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Cultural Patterns and Communication

Cultural patterns are shared beliefs, values, norms, and social practices that guide thought and behavior within a culture. They are learned from a young age and reinforced over time. Beliefs are ideas people assume to be true. Values determine what is good/bad. Norms are expectations for appropriate behavior. Social practices are predictable behavior patterns. Cultural patterns create a lens for interpreting communication and influence judgments of intercultural competence. Understanding cultural patterns is important for effective intercultural communication.

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Syahid Usman
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20 views9 pages

Cultural Patterns and Communication

Cultural patterns are shared beliefs, values, norms, and social practices that guide thought and behavior within a culture. They are learned from a young age and reinforced over time. Beliefs are ideas people assume to be true. Values determine what is good/bad. Norms are expectations for appropriate behavior. Social practices are predictable behavior patterns. Cultural patterns create a lens for interpreting communication and influence judgments of intercultural competence. Understanding cultural patterns is important for effective intercultural communication.

Uploaded by

Syahid Usman
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Cultural Patterns and

Communication:
Foundations
Muhammad Syahid Usman
2120203879102009
Pascasarjana Tadris Bahasa Inggris
Institut Agama Islam Negeri
Parepare
• Cultural patterns are defined as shared beliefs, values,
norms, and social practices that are stable over time
and that lead to roughly similar behaviors across
similar situations.
• Cultural patterns provide a basic set of standards that
guide thought and action.
• Cultural patterns are not so much consciously taught
as unconsciously experienced; they are taught at a
young age and are reinforced continuously.
• Beliefs
• Values
• Norms
• Social Practices
• A belief is an idea that people assume to be true
about the world (e.g. we “know” the world is round– but
European’s “knew” the world was flat… therefore, Asia is East, Europe is
West).
• Beliefs are a set of learned interpretations that
cultural members use to decide what is and is not
logical and correct.
• Beliefs range from ideas that are central to a
person’s sense of self to ideas that are more
peripheral (personal taste).
• Culturally shared beliefs are so fundamental to
assumptions about what the world is like and how
the world operates that they are typically
unnoticed.
• Values are concerned with what a culture regards
as good or bad, right or wrong, fair or unfair,
beautiful or ugly, valuable or worthless,
appropriate or inappropriate, and kind or cruel.
• Values are the desired characteristics or goals of a
culture (not necessarily its actual behaviors)
• Values are often offered as the explanation for the
way in which people communicate.
• Values serve as guiding principles in people’s lives.
• Values differ on the dimensions of valence (whether
the value is seen as positive or negative) and intensity.
• Norms are the socially shared expectations of
appropriate behaviors.
• Norms can change over time, whereas beliefs and
values are more enduring.
• Norms exist for a wide variety of behaviors and
include typical social routines (i.e. greetings, how to engage
conversation, what to talk about, how to disengage, etc.)
• Norms are the surface characteristics that emerge
from a culture’s beliefs and values.
• Norms are linked to beliefs and values to form the
patterns of a culture.
• Because norms are evident through behaviors, norms
can be readily inferred.
• Social Practices are the predictable behavior patterns
that members of a culture typically follow.
• Social practices are the outward manifestations of
beliefs, values, and norms.
• Social practices can be informal (eating- what time is
dinner?- sleeping, dressing, playing, etc.) or formal and
prescriptive (rituals, ceremonies, publically and collectively
performed routines).
• All members of a culture do not necessarily follow
that culture’s “typical” social practices; each person
differs, in unique and significant ways, from the
general cultural tendency to think and behave in
particular ways.
• There is a strong relationship between the
foundations of cultural patterns and intercultural
competence.
• The patterns of a culture create the filter through
which all verbal and nonverbal symbols are
interpreted.
• Judgments of competence are strongly influenced
by the underlying patterns of one’s cultural
background.
• A cultural pattern may be the preferred choice for
most cultural members, but not for every
individual.
• When confronting a set of beliefs, values, norms,
and social practices that are inconsistent with their
own, many people will negatively evaluate others’
cultural patterns.
• Cultural patterns form the basis for what is
considered to be communicatively appropriate and
effective.
• The patterns of a culture shape, but do not
determine, the mental programming of its people.
• Because cultural patterns define how people see
and define reality, they are a powerful emotional
force in competent intercultural communication.

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