A
cognitive definition
e. A
symbolic definition
B.
Discussion
1.
What
is culture?
Culture
is defined as 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.
Culture
according to point of view of our group is about a set of things use by human
to adapt in the new environment or new life, because adapting with it is very
important, as a new comer, for example.
2.
Teachers
definition
According to teachers’
definition, culture is something that can be taught and also can be observed
through many ways because culture is something real. Culture is about a thing
that can be taught to our students because it is real and has a part to
analyze, for example, the culture of Toraja and Parepare is very different.
That is why teacher should teach the difference between two different cultures,
in order that the learners can understand the difference and apply it to their
daily life in home and also in their environment.
It is important to take a
closer look at these distinctions, and others not included above, which are
also relevant to what is acquired in the name of culture. For example, some
aspects of culture are not only non-observable, but they also elude explicit
description, such as aspects of cognitive interpretation and affective
reactions. Other aspects of culture may elude identifications because their
essence is a dynamic, symbolic process of creating meaning.
3. A behaviorist definition
According to behaviorist
point of view, culture something that consist a sets of behavior and also a
sets of values which used by human to adapt to their environment. From the
behaviorist point of view, culture consists of discrete behaviors or sets of
behaviors, e.g., traditions, habits or customs, as in marriage or leisure.
Culture is something which is shared and can be observed. So that is why
according to behaviorist definition, culture is something that need to follow,
because it has many good values.
Behaviorist definition
emphases that culture is needed by every human, every people in their life,
particularly for college students like us. In the language classroom, this
concepts of culture often leads to study of discrete practices or institutions
such as “a study of the family; how the French spend their leisure; buying
foods in the market,” etc.
4. A functionalist definition
According to the
functionalist point of view, culture is something that cannot be directly
observed and taught (like teachers definition) because functionalist point of
view emphases that culture should be an approach to people as a functionalist.
The functionalist approach
to culture is an attempt at making sense out of social behaviors. Again,
culture is viewed as a social phenomenon. However, what is shared are reasons
and rules for behaving. While the function or rules underlying the behavior
cannot be directly observed, they are inferred from the behavior and may be
explicitly described.
Recall
that the functionalist perspective
is
based upon the assumption that
society is a
stable, orderly system with
interrelated parts that serve
specific functions
Anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski
suggests that
culture helps
people meet their needs
Biological needs
(eg. food, procreation)
Instrumental needs (eg. law, education)
Integrative needs (eg. religion, art)
The assumption is that by
understanding the reason behind a particular event, be it eating different
foods, speaking in loud voices, or speaking in close proximity, learners will
better understand and tolerate the person who is participating in the event.
5. Benefits and inadequacies of
behaviorist and functionalist definitions
Everything has a benefit and
also an inadequacy for each, same with the behaviorist and functionalist, which
seen though its definition. Behaviorist and functionalist approaches facilitate
cultural description and awareness of why some people act the way they do.
Students are helped to recognize and anticipate cultural behavior, both
linguistic and non-linguistic. However these approaches are insufficient is
several ways. They assume that cultural behaviors and their functions can be
objectively identified; that awareness and anticipations lead to greater
coping; and that the important concerns of culture, i.e., what is shared, can
be observed directly or inferred from observable behavior.
First, different perceptions
and interpretations of behaviors by different observers, be they cultural
anthropologists, bilingual teachers, language students or textbook writers,
result in a methodological problem for designating exactly what constitutes
cultural behavior.
Second (assuming that
accurate identification of cultural behaviors is possible), anticipation of
cultural behaviors which newcomers perceive as negative may actually increase
anxiety rather than cushion culture shock, even if the newcomer understands the
reason.
Third, behaviorist and
functionalist concepts of culture assume that what is shared in the name of
culture may be directly observed or inferred from observations. Some
anthropologists have suggested that too much emphasis on empiricism.
6. A cognitive definition
According to the cognitive
definition, culture is described as a system or a mechanism that same as a
machine or computer that process the values to the real act. The process is
called an adapting to the new culture to prevent a negative side. The cognitive
definition shifts attention from the observable aspects of what is shared to
what is shared “inside.” The “cultural actor.” What is shared is a means of
organizing and interpreting the world, a means of creating order out of the
inputs. The idea of culture as world view is related to this definition.
According to cognitive approaches, culture is not a material phenomenon
To adapt to the specific
needs of their students, teachers may also incorporate other stories into the
suggested critical incident format. To do this, teachers can either use stories
of cross-cultural miscommunication that they might have heard of from their
students or describe the situations that they have experienced themselves. If
they choose to do so, teachers should be cautious about stereotyping and
reinforcing misrepresentations about people from other cultures.
( http://iteslj.org/Lessons/Stakhnevich-Critical.html
)
The cognitive approach
emphasizes the mechanism of organizing inputs. That is culture itself is a
process through which experience is mapped out, categorized and interpreted.
From this perspective, culture is like a computer program. The program differs
from culture to culture. The program refers to cognitive maps.
7. A symbolic definition
According to symbolic
definition student should learn about the symbolic meaning of culture itself,
because it is very important to learn, very different with cognitive definition
which emphases to the cognitive, study to knowing what culture really is trough
the cognitive aspects. Cultural understanding viewed as processing within the
learner leads to a symbolic definition of culture. While cognitive
anthropologists focus on the mechanism for processing i.e., the cognitive map,
symbolic anthropologists focus on the product of processing, I.e., the meanings
derived.
In
many two-thirds world cultures, a deep relationship does not begin until there
is debt and reciprocal obligation. We have found that one of the best ways to
signal our desire for a deeper relationship is to ask others for help. This
phase of the relationship causes much stress to many westerners. For
self-sufficient westerners, asking for help is much more difficult than giving
it, yet asking is the most important step in initiating relationships in many
non-western cultural contexts.
This
concept f culture as a creative, historical system of symbols and meaning has
the potential to fill in the theoretical gaps left by behaviorist,
functionalist and cognitive theories. This dynamic notion theoretically dwells
on the interdependence between the derivation of meaning within the learner and
cultural experience.
As a result, Symbolic
Interactionism does
not
provide an outline
to analyze how we shape culture and how
it in turn shapes
us. It fails
to take into
account the
larger, macro- level
social
structures (eg. social
class)
that are considered in the
Functionalist and Conflict perspectives
C.
Closing
1. Summary
According to many various
definitions of culture reflect different theoretical concepts about what
culture is, what should be studied in the quest for cultural understanding, and
the methodology that is most appropriate. Bilingual and second language
educators most frequently conceive of culture in the categories of ideas, behaviors,
or products, which are shared by members of a given group. Behaviorists treat
culture as observable actions and/ or evens. Functionalists focus on the
underlying structure or rules which govern and explain observable events.
Awareness of cultural behaviors and underlying rules help people predict or at
least anticipate how others are going to act and why. Classroom practices in
second language and bilingual education tend to reflect behaviorists and functionalists
perspectives. Less applied are cognitive and symbolic concepts of culture which
are non-observable and internal to the cultural actor or learner. Cognitive
anthropologists liken cultural to a computer: culture is an internal mechanism
for organizing and interpreting inputs. Symbolic definitions of culture focus
neither on external events nor the internal mechanism for organizing per se,
but rather on the meaning which results from the dialectic process between the
two.
Ultimately, learning to understand someone
from another culture hinges on the internal development of new or synthesized
meaning for each learner.
2. Suggestion
As good students we have to
be a good learner in our environment. We should know what culture is. If we
want to adapt with our environment, it is necessarily for us to get a study
about culture. The importance of learning culture in the foreign language is to
be part of a culture means to share the propositional knowledge and the rules
of inference necessary to understand whether certain propositions are true
(given certain premises). To the propositional knowledge, one might add the
procedural knowledge to carry out tasks such as cooking, weaving, farming,
fishing, giving a formal speech, answering the phone, asking for a favor,
writing a letter for a job application
3.
Bibliography
a.
Book “Cross Cultural
Understanding” by Gail L Nemetz Robinson
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