Models of cross-cultural analysis - Archeologists focus on material and tangible culture whereas cultural anthropologists focus on symbolic culture. Sociobiologists try to understand the many aspects of culture in the light of the concept of the meme, first introduced by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene. Dawkins suggests the existence of units of culture - memes - roughly analogous to genes in evolutionary biology. Although this view has gained some popular currency, anthropologists generally reject it.
- Culture is the section in the newspaper where they review theatre, dance performances or write book reviews etc.
- Culture is what parents teach their kids and grandparents teach their grandchildren.
- "You don't have any culture," is what people say to you when you put your feet on the table at lunchtime or spit in front of guests.
- "They just have a different culture," people say of those whose behaviour they don't understand but must tolerate.
What is cross-cultural communication?
Cross-cultural communication or intercultural communication looks at how people from differing cultural backgrounds try to communicate. It also tries to produce some guidelines to help people from different cultures to better communicate with each other. The main theories for cross-cultural communication are based on value differences among cultures. Edward T. Hall, Geert Hofstede, Fons Trompenaars, Shalom Schwartz and Clifford Geertz have been major contributors in this field.
It is a daunting challenge to convey research findings and discuss cross-cultural issues in diverse contexts such as corporate culture, workplace culture and intercultural competency as laypeople tend to use the word 'culture' to refer to something refined, artistic and exclusive to a certain group of "artists" who function in a separate sphere than ordinary people in the workplace. Some typical allusions to culture:
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