SOCIOCULTURAL

FACTORS
C

MS. JONNAH BEB FAJARDO ANGAY

Another aspect of the
communicative process: the
intersection of cultures and
affect
How do learners overcome
the personal and
transactional barriers
presented by two cultures in
contact?
What is the relationship of
culture learning to second
language learning?
WHAT IS CULTURE?
CULTURE
•“way of life”
•It is the context within which we exist, think, feel,
and relate to others.
•It is the “glue” that binds a group of people
together.
CULTURE
•“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is
a piece of continent…” – John Donne

•It is our “blueprint” that guides the behavior of

people in a community… - Larson & Smalley
CULTURE
•A dynamic set of rules, explicit an implicit,
established by groups in order to ensure their
survival, involving attitudes, values, beliefs, norms,
and behavior, shared by a group but harbored
differently by each specific unit within the group,
communicated across generations, relatively
stable but with the potential to change across
time. – Matsumoto (2000)
Condon (1973) said, Culture
establishes for each person a
context of cognitive and
affective behavior, a template
for personal and social existence.
But we tend to perceive reality
within the context of our own
culture, a reality we have
“created”, an therefore not
necessarily a reality that is
empirically defined.
The meaningful universe in which
each human being exist is not
universal reality, but ‘a category of
reality’ consisting of selectively
organized features considered
significant by the society in which he
lives.
PERCEPTION
It is apparent that culture, as an
ingrained set of behaviors an
modes of perception, becomes
highly important in the learning
of a second language.
What do you think is the
effect of CULTURE in
learning a second
language?
A language is part of a
culture.

A culture is part of a
language.
The acquisition of a second
language is also the
acquisition of a second
culture.
Problems:
•Cultural stereotypes
•Attitudes
•Learning a second culture
•Sociopolitical considerations
•Relationships among language, thought, and
culture
CULTURAL STEREOTYPES
STEREOTYPES OR GENERALIZATIONS?
• Mark Twain
• Linguistic and cultural stereotypes in the biased of our
own culture-bound worldview
• “strange”
• Open-minded attitude toward cross-cultural differences
What does this imply…?
• Both learners and teachers of second language need
to understand cultural differences, to recognize openly
that people are not all the same beneath the skin.
• Language classrooms can celebrate cultural
differences, and even engage in critical analysis of the
use and origin of stereotypes.
What does this imply…?
• As teachers and researchers we must strive to
understand the identities of our learners in terms of their
sociocultural background.
• When we are sensitively attuned to perceiving cultural
identity, we can then perhaps turn perception into
appreciation.
ATTITUDES
“The Chinese language is monosyllabic and uninflectional. With a
language so incapable of variation, a literature cannot be produced
which possesses the qualities we look for and admire in literary works.
Elegance, variety, beauty of imagery – these must all be lacking. A
monotonous and wearisome language give rise to a forced and formal
literature lacking in originality and interesting in its subject matter only.
Moreover, a conservative people… profoundly reverencing all that is old
and formal, and hating innovation, must leave the impress of its own
character upon its literature”

- an excerpt from Chinese Literature, New Standard

Encyclopedia (1940)
BIASED ATTITUDE
• Biased attitudes are based on insufficient knowledge,
stereotyping, and extreme ethnocentric thinking

• Attitudes, like all aspect of development of cognition and affect

in human beings, develop early in childhood and are the result of
parents’ and peers’ attitudes, contact with people who are
“different”, and of interacting affective factors in human
experience
ATTITUDES
• Gardener and Lambert (1972) – effects of attitudes on language
learning
• A desire to understand them and to empathize with them will
lead to an integrative orientation to learn the language, which in
the study was found to be a significant correlate of success
What does this imply…?
• Teachers should be aware that everyone has both positive and
negative attitudes.

• The negative attitudes can be changed, often by exposure to

reality.

• Teachers can aid in dispelling what are often myths about other
cultures, and replace those myths with an accurate
understanding of the other culture as one that is different from
one’s own, yet to be respected and valued.
SECOND CULTURE
LEARNING
Second Culture Acquisition
• Learning a second language implies some degree of learning a
second culture, it is important to understand what we mean by
process of culture learning.

• “process that is, a way of perceiving, interpreting, feeling, being

in the world…” and relating to where one is and who one meets”

• Culture learning is a process of creating shared meaning

between cultural perspectives.
Second Culture Acquisition
• It is experiential, a process that comes over years of language learning,
and penetrated deeply into one’s patterns of thinking, feeling, and
acting.

• The creation of a new identity is at the heart of culture learning, or what

some might call acculturation.

• The process of acculturation can be more acute when language is

brought into the picture. To be sure, culture is a deeply ingrained part
of every fiber of our being, but language – the means of
communication among members of a culture – is the most visible and
available expression of that culture.
Stages of Culture Acquisition
1. Stage 1 is a period of excitement and euphoria over the newness of the
surroundings.
2. Stage 2 – culture shock – emerges as the individuals feel the intrusion of more
and more cultural differences into their own image of self and security.
3. Stage 3 is one of gradual, and at first tentative and vacillating recovery.
“Cultural stress.”
4. Stage 4 represents near or full recovery, either assimilation or adaptation,
acceptance of the new culture an self-confidence in the “new” person that
has develop in this culture.
Social Distance
• The concept of social distance emerged as an affective
construct to give explanatory power to the place of culture
learning in second language learning.
• Social distance refers to the cognitive and affective proximity of
two cultures that come into contact within an individual.
Social Distance Parameters
1. Dominance
2. Integration
3. Cohesiveness
4. Congruence
5. Permanence
Schumann’s hypothesis was that the
greater the social distance between
two cultures, the greater the difficulty
the learner will have in learning the
second language, and
Conversely, the smaller the social
distance (the grater the social
solidarity between cultures), the
better will be the language learning
situation.
TEACHING INTERCULTURAL
COMPETENCE
• Learners can feel alienation in the process of learning a
second language
• In teaching an “alien” language, we nee to be sensitive
to the fragility of students by using techniques that
promote cultural understanding.
SOCIOPOLITICAL
CONSIDERATIONS
LANGUAGE POLICY and the
“ENGLISH ONLY” Debate
LANGUAGE, THOUGHT, and
CULTURE
• Universal properties bind us all together in one world.
• The act of learning to think in another language may
require a considerable degree of mastery of that
language, but a second language learner does not
have to learn to think, in general, all over again.
LANGUAGE, THOUGHT,
and CULTURE
•As in every other human learning experience,
the second language learner can make positive
use of prior experiences to facilitate the process
of learning by retaining that which is valid and
valuable for second culture learning and second
language learning.
CULTURE IN THE LANGUAGE
CLASSROOM
1. Does the activity value the customs and belief systems that are
presumed to be a part of the culture(s) of the students?

2. Does the activity refrain from any demeaning stereotypes of any

culture, including the culture(s) of your students?
CULTURE IN THE LANGUAGE
CLASSROOM
1. Does the activity refrain from any possible devaluing of the
students' native language(s)?

2. Does the activity recognize varying degrees of willingness of

students to participate openly due to factors of
collectivism/individualism and power distance?
CULTURE IN THE LANGUAGE
CLASSROOM
1. If the activity requires students to go beyond the comfort zone of
uncertainty avoidance in their culture(s), does it do so em
pathetically and tactfully?

2. Is the activity sensitive to the perceived roles of males and females

in the culture(s) of your students?
CULTURE IN THE LANGUAGE
CLASSROOM
1. Does the activity sufficiently connect specific language features
(e.g., grammatical categories, lexicon, discourse) to cultural ways
of thinking, feeling, and acting?
2. Does the activity in some way draw on the potentially rich
background experiences of the students, including their own
experiences in other cultures?
Thank you and God Bless!