Appunti Inglese monografico 3

Monografico lingua inglese III

Lezione 1

Don't know the most of the time, the relationship between us and our interlocutor exists through values that understate the conversation. In fact, we need to know the issues related to the culture of our interlocutor. Culture is made up of different dimensions, values, and issues, so it’s important to understand other cultures and the reasons for which communication with people from different cultures fails.

We have to consider cultures in different aspects: Italian culture or social roles/aspects. We have to be aware and proud of our cultural group. These cultural differences are important, we have to analyze them and face them. There are differences not only between cultures but also between individuals, so even if we are in the same cultural group. Individuals and individualities are essential, and also knowing a language is essential. Diversity can create problems, but it’s a huge resource.

Song "Same Love" by Macklemore: language can be offensive, can flutter, can be suitable for the conversation. When you listen to a song, you are a passive user of the communication. "I thought that I was gay because I could draw" → it’s a stereotype. Stereotypes are inevitable and most of the time they have a part of truth. If we are not able to recognize our flaws, they immediately come to our face.

When analyzing a stereotype, what changes the reality is the kind of perception we have about the reality around us. Stereotypes hurt our feelings. Most of the time stereotypes have a kernel of truth (even if we don’t have to be depicted as in a stereotype). Sometimes they can be helpful to help us understand some characteristics of our culture. Start with the observance of yourself, then observe the others and ask why: understand what the important things for that culture are to be kept in mind to avoid working intercultural mistakes in communication (religion, gender, color).

Italian stereotypes: mafia, gesticolare, interrompiamo, rumorosi, an Italian is recognizable (also just watching them), dettare e rompere le regole. Faggots = omosessuale in modo offensivo. Pre-k = American version of pre-kindergarten.

Voiceless: there are voiceless people who can’t speak out their own mind. Words are dangerous and can hurt people, we have to be respectful between cultures, we are living in a society in which men and women are exactly the same. 100 years ago it wasn’t the same thing, this is not applicable to the whole world (sensibility + awareness). Perfect English doesn’t exist anymore, it will be completely different. It’s important to be intelligible (understand what is said and being understood; use the language passively and what’s actively). Communicate in a respectful way, you know the rules if you understand behind.

3500 in the USA is thirty-five hundred, while in the UK it is three thousand and five hundred.

Intercultural Communication: why?

Intercultural = between and among different cultures. We take for granted we have them, but we don’t have to.

• Human rights → Don’t press pause on progress: because we are the lucky ones, not everyone has access to education, we have the duty to preserve it.
• Interaction, it means people communicating orally and talking.
• Communication can be active or passive, we have to take into account that we have to be active listeners, otherwise communication won’t work. If we are silent, also our body language and expressions will tell something of our feelings (if we are disgusted, annoyed, etc.).
• Globalisation Interconnectedness between globalization and English: Englishization (they are part of the same process) has spread the contact between different cultures and nations.
• English medium in order to communicate.
• Media how much we are influenced and informed by the media, access to media.
• Business you have to focus on it/your activity and how it will be developed depends on how good you are at communicating in English and in general, this is fundamental.
• Internationalization it’s very important it has spread the contacts between people, and a frame of the things above; an international frame. English is a medium.

Definition of Globalization

• The tendency of business, technologies, or philosophies to spread throughout the world, or the process of making this happen.
• The creation of international strategies by organizations for overseas expansion and operation on a worldwide level.
• Creation: If we create things that haven't been invented before, we are active participants.
• Strategies: ways that you choose to behave in a particular setting that will end in a worldwide setting, we need to be prepared for this.
• Globalization is the process of increasing interconnectedness between societies and people.

Globalization involves:

• English: it has to do with globalization and vice versa, and this is a process that unites societies because it puts them in communication. We take globalization for granted, but we don’t have to.
• Internet: Media through which we express it.
• Popular culture.

English + internet (we can’t do without it) + popular culture: tools that are helpful in a globalized world, we need instruments to understand things/reality. 40 years ago these concepts didn’t make sense, English wasn’t studied in schools. Do we have the instruments to analyze what’s happening?

Ex. Husband and "Ferrari song" → Is this the English culture you are aiming at? Is this what you think when you are preparing for "the real world"? English doesn’t belong to the native, "it doesn’t belong to Her Majesty anymore", in fact, the aim of education is a global, sensitive, communicative English; kind of English that knows that there are things like "Ferrari" BUT also different things.

The aim of education is a kind of language that doesn’t necessarily need to be perfect, that may be conceived/understood/analyzed as a LF (lingua franca) or as a language that means to be useful for international communication. In fact, we must use English as an instrument/tool that is useful for international communication to develop it.

Lezione 2

The hinterland of English is communication in general between the interlocutors who share the same background of knowledge. The language we need has to be free from stereotypes and misunderstandings: we are not talking C1 English, we are talking about global, sensitive English which promotes intercultural competence and transcends elites.

This English is a global, sensitive English, (Siedlhofer, 2003) → promotes intercultural competence and transcends elites, putting people at the same level.

Why do people want to learn English?

• For personal interests
• To be able to surf the web
• To work
• Leisure activities
• Study once you get that global and sensitive English you’ll reach
• For life-long learning, in fact, that life-long learning.

Identity = being here, you are really willing to learn other languages, but being Italian is a precious characteristic that has to be preserved (has to be respected, understood), nonetheless aspiring at becoming intercultural citizens who may be using an international language (English) but who will be in contact with more and more cultures every day.

Therefore English Language Learning/Teaching must have a Global Issue Dimension: this will necessarily mean respect for diversity (linguistic pluralism, non-discriminatory education, sustaining economic development...). It is important to preserve and give value to Cultural diversity. Culture is the whole view of the universe from which people assess the meaning of life and their appropriate response to it.

Culture is:

• Something that has been transmitted: we weren’t born with it, it doesn’t have to do with our genes, our parents have thought it, etc.
• Something important
• Something unconscious: unaware of what he/she was transmitting
• Familiar (something that it’s shared)
• Something that has to do with our traditions (culinarie,…)

Cultural misunderstanding can be destructive to a company; mistakes can be unconscious and unintentional. The failure of companies that go international usually occurs because someone didn’t understand the WHY of culture:

• Why people think as they do
• Why people value what they do

Once understood WHY people and companies think as they do, then it will be easy to comprehend, and even to predict as those same people and companies will act… often avoiding heavy business losses and failures.

Onstage and Backstage elements of Culture

Culture can be visible or invisible.

Onstage behaviour

What people who are in contact with one another find easiest to observe and read to (Beamer L.). It involves identifiable actions such as shaking hands, bowing (inchino), kissing upon meeting, holidays and traditional ways of celebrating them, food and dances, costume and music, and many more. Onstage behaviour is often what people refer to when asked to describe another culture, or what people simply see. So, it’s something you see and you evaluate at first sight, these aspects are the most dangerous in cultural relationships because you don’t think about what’s behind.

Examples:

• Shaking hands
• Bowing
• Kissing upon meeting
• Holidays and traditional ways of celebrating them
• Food and dances
• Costume and music…and many more.

Lezione 3

Defining the word 'culture'

'Culture' can mean different things to different people.

• The sum total of all the beliefs, values, and norms shared by a group of people.
• The way you have been conditioned in a society to think, feel, interpret, and react.
• The collective programming of the human mind.
• A large pool of experience composed of learned programmes for action and passed on from generation to generation.
• All you need to know and believe in order to be accepted in a society.

Backstage culture

Something that is not easily recognizable and identifiable and is absolutely not visible to someone who is unfamiliar with it. Backstage behaviour reasons are usually unconscious. The way we react to some action made by other people, most of the time is unconscious. But although backstage culture can seem very difficult to grasp, it definitely holds the reasons why things happen. Individuals' specific cultural backgrounds give rise to the backstage reasons why people believe, act, and look at things the way they do.

The culture iceberg (p.7)

When you observe people from a certain culture, some characteristics, such as dress and the way people greet each other, are easy to see. Others are not easy to see. Culture is something compared to an iceberg, some of which is visible, but much of which is difficult to see, or invisible.

• Level A things which you can recognize quite easily: directness of speech in business, emotion show in public, family life, greetings, organization of companies, press and other media, punctuality in business.
• Level B things which take something to recognize: corruption, democracy, gender (roles of males and females), treatment of outsiders/foreigners.
• Level C things which you recognize only when you are very familiar with a cultural: humor, personal friendship, value, and beliefs.

Culture has been aptly compared to an iceberg. Just as an iceberg has a visible section above the waterline, and a larger, invisible section below the waterline, so culture has some aspects that are observable and others that can only be suspected, imagined, or intuited. Also like an iceberg, that part of culture that is visible (observable behaviour) is only a small part of a much bigger whole.

Lezione 4

Backstage culture underlies what others see. Backstage behaving reasons are usually unconscious. Actors are not aware that they are behaving in a culturally driven way. This is because this behaviour is culturally driven. It is not the intention, it is true, but the way we behave is driven by culture. It is important to analyze the way we act and react.

Usually, people think that their own backstage culture is simply normal, something normal means that it is shared by a community. Normal doesn't mean anything - what is normal for us can be abnormal for others.

Backstage culture aspects in business

• The ways people make decisions: they do so on the basis of different factors and these factors are usually invisible. It is culturally driven by the backstage elements.
• Respond to deadlines: in Italy, for example, the deadline is usually postponed, in other cultures this is seen as unacceptable. We have universalists: the ones that follow rules no matter what, and particularists: the ones that think that there are rules but there are also different circumstances (ex. Majority of Italians).
• Accomplish tasks: there are cultures in which if you don’t accomplish tasks, they could fire you. This is not the case in cultures in which community and team are really important, in fact, it is relevant to know the different circumstances (ex. If you don’t do your task because your mother had died, in one case they could fire you, but in other they could empathize with you).
• Rank events by importance. Some cultures do things in chronological order: do one thing at a time → they see time as a straight line. Italy is a circular culture that does a lot of things at the same time (do all together). In this case, there is no particular importance that is given to a specific task. Sometimes it is important to know what other cultures think is important. If you don’t understand what your interlocutors need, because sometimes the amount of importance given to a certain thing is different in each culture.

The whys of culture

If you can explain backstage behaviours then, you will understand the WHY of culture, in particular: the 'why' is the essence of a people’s culture. Everything you know about a culture brings you back to answer the question of why:

• Why people believe what they do?
• Why people act as they do?
• Why people give importance to things as they do? It is the most backstage behaviour you can deal with, together with the first one.

If you understand why people value some things, you may well make good guesses about why they value other things. If you understand why they behave a certain way, you can interpret other behaviours with some accuracy.