Introduction

This article will look into three models for describing culture for the purpose of language teaching: prototype, matrix, and continuum. The prototype model will be looked at as the most typical representation of the target culture, that which makes it recognisable. A matrix model will describe the target culture in the broad context of cultural diversity while a continuum model will discover how cultures co-exist, showing the gradual transition from one to another rather than an abrupt difference.

Definition of culture

Culture in this article will be understood as a set of conventions, stereotypes and values that are shared by members of community and are used for self-identification with a particular social group as a sign of belonging to it. The behavioural patterns of a social group which arise (such as a community), will be referred to as social culture (Tomalin and Stempleski 1993; Millrood 2002).

Prototypes of culture

A prototype is a typical case, usually a generalisation. A culture can be described as a ‘prototype’ when it has a number of features that make this culture recognisable. Social culture can be represented by a ‘pyramid’ metaphor with a certain feature found on top of the pyramid and others found at lower levels down to the foundation of the pyramid (Lewis 1998). An attempt to build the Asian (Japanese) ‘cultural pyramid’ is shown below:

An Anglo-Saxon cultural pyramid is different. Instead of the ‘politeness’ found on top of the Japanese pyramid, there is the concept of action that is typical in many ways of the Western mentality (e.g. the USA). Silence and rituals give way to intervention and law-abidance as important principles. The place of ‘belonging’ is taken by individualism. Face-saving is substituted by integrity, self-effacement by self-assertion etc.:

A comparison can be made with the Slavonic (Russian) ‘pyramid’ (Shikhirev 2000):

The diagrams show that on top of the ‘Japanese pyramid’ there is politeness, the ‘American pyramid’ is crowned with pragmatism, while the ‘Russian pyramid’ features spontaneity as a highly observable feature in social behaviour, with less social constraints than in an orderly Western mentality.

Japanese patience is contrasted in the ‘pyramid’ to American rationalism, and Russian ‘futurism’ i.e. hope for a happy solution to problems in the future, investment of resources in children, and a belief that virtue will eventually overpower evil. Russian fairy-tales are often centred around the battle of virtue and evil, with virtue winning over evil after a series of physical and moral tests. Virtue is destined to win because it is ‘good’, while evil is doomed to failure for being ‘bad’. Virtue is rewarded simply for being virtuous. There is some mysticism lying behind any attempt to explain why virtue is destined to be the winner in Russian myths.

Interestingly, American pragmatism dictates a different scenario. American cartoons create characters that are strong, not always intelligent, but decisive and quick. Being noble is important for a victory but not enough to achieve much in life. Decisiveness, action, initiative and taking risks matter more.

Japanese collectivism and faithful allegiance i.e. a strong sense of belonging to a team that is viewed as one's ‘family’, is contrasted to American individualism, and Russian ‘group thinking’, with less dependence on a team, but a tendency in individuals to conform to decisions.

The foundation of the ‘Japanese pyramid’ consists of face-saving, self-effacement, and faithful allegiance. At the basis of the ‘American pyramid’ lie integrity (fair play), self-assertion, and leadership. ‘Russian pyramid’ rests upon mentality, spirituality, and a belief in ‘autocracy’ i.e. in an authoritative leader capable of effective decision-making. A failing leader quickly becomes the butt of humour and criticism. A ‘tsar’ can be either good or bad, but needed.

These and other features of social culture have relative meaning and significance because any culture, interacting with the broader cultural context, absorbs features that are more or less typical. This is the property of any prototype, within which there always is a room for general and particular, permanent and variable, stable and transitive.

A symbolic paradigm of culture

Culture can be described as a phenomenon with symbols. This paradigm includes properties of culture that are symbolic of certain religions, philosophy and ethnicity, as well as regions (migration of the population causes export of certain cultures to new regions where a diaspora or a colony retains its social culture).

Cultures in the symbolic paradigm are grouped as cultures of ‘word’, ‘action’, ‘silence’, ‘creed’, and ‘fate’. The culture of ‘word’ - Slavonic, the culture of ‘action’ - Germanic (exported to the USA by migrants of Anglo-Saxon descent), the culture of ‘silence’ - Asian, the culture of ‘creed’ - Arabic, and the culture of ‘fate’ - Indian.

This taxonomy of cultural prototypes has clear religious fault lines, cutting between theology (culture of word, action, creed), philosophy (culture of silence) and astrology (culture of fate).

From a religious aspect, the culture of ‘word’ is orthodox Christian (e.g. the Slavonic culture found in Russia and Eastern Europe), the culture of ‘action’ is Christian protestant (e.g. Germanic with Anglo-Saxon traditions in the USA - ‘Do something!’). The culture of ‘silence’ is Confucian (e.g. Japanese or Korean), the culture of ‘creed’ is demonstrated in Islam (e.g. Arab world where life is subordinate to religious rites and group thinking) and the culture of ‘fate’ is Buddhist (e.g. India where people put faith in the primacy of destiny, pre-determination of earthly life in humans, eternal cycles of re-incarnation, and credibility of astrology).

Cultures can be described with symbolic geometric figures (Dellinger 1996). The culture of ‘word’ (Slavonic) is symbolised with a circle whose function is communication, hope, forgiveness and the redemption of sin. The culture of ‘action’ (Germanic) is symbolised with a triangle whose function is rationalism and modernisation while the symbol for the culture of ‘silence’ (Asian) is a box. The box represents corporation, paternity ‘top-down’, and respect ‘bottom-up’. A rectangle symbolises the culture of ‘creed’ (Arabic) and its function is faith, family and fellowship. The squiggle stands for the culture of ‘fate’ (Indian) with a function of creativity, meditation and the achievement of nirvana

The following contrasts can be drawn between the culture of ‘circle’ (Russia), and the culture of ‘triangle’ (USA):

A behavioural paradigm of culture

Cultural prototypes, such as ‘circle’, ‘triangle’, ‘box’ etc. are not the only dimension for describing culture. The other dimension, closely related to prototypes, includes verbal, non-verbal, cognitive, ethical and affective forms of behaviour. Verbal behaviour is the way certain cultures use language for communication in a culturally consistent way. Non-verbal behaviour includes, mimicry, gestures, proxemics, body language, olfactory (smell) experience, dress, make-up etc. Cognitive culture is a culturally consistent way of representing the real world in the ‘collective mind’ (e.g. the concept of time is ‘linear’ in ‘action’ cultures where ‘time flies’ and there is a need to hurry; time is ‘cyclical’ in the cultures of ‘fate’ where it revolves around the person and there is no reason for haste and no direction in which to make it). ‘Action’ cultures picture the world full of activities and events in progress (e.g. ‘Look! The bus is coming!’), whereas the culture of ‘silence’ maps a world full of empirical facts (e.g. ‘Look. The bus has come …’). ‘Silence’ is a ‘wait-and-see’ culture of listening, observing and noticing (there is a legend about the Chinese lion sitting high in the mountains and watching the two stupid tigers fighting in the valley). ‘Action’ is the culture of doing, persevering and achieving (the USA, the UK). In this context, the ‘trial-and-error’ culture of ‘word’ is taking risks, venturing, hitting or missing (Russia).

Ethical culture prompts the choice between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ behaviour for example a debate is considered useful in the culture of ‘word’ (a Russian saying goes that ‘in a debate the truth is born’). A debate is a waste of time in the culture of ‘action’. It is impolite in the culture of ‘silence’, an expression of sincerity in the culture of ‘creed’, and food for thought in the culture of ‘fate’.

Affective culture regulates expression of emotions. The culture of ‘word’ allows expression of emotions in public, while the culture of ‘action’ introduces stoicism; the culture of ‘creed’ encourages the hue and cry of the crowd, while the culture of ‘silence’ advocates observation of rituals rather than expression of emotions. The culture of ‘fate’ encourages expression of pleasure and joy, while negative emotions (pain and suffering) are taken philosophically. The culture of ‘fate’ believes that life is pain and this cannot be changed. The culture of ‘fate’ cultivates subservience to order and suffering, while ‘action’ culture educates children in the spirit of resistance and healthy aggression in defending one's interests.

The matrix model of culture

Social culture can be presented as a ‘matrix’ with symbols of behavioural patterns making up the matrix dimensions. A matrix of culture with generalised symbolic meanings and behaviour forms is given below:

The matrix gives a panoramic taxonomy of the major social cultures that are found on the global scale.

Cultural continua

Cultures do not exist as extreme poles, but rather form a continua with a gradual transition from one polarity to the other with a number of intermediate stages on the way. This is the property of any cultural prototype - to be both the most typical and general case, and at the same time, to provide for a smooth transition to another type of culture. Such a transition is found in borderline conventions, stereotypes and values that do not belong exclusively to only one culture but are shared by two or more social groups (e.g. ‘silence’ is a feature of Japanese culture, but ‘patience’ can belong to other cultures as well).

If the explicit use of language in cultures is considered, the continuum in the use of words as observed in a number of countries shows that different cultures make varying use of explicit communication. The ratio between words and thoughts can be considered an important feature of one's social culture. Metaphorical icebergs of speech and thought (speech is the tip of an iceberg) are shown below (compare: Lewis 1998: 275)

As might be expected, the culture of ‘word’ shows the greatest amount of external speech activity in communication, with the ‘culture’ of silence taking the opposite extreme position.

All cultures can be described in terms of relativity to each other. Culture of ‘action’ is more affirmative than culture of ‘word’, and culture of ‘word’ is more optimistic than culture of ‘creed’. Culture of ‘creed’ is more ‘right-brain’ dominant than culture of ‘action, and develops ‘cults’ just as easily as the culture of ‘silence’. At the same time, the culture of ‘creed’ shows more empathy than culture of ‘silence’, which is much less ‘consumer oriented’ than the culture of ‘action’ etc. No culture has a rigidly fixed position on a cultural continuum, and either moves closer to another, or further apart depending on a parameter of observation. For example on the ‘introvert-extravert’ scale in verbal behaviour the culture of ‘word’ is quite close to the culture of ‘action’ and is very far away from the culture of ‘silence’:

In non-verbal behaviour the culture of ‘word’ moves closer to the culture of ‘creed’ on the ‘group-dependent’ - ‘self-sufficient’ scale and the culture of ‘creed’ stays wide apart from the culture of ‘action’:

In cognitive behaviour the culture of ‘word’ is still close to the culture of ‘creed’ and is distant to the culture of ‘silence’ in the dominance of feeling (right-brain) and thinking (left-brain) tendencies:

Ethical behaviour brings together the cultures of ‘action’ and ‘silence’, with the culture of ‘action’ and ‘creed’ taking extreme positions on the continuum of keeping one's word (contract) or going back on it (bargain):

In affective behaviour the chief opposition is between the cultures of ‘creed’ and ‘silence’, with the culture of ‘fate’ taking the middle position:

The continuum analysis shows that the circle (e.g. Slavonic culture) in most cases is comfortable in the neighbourhood of a rectangle (Arab culture). The Slavonic circle stands close to the Germanic triangle in verbal behaviour, but moves far away from the triangle in ethical culture, and from the Asian box in the culture of affective behaviour. Instead, the circle shows similarity to the rectangle in the letting out of steam in public.

Social culture has an impact on the concept of ‘truth’ in a number of countries. The difference in this concept is given below as a continuum ‘from relativity to objectivity’:

Any nation can show signs of ‘chauvinism’ i.e. a prejudiced belief in the superiority of one's social group and culture. The reasons for such chauvinism in a number of nations can be different as derived from outsiders' perspective

Description of culture is always relative, with a good deal of variability within the cultural boundaries (cultural features are more recognisable on a community scale than judging by individual behaviour). Relativity also means that there is no absolute truth in drawing cultural portraits. Extreme points are but rarely reached on the continuum for example relativity in describing Russian culture can be seen from the following definitions that partly explain the ‘enigma’ of the Russian soul:

• Russia is ethics-conscious without fanaticism.

• Russia is sin-aware without puritanism

• Russia is guilt-concerned without paranoia

• Russia is money-interested without miserliness

• Russia is sincerity-focused without being simple

Similar propositions can, perhaps, be made regarding any culture.

Conclusion

This discussion attempts to describe culture using the models of prototype, matrix and continuity. As with any description of culture, this paper should be taken in the context of the cultural positions of the writer - which of us is completely free of cultural stereotypes? However, the suggested models can encourage further research and increase cultural awareness in language teachers and learners and opportunities for understanding, tolerance and empathy rather than confrontation between different cultural types.

Further reading

Dellinger, S. 1996. Communicating Beyond Differences. Introducing the Psycho-Geometric System. Tampa: Jade Ink

Lewis, R. 1998. When Cultures Collide: managing successfully across cultures. London: Nicholas Brealey Publishing.

Millrood, R. 2002. Theory of Language Teaching. Volume 1. Applied Linguistics. Tambov: University of Tambov Press.

Shikhirev, P. 2000. Introduction to Russian Business Culture. Moscow: Novosti.

Tomalin, S. and Stempleski, S. 1993. Cultural Awareness. Oxford: Oxford University Press