Appunti Inglese monografico 3

Lezione 4

Backstage culture underlies (sta alla base di) what other see..

- Backstage behaving reasons are usually unconscious. → don’t know

- Actors are not aware that they are behaving in a culturally driven way we

is culturally driven. “It is not

the reasons we do what we do, this is because this behaviour

intention”

my = it is true, but the way we behave is driven by culture. It is important to

analyse 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 anormal for others.

Backstage culture aspects in business, among many others, include:

- 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 one that follows rules no

matter what, and particularists: the ones that think that there are rules but there are also

different circumstances (ex. Majority of Italians).

are cultures in which if you don’t accomplish

- accomplish tasks: there tasks, they could

fire you. This is not the case in culture in which community, and team are really important,

it is relevant to know the different circumstances (ex. If you don’t do your task

in fact

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 orders: do one thing

time→ they see the time as a straight line. Italy is a circular culture that does a lot of

at the

thighs 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 7

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/are able to explain backstage behaviours then, you will understand the WHY of

‘why’ is the essence of a people’s culture.

culture, in particular: the

Everything you know about a culture brings you back to answer to 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 behavior

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.

Once you’ve understood what people think is important and how people behave, you can

do business with them!

7 dimensions of culture

Trompenaar’s 7 fundamental dimensions of culture

There are Fons that will help you

understand how we all behave:

- Universalism vs. particularism

Universalism: universal rules are something that can’t be changed. If there are rules, these

rules need to be followed without any exceptions.

Particularism: there are rules but there are also exceptions.

- Individualism vs. communitarianism

Individualism: what matters most is the fulfilment of personal interests, the individual

person works for himself/herself.

Communitarianism: in this case the individual works for the team.

- Neutral vs. emotional you are neutral, you don’t want other

Neutral: you do not want to show your emotions,

people to know what your emotions are. Your neutrality says to your interlocutor that you

do not want to show emotions. These aspects should be respected by others. 8

Emotional: emotional people that express their own emotion openly. Example: the fact that

Italian people use their body language a lot.

- Specific vs. diffuse

Specific: tend to divide the private life to the working one because each part of their life is

like the slices of a pie: they are many but have to be divided.

Diffuse: they tend to mix these slices. If I am a student, I am also a woman: not only one of

them at a certain time.

- Achievement vs. ascription (attribuzione)

Achievement: you reach something, if you want to achieve something you have to work

harder. What you get is simply the result of what you achieved. If you want to achieve

something you have to work harder. What you get is simply the result of what you

achieved. If you want something go and get it. The status is given based on what is

achieved.

Ascription: is to give status, not on the basis of what you do, but on the basis of who you

parents do for living, etc….). We talk about social

are (in which school you went, what your

status.

- Attitudes to time

Monochronic: cultures where the time is a straight time, divided in different steps that

needs to be done separately.

Polychronic: the time is a circular process; all different things happen at the same time.

- Attitudes to the environment

Are we in control of the environment or it is the opposite?

Inner (internal) oriented: we governed the world.

Outer (external) oriented: the world is controlling us.

Before trying to understand how the previous classification works, we absolutely need to

‘culture’

try to understand what means.

Culture involves learned and shared behaviours, norms, values and material objects.

Lezione 5

Culture is largely undiscussed by the members who share it.

Culture is those deep, common, unstated experiences:

- which members of a given culture share,

- which they communicate without knowing, 9

- which form the backdrop against which all other events are judged.

The more you experience something the more you get used to it and you get the tendency

to take for granted that habit: if something it’s recognizable it’s been experienced.

Backdrop/nucleo: the way you value and evaluate the reality around you.

Five characteristics of culture (pdf on blended)

1. Culture is acquired, it means that something unconscious happens, you do it

spontaneously, without an effort.

2. Culture is shared by groups of people: share, dispute, reinforce. Condividiamo,

cerchiamo di comprenderne i meccanismi, e rinforziamo questo “shared system”. We are

and unconscious of what I’m representing for the other people. Culture

often unaware

needs to be explained, this is the same for business, that is even more difficult.

Much of a person’s culture is unconscious: when we are in a situation in which we are in

3. that are different from us, who have a different culture, sometimes we don’t

front of people

understand that reality. Culture is apparently normal, natural for us and easy to cope with,

but it’s not like this for people who don’t know our same reality and share our culture, and

the more you experience that culture, the more it can seem difficult for you, it depends on

how strong your personality is as well.

4. Culture is dynamic, it constantly changes and cannot be created artificially.

person’s identity,

5. Culture is part of a we need to be proud of our culture, to be Italian in

this case and European citizen.

1.6 Universal, cultural or personal (p.14 dispensa)

Culture is only one category or dimension of human behaviour, and it is therefore

important to see it in relation to the other two dimensions: the universal and the personal.

The three can be distinguished as follows:

1- Universal refers to ways in which all people in all groups are the same

2- Cultural refers to what a particular group of people have in common with each other

and how they are different from every other group

3- Personal describes the ways in which each one of us is different from everyone else,

including those in our group. 10

These are two important points to remember:

- Because of universal behavior, not everything about people in a new culture is going to

be different; some of what you already know about human behaviour is going to apply in

your host country.

- Because of personal behaviour, not everything you learn about your host culture is going

to apply in equal measure, or at all, to every individual in that culture.

Ex.p.15

1. personal 9. cultural

2. universal 10. cultural

3. cultural 11. personal

4. today is personal, but before it was 12. it should be universal, but

5. cultural it’s personal

6. personal 13. universal

7. personal 14. cultural

8. it should be universal, but it is cultural 15. personal

and sometimes is personal

1.9 In the mind of the beholder

Reality can be perceived in different ways.

Beholder: who does the action.

Our eyes are watching something that is real, and reality can be perceived in different

ways. Ex. I can be very embarrassed, but someone can even not notice it.

Reality is filtered by the eyes of culture.

In fact, any behaviour observed across the cultural divide has to be interpreted in two

ways:

- the meaning given to it by the person who does the action

- the meaning given to it by the person who observes the action.

Only when the two meanings are the same do we have successful communication,

successful in the sense that the meaning that was intended by the doer is the one that was

understood by the observer. 11

Lezione 6 about life’s concerns

Culture is the coherent, learned, shared view of a group of people

that ranks what is important, furnishes attitudes about what things are appropriate and

dictates behaviour.

Being exposed to a culture makes you familiar with that culture.

each culture, past or present, is coherent (‘logica’) and complete

Coherent: within itself: it

is an entire view of the universe.

Different groups of human beings have developed different visions: this is both a cause for

wonder and a cause for misunderstanding:

those who make the effort to understand another culture gain knowledge about how to

in that culture and so, as Hendrick Serrie says, ‘relatively

behave few people understand

that mastering appropriate behaviour takes precedence over mastering the language’.

is not something we are born with; rather it is ‘learned’.

Learned: Culture Much of what is

learned about one’s own culture is stored in mental categories that are recalled only when

they are challenged by something different.

If culture is learned, then is learnable.

If you want to understand other cultures, you can and you can also get inside them and act

according to what is expected in them.

Shared: not all the time we share the same view, but generally people who belong to the

same cultural group share culture. If people have different visions of culture, there may be

misunderstandings. You can’t say you d