3.2 Elements of Culture – Comprehensive Study Notes

Values and Beliefs

• Values vs beliefs
  • Values are ideals or principles and standards that members of a culture hold in high regard; not monetary worth.
  • Beliefs are tenets or convictions that people hold to be true and are learned from a culture.
  • Cultures have personal beliefs as well as shared collective values.
• Examples of values and beliefs
  • American Dream: belief that hard work leads to success and wealth; underlying value is that wealth is important.
  • Other cultures may tie success to having many healthy children rather than wealth.
  • U.S. youth are valued as representing innocence; youthfulness in appearance signals sexuality.
  • Cosmetic products and surgeries market reflect the value placed on looking young and beautiful.
  • U.S. as an individualistic culture: high value on individuality and independence; contrasted with collectivist cultures prioritizing the welfare of the group.
• Values shape society
  • They suggest what is good, bad, beautiful, or ugly; what is sought or avoided.
  • Example: the U.S. places high value on youth and individuality.
• Ideal culture vs real culture
  • Ideal culture: the standards a society would like to embrace and live up to (e.g., no traffic accidents, murders, poverty, or racial tension).
  • Real culture: how people actually behave; police officers, lawmakers, educators, and social workers work to prevent or address issues.
  • Example: American teenagers are encouraged to value celibacy, yet teen pregnancy still occurs; the ideal is not always realized in practice.
• Rewards and punishments (sanctions) as social control
  • Sanctions are tools to encourage conformity to norms and values.
  • Positive sanctions: praise, rewards, or bonuses (e.g., a manager receives a quarterly bonus for profit growth).
  • Negative sanctions: disapproval, frowns, or being fired (e.g., a manager who drives away customers).
  • Sanctions can be formal (written rules) or informal (unwritten social expectations).
  • Sanctions occur whether or not authority figures are present; they help maintain conformity.
• Nonstatic nature of values
  • Values change over time and differ between groups.
  • Example: differences in physical closeness in public (e.g., two male friends holding hands is rare in the U.S. but common in many African and Middle Eastern cultures).
  • Public reaction differences illustrate cross-cultural value variations (e.g., Bush holding hands with the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia in 2005).
• Real-world implications
  • Values influence laws, social policies, and daily interactions, yet do not always predict behavior perfectly (linking to the difference between ideal and real culture).

Norms

• Definition of norms
  • Norms are visible and invisible rules of conduct that societies define as good, right, and important; most members adhere to them.
• Formal norms
  • Established, written rules that exist in all societies and support social institutions (e.g., the military, criminal justice, healthcare, public schools).
  • Laws are formal norms; other formal norms include employee manuals, college entrance exam requirements, and “no running” signs at pools.
• Informal norms
  • Casual behaviors widely conformed to but not codified in written rules.
  • Learned by observation, imitation, and socialization; some are taught directly (e.g., "Kiss your Aunt Edna" or "Use your napkin").
  • Others are learned by observing consequences of violations.
  • Informal norms govern everyday interactions (e.g., standards at fast-food restaurants: line up to order, leave after finishing, do not sit with strangers, do not sing loudly, etc.).
• Formal vs informal norms in social life
  • Formal norms are highly explicit and strictly enforced to varying degrees; informal norms are more flexible but deeply influential in daily life.
• Role of social institutions
  • Norms shape and are shaped by social institutions (military, criminal justice, healthcare, education).

Sanctions and Social Control

• Sanctions as mechanisms of social control
  • Positive sanctions: rewards for conforming to norms (e.g., praise, bonuses, grades).
  • Negative sanctions: penalties for deviating from norms (e.g., frowns, fines, imprisonment, termination).
• Examples and consequences
  • Positive example: a boy helping an elderly woman board a bus may receive a smile and a “thank you.”
  • Negative example: a boy shoving an elderly woman may be frowned upon or he may be scolded; a manager driving away customers may be fired.
  • Breaking norms can lead to cultural sanctions (negative labels like “lazy”) or legal sanctions (e.g., traffic tickets, fines, imprisonment).
• Universal function of sanctions
  • Social control works to encourage conformity even when authority figures are not present.

Values in Time and Across Cultures

• Change and variation
  • Values are not static; they evolve as groups reevaluate and debate social beliefs.
• Cultural differences in public behavior
  • Norms about physical closeness in public vary across cultures (e.g., hand-holding among men in some cultures vs. U.S.).
  • Public reactions to behavior across cultures highlight value differences.

The Concept of Norms: Mores and Folkways

• Breaching experiments
  • Conducted by sociologist Harold Garfinkel (1917–2011) to study how norms shape social order.
  • Garfinkel’s book: Studies in Ethnomethodology (1967).
  • Method: researchers perform socially awkward actions to reveal unwritten rules and reactions.
  • Example: an experimenter may play tic-tac-toe by having players place Xs and Os on lines rather than in boxes; the reaction reveals normative expectations.
  • Purpose: to show how strongly people rely on social norms to coordinate behavior.
• Mores
  • Norms that embody moral views and principles; often have a religious foundation.
  • Violations can carry serious consequences and are protected by formal sanctions (laws) or informal sanctions (public sentiment).
  • Example: plagiarism in schools/higher education; writing someone else’s words as your own can lead to expulsion or termination.
• Folkways
  • Norms without moral underpinnings; guide day-to-day behavior and routines.
  • Examples include greetings (handshakes vs. cheek kissing), dress codes, etc.
  • Cultural differences: what is a normal greeting or dress in one culture may be rude in another (e.g., Canada vs. Egypt; southern U.S. norms about chatting with acquaintances).
  • Folkways are not trivial; they enable smooth daily functioning and may be learned by observation and imitation.

Symbols and Culture

• What are symbols?
  • Symbols are gestures, signs, objects, signals, and words that help people understand and communicate about their world; they carry shared meanings.
• Material vs nonmaterial meaning
  • Some symbols are material objects (e.g., road signs, logos, trophies) but they convey nonmaterial cultural meanings.
  • Some symbols are valued only for what they represent (e.g., trophies represent achievement).
• Symbolic messages and context
  • Symbols gain meaning in context; out-of-context use can convey strong political or social statements (e.g., a stop sign on a door, camouflage jacket in an antiwar protest, peace sign from semaphore signals for N and D).
  • Symbols can be universal in some cases, but interpretations vary across cultures.
• Examples of symbol usage and controversy
  • Political or historical symbols may provoke strong emotions or social unrest.
  • Historical events as symbols: Berlin Wall (1989) as a symbol of division; statues related to slavery and the Civil War removed in the U.S. (from public spaces, 2019 onwards).
  • Germany’s legal prohibition on displaying Hitler/Nazi memorabilia or denying the Holocaust.
• Language as a system of symbols
  • Language uses symbols (letters, pictographs, signs) to communicate; sign language has its own grammar distinct from spoken language.
  • Language as a cultural transmitter: it conveys norms and meanings across generations.

Language and Culture

• Language as a system of symbols
  • Letters, pictographs, and signs combine to form words and convey meanings.
  • Sign language incorporates signs representing words and includes facial expressions and postures; its grammar differs from spoken language.
• Basic elements of language
  • All language systems convey ideas using core elements: object, subject, and action.
  • Written language uses symbols to refer to spoken sounds.
• Examples of linguistic features
  • English: 26 letters; over 600000 recognized words (OED Online, 2011).
  • Tone and meaning, as in Mandarin, where the same character can symbolize different concepts depending on tone.
  • Language evolution: new words emerge with technology (e.g., "e-mail", "Internet", "downloading", "texting", "blogging"); these would have been nonsensical a few decades ago.
• Regional and cultural variation in language
  • Spelling and pronunciation differences (e.g., British vs. American usage: British English often retains a 'u' in words like "behaviour" and "flavour"; Americans dropped that 'u').
  • Variations in everyday terms: grinder/sub/hero/gyro; soda/pop; family room/rec room/den.
• Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (linguistic relativity)
  • Proposes that language shapes thought and perception, thereby influencing behavior.
  • Examples and evidence:
  • Numeric associations: some cultures avoid certain numbers (e.g., number 13 in the U.S. associated with bad luck) leading to architectural omission of the 13^{th} floor; in Japan, 4 is avoided due to its similarity to the word for death.
  • Gendered nouns and perception: Boroditsky, Schmidt, and Phillips (2002) found that German speakers described masculine nouns with more masculine adjectives than Spanish speakers when the noun’s gender in German matched a masculine gender; for the same concept, Spanish speakers used more feminine or neutral descriptors. The word for “key” is masculine in German and feminine in Spanish; results showed differing descriptors (e.g., hard, heavy, metal vs. golden, delicate, shiny).
  • Language and perception of space and movement: studies suggest Finnish vs. Swedish linguistic structures may influence workplace accident rates due to differences in spatial-temporal description; Swedish emphasizes timing of movement in space, potentially affecting factory layout and workflow (Salminen & Johansson, 2000; Lucy, 1997).
• Ambivalence and linguistic relativity
  • Sapir-Whorf is often read to suggest that if a word does not exist in a language, its concept may be harder to conceive, but interpretation remains possible; the hypothesis emphasizes that meaning and perception are shaped by language, not that people cannot hold multiple feelings (ambivalence) without a specific word.
• Nonverbal communication
  • Nonverbal cues are symbolic and culturally learned; they complement spoken language.
  • Universality and variation: smiles often convey positive reinforcement in the U.S., but can be rude in some cultures when directed at strangers; thumbs-up can be offensive in Russia and Australia; waves, winks, and other gestures have context-dependent meanings.
  • People often read emotions and social situations from body language, but misreadings can occur when cultural norms differ.

Language, Culture, and Identity: Nonverbal Communication

• Nonverbal cues and context
  • Body language, facial expressions, and gestures convey meaning beyond spoken words.
  • Cultural scripts determine appropriate nonverbal behavior (e.g., a wave can mean multiple things depending on how it is performed and to whom).
• Interpreting interaction across cultures
  • Observers may wrongly interpret a culture’s behavior as an argument or aggression when it may simply be normal conversational style.

Social Policy and Debate: Language(s) in the United States

• Bilingual education in the U.S.
  • Case study: Lucy’s family immigrated at age six; attended a school with bilingual options (English and Spanish) to support learning.
  • Dual-language instruction helped maintain proficiency in native language while learning English; after two years, Lucy progressed well in mathematics and other subjects; English instruction eventually dominated but subject understanding remained solid.
  • Research: Slavin et al. (2008) findings suggest students taught in both their native tongue and English make better progress than those taught only in English.
• Official language status in the U.S.
  • Legally, the U.S. has no official language; however, many states have English-only laws to reduce translation costs and ease integration (Mount, 2010).
  • Proponents argue English-as-official reduces translation costs and supports bilingual education; opponents (e.g., ACLU) argue such laws threaten the rights of non-English speakers and undermine national diversity.
  • The debate has intensified since 1970 amid waves of immigration from Asia and Mexico; many products are now produced and presented in multiple languages to accommodate diverse populations.

Connections to Foundational Principles and Real-World Relevance

• Foundational concepts linked to culture:
  • The distinction between ideal vs real culture emphasizes the gap between normative expectations and actual social behavior.
  • The role of sanctions shows how norms are enforced across formal and informal channels.
  • The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis connects language to cognition and perception, underscoring how communication tools shape social reality.
  • Breaching experiments illustrate that social order rests on unwritten rules and shared understandings, not just formal laws.
• Real-world relevance:
  • The interplay of language, culture, and policy affects education, immigration, workplace safety, and cross-cultural interactions.
  • Understanding norms, values, and symbols helps explain social cohesion, conflict, and policy debates in multicultural societies.

Key Terms and Concepts (glossary)

• Values: ext{ideals or principles held in high regard}
• Beliefs: ext{convictions considered true}
• Norms: ext{shared rules of conduct}
• Formal norms: ext{written, codified rules (e.g., laws, regulations)}
• Informal norms: ext{unwritten, learned through socialization}
• Mores: ext{norms with moral/ethical foundations; often legally protected}
• Folkways: ext{norms without strong moral underpinnings; everyday habits}
• Sanctions: ext{rewards or punishments used to enforce norms}
• Symbols: ext{gestures, signs, objects, or words with shared meaning}
• Material culture: ext{physical objects created by a culture}
• Nonmaterial culture: ext{ideas, beliefs, symbols conveyed by a culture}
• Language: ext{system of symbols used for communication}
• Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: ext{linguistic relativity; language shapes thought and behavior}
• Breaching experiments: ext{research methods to test social norms by breaking them in public}
• Bilingual education: ext{instruction in two languages to support learning}
• Official language laws: ext{political/legal designation of a language for a country or region}

References to Figures and Examples Mentioned

• Gendered adjectives in German vs Spanish (Boroditsky, Schmidt, and Phillips, 2002): gender of nouns influences descriptive adjectives chosen.
• Linguistic and cultural tone effects: Finnish vs Swedish language structures impacting workplace safety and efficiency (Salminen & Johansson, 2000).
• Breaching experiments by Garfinkel (1967) in Studies in Ethnomethodology.
• Historical symbols and events:
  • Berlin Wall destruction (1989) as a symbol of division.
  • Statues related to slavery and the Civil War removed in the U.S. (2019).
  • Prohibition of Nazi memorabilia and Holocaust denial in Germany.
• Language evolution and examples:
  • English alphabet: 26 letters; over 600000 words (OED Online, 2011).
  • Japanese script: over 8000$$ characters; tone changes meaning.
  • English vs. French examples: verb and noun usage differences (e.g., eat vs. dine; meet vs. encounter).