MCTI

COMMUNICATI
ON
CULTURE AND
SOCIETY
“Culture is communication and
communication is culture”. (Edward T Hall,
1959)
COMMUNICATION: MCTI
The word communication was originated from the Latin
word ‘ communis’ which means ‘common’. Communion,
community, communism, commonality, communalism
etc. are some related words having the same linguistic
roots. Similarly, newer and newer terms are being
coined as the concept of communication assumes
importance day by day. Communication technology,
communication media, communication age,
communication management are just a few. As the very
term indicates, the ultimate aim of the communication
process is to create commonness between
communicator and receiver of the message. Through
communication, both communicator and receiver enter
into a mental agreement. Thus, they achieve their goal,
which may be expression of an emotion or transmission
of an idea. Transaction, interchange, in teraction,
dialogue, discussion, sharing, contact are some of the
concepts that come up in our minds when we refer to
‘communication’.Transaction, interchange, in teraction,
dialogue, discussion, sharing, contact are some of the
DEFINITIONS:

 Communication is the exchange of meanings between individuals through a common system of
symbols. (I.A.Richards).
 The transmission of information, ideas attitudes, or emotion from one person or group to another or
others primarily through symbols. (Theodorson and Theordorson)
 Communication is the transmission and interchange of facts, ideas, feeling or course of action. (Leland
Brown)
 Communication is a social interaction through messages (Grabner, 1967)
 The interchange of thoughts or information to bring about mutual understanding and confidence or
good human relation. (American society of Training Directors).
 ‘One mind affecting another’ (Claude Shannon)
 ‘The mechanism through which human relations exist and develop’ (Wilbur Schramm)
 ‘Transmission of stimuli’ (Colin Cherry)
 Communication is the sum of all the things one person does when he wants to create understanding in
the mind of another. It is a bridge of meaning. It involves a systematic and continuous process of
telling, listening and understanding. (Louis Allen)
 Communication refers to the act by one or more persons, of sending and receiving messages distorted
by noise, within a context, with some effect and with some opportunity for feedback (Joseph A.Devito)

The definitions given here indicate the following facts:

• A world without communication is unthinkable

• Communication is a complex process
• Communication is essential for human relationships
and progress
• Human mind, body and physical conditions are
vital components of communication
• A common symbol system is essential for communication

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 The Importance of Communication:

The basic foundation of human society is communication and it takes place

at different levels – within oneself, between individuals, between individual
and a group, between groups, between countries and so on. Similarly, we
use verbal and non - verbal forms of messages for communication.
Communication is essential for development of the society. We attain
cultural, social and economic prosperity by sharing out experiences. How
can we share experience without better communication? Personal
enjoyment is communication based. Just think of a person kept in isolation
without any chance for communication with his friends and relatives. It is
really a punishment, a prison life. Communication helps us interact with
our surroundings, thus create positive relationships, share love, build up
friendship and depend each other to enjoy life. Can you imagine a world
without media? Not at all. The basic mission of mass media is to create ties
in human society sharing news. In modern world, media have some more
roles to play . Media defines our political system, form public opinion,
support public demands and set agenda of our social life. In short, no social
activity, be it marketing, business, education, politics, media profession..., is
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possible without communication.
 Functions of Communication:

Considering the essentiality of communication, scholars enumerated the following functions of it.

a) Education: To transfer knowledge for the progress of the society (Example: class room communication)

b) Information: To find and explain some thing new (Example: News media)

c) Cultural promotion : To help foster social values and pass them from generation to generation (Example:
Festivals, parties, celebrations)

d) Social contact: To help make enjoyable companionship (Example: Friendship, clubs, organizations etc.)

e) Integration: To create harmonious relationships among various social groups (Example: Political parties,
conferences, meetings etc.)

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 Functions of Communication:

Considering the essentiality of communication, scholars enumerated the following functions of it.

f) Stimulation: To create interest and develop positive thinking /behavior(Example: Advertisements)

g) Counseling: To alleviate anxiety and lead to better ways (Example: guidance, consolation etc.)

h) Expression of emotions (Example: crying, smiling etc)

i) Entertainment: To help pass time and enjoy life (Example: drama, song etc.)

j) Control function: To get someone to behave in an appropriate way (Example: management, censorship etc)

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 Elements of Communication
Let us analyse Joseph A Devito’s definition that ‘communication refers to the act by one or more persons,
of sending and receiving messages distorted by noise, within a context, with some effect and with some
opportunity for feedback’ to find out the essential elements of communication.

According to his definition, communication has the following elements:

a) Sender
b) Message
c) Channel
d) Receiver
e) Noise
f) Feedback
g) Context
h) Effect

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 The word 'culture' comes from the Latin cultus, which means
CULTURE: 'care' or cultura which means ‘growing, cultivation’, and from
the French colere which means 'to till' as in 'till the ground'.
In late Middle English the sense was ‘cultivation of the soil’
and from this (early 16th century) arose ‘cultivation (of the
mind, faculties, or manners).
Sir Edward Tylor’s definition in 1871 (first use of this
term):“that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief,
art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits
acquired by man as a member of society”
Culture involves... what people think, what they do, and the
material products they produce.... It is shared... it is a social
phenomenon.... Culture is learned, not biologically inherited,
and involves arbitrarily assigned, symbolic meanings.... The
human ability to assign arbitrary meaning to any object,
behavior or condition makes people enormously creative and
readily distinguishes culture from animal behavior. People
can teach animals to respond to cultural symbols, but animals
do not create their own symbols.
-- John H. Bodley (1943-), U.S. anthropologist

A society’s culture consists of whatever it is one has to know

 CULTURE:
Culture consists of the beliefs, behaviors, objects, and other characteristics
common to the members of a particular group or society. Through culture, people
and groups define themselves, conform to society's shared values, and contribute
to society. Thus, culture includes many societal aspects: language, customs, values,
norms, mores, rules, tools, technologies, products, organizations, and institutions.
Culture is, basically, a set of shared values that a group of people holds. Such
values affect how you think and act and, more importantly, the kind of criteria by
which you judge others. Cultural meanings render some behaviors as normal and
right and others strange or wrong. Every culture has rules that its members take
for granted. Few of us are aware of our own biases because cultural imprinting is
begun at a very early age. And while some of culture’s knowledge, rules, beliefs,
values, phobias and anxieties are taught explicitly, most is absorbed
subconsciously.
Of course, we are all individuals, and no two people belonging to the same
culture are guaranteed to respond in exactly the same way. However,
generalizations are valid to the extent that they provide clues on what you will
most likely encounter – and how those differences impact communication.
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 CULTURE:

• Culture is Shared
To be a member of society means sharing a culture. In this sense, a society is more
than the sum of its members. Membership in a society necessarily involves
sharing a way of life, engaging in similar patterns of thought and behavior, such
as celebrating Naba-Borsho or spending years in school in similar way

• Culture is Learned
Human beings are not born with cultural patterns encoded into their DNA. No one is
born Christian or Muslim, Bangla/English-speaker, and facebook user. All such
patterns of behavior have to be learned, and the more complex the society one lives
in, the longer it takes to learn the necessary skills needed for competent social
participation. Accordingly, most members of postindustrial societies spend long
years in the educational system whereas member of the few remaining hunting and
gathering societies have no need for formal education and rely rather on informal
training. But however such learning takes place, informally with a relative or in a
formal setting such as a school, it is vital for individuals to be able to become true
members of society.
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 CULTURE:
· Culture is Nonmaterial
Nonmaterial culture comprises the software of society: specific shared ways of thinking shared by
members of society such as language, beliefs systems, customs, myths, music, scientific knowledge or
political ideas. And as mentioned above, culture also involves shared ways of behaving, such as participating
in religious rituals or organized sports. These shared modes of thinking and behaving all constitute non-
material or intangible culture.

· Culture is Material
Material culture includes all the hardware of social life, that is, all the material and physical products of
society: buildings, computers, IPods, bows and arrows, DVDs and DVD players and all forms of technology.
Technology consists in the material application of knowledge, scientific or other.

· Culture as a Tool box

Because humans are not born with pre-determined solutions to most of life’s problems, they use culture as a
toolbox that provides answers that are learned and shared. Culture provides material and non-material
solutions to different problems: how to find food, how to deal with social relationships, heal sickness and
express emotions. In other words, culture provides ready-made but variable formulas on how to be a human
being in a given society. And because the problems faced by human societies change over time, culture is
dynamic as new solutions are needed.
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 The term "society" came from the Latin word societas,
SOCIETY: which in turn was derived from the noun socius ("
comrade, friend, ally"; adjectival form socialis) used to
describe a bond or interaction between parties that are
friendly, or at least civil. According to sociologists, a
society is a group of people with common territory,
interaction, and culture.
Territory: Most countries have formal boundaries
and territory that the world recognizes as theirs.
However, a society’s boundaries don’t have to be
geopolitical borders. Sometimes a society can be
formed across borders, like Tamils in India and
SriLanka.
Interaction: Members of a society must come in
contact with one another. If a group of people within
a country has no regular contact with another group,
those groups cannot be considered part of the same
society. Geographic distance and language barriers
can separate societies within a country.
Culture: People of the same society share aspects of
their culture, such as language or beliefs.
SOCIETY:

Many define society as the people who interact in such a

way as to share a common culture. The cultural bond may
be ethnic or racial, based on gender, or due to shared
beliefs, values, and activities. The term society can also
have a geographic meaning and refer to people who share
a common culture in a particular location. For example,
people living in arctic climates developed different cultures
from those living in desert cultures. In time, a large variety
of human cultures arose around the world.

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SOCIETY:
There has been much debate over what makes a society successful.
Philosopher Thomas Hobbes believed that without society, human life
would be "nasty, brutish and short." Man's natural state, he argued, would
be to preserve only oneself -- a man without society would steal another
family's food, seduce other men's wives and kill anyone who got in his way.
Of course, the same man would be in constant danger of those things
happening to him, his wife and his children. What people needed,
therefore, was a society, which would provide protection by subjecting
everyone to a set of rules. But the number of governments, tribes and
communities today demonstrate that there's no single way to form or
govern a society. Philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau dubbed the set of
rules that a society lives by "the social contract." In other words, people
must play a part in agreeing to certain laws and in choosing a given
leader. If people lose that right, then society won't function as well.

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SOCIETY:

Society is made up of individuals who have agreed to work

together for mutual benefit. It can be a very broad term,
as we can make generalizations about what the whole of
Western society believes, or it can be a very narrow
definition, describing only a small group of people within a
given community. But no matter the size, and no
matter the link that binds a society together, be it
religious, geographic, professional or economic, society
is shaped by the relationships between individuals.

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SOCIETY:
Inter-relationship
Culture and society, though similar, are different things. Cultures are
defined by these learned behaviours and schemas. Societies at their
simplest can be defined as groups of interacting individuals. However, it is
through this interaction that individuals develop and communicate the
markers of culture, and so in human societies, it is very difficult to
separate out ‘culture’ and ‘society.’
And thus we come back to the role of communication within culture.
The idea of culture as something that is shared means that it is vital to
understand culture and communication in relation to one another. The
relationship between culture and communication, in all its forms, is tightly
interwoven and interlinked. We can see that communication enables the
spread and reiteration of culture. Both communications and the media
propagate the values and schemas of a culture

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SOCIETY:
Inter-relationship
Culture and society, though similar, are different things. Cultures are
defined by these learned behaviours and schemas. Societies at their
simplest can be defined as groups of interacting individuals. However, it is
through this interaction that individuals develop and communicate the
markers of culture, and so in human societies, it is very difficult to
separate out ‘culture’ and ‘society.’
And thus we come back to the role of communication within culture.
The idea of culture as something that is shared means that it is vital to
understand culture and communication in relation to one another. The
relationship between culture and communication, in all its forms, is tightly
interwoven and interlinked. We can see that communication enables the
spread and reiteration of culture. Both communications and the media
propagate the values and schemas of a culture through the repeated
interaction and exchange enabled by the communications process.
Culture and society are intricately related. A culture consists of the
“objects” of a society, whereas a society consists of the people who share a
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common culture.
MCTI
THANK YOU