Fight for the right to party: like its 1999? Gangnam-style? Boogie-woogie?

In a conversation with my mother this past weekend we happened upon the topic of teenage weekend activities.  In the 70's, with two older, much older, sisters, my mother was introduced to cigarettes and beer around the age of 11 or 12.  This was just normal.  For me, at the age of 12, I was most likely riding bicycles with my friends, playing video games, or going to summer camp.
At 17 my mother would slip into her bell bottoms and go out to the bars with her girlfriends.
At 19 I would slip out to an apartment party in my skinny jeans.
We both flat ironed our hair, but she actually used an IRON!

We are mother and daughter, Jewish, Americans, feminists... but we are part of different cultures due to our generational differences.  Where we see eye to eye on many things, style of dress and dance is not one of them, but does not rip our family bond apart.

Culture = a means of unification under one 'flag' with a set of ideals that guide our mannerisms, beliefs, creations, and communications
Culture = "power to sow the seeds of dissension between members of a familly, between communities in a nation, and between nations in this world" (Kumaravadivelu, 2010:9).

Are we united and separated under the headings of 'culture' or are do we define and redefine ourselves then choose an appropriate heading?

Kumaravadivelu (2010) goes on to discuss the mindbending notion that it is not that culture is but it is what culture does that is important.  If culture is not a noun, what is it?  Wintergerst (2011) proposes that "culture is a far-reaching dynamic concept" (3) and as a "complex frame of reference that consists of patterns of traditions beliefs, values, norms, symbols, and meanings that are shared to VARYING DEGREES by interacting members of a community" (cited from Stella Ting-Toomey 1999).

Culture does.  Members of a culture share beliefs to varying degrees.  Generations share culture but each new generation incorporates patterns of interaction from those other intersecting peoples and ideas (and here comes mass media as a player! - not to mention youtube...)

Each of these authors touch on culture as an inexplicable entity, and then propose ways to explain it in a classroom!  Does anyone else see this as counterproductive?
The standards for language education propose incorporating "culture/Culture" into the classroom, but there is no way to accomplish student comprehension of what it is to be a part of another mind set without living through certain experiences.  I believe that, as nearly all our authors studied thus far, students should discuss the idea of culture as an iceberg and detail what culture means to them.  In this way, in reading their course texts, they can take all they read with the proverbial grain of salt; hopefully understanding that the small boxes shoved into textbook margins or short online videos featuring the same cast of characters at the end of each chapter is NOT representative of an entire people, its generations, its history, and even its present!

How often do we read something in an English textbook (TESOL professionals) that is so outdated that we have no idea to what it refers?  Or perhaps the English textbook is British English or Australian English and we haven't a clue as to what certain vocabulary items mean?

This goes to show that there is so much more to a people than what can be demonstrated in reading a textbook and in 50 minutes of instruction... or even in 100 hours of instruction.
Language instruction is an opportunity to get a glimpse at the tip of an iceberg that is the studied language.  Language study opens the door so that each student might pass through and learn firsthand what the global perspective has in store on his/her adventure through Wonderland.
Discussion of cultural 'norms' is helpful to students in understanding actions or ways of speaking which they might otherwise view (through ATTRIBUTION) as bizarre or offensive.  Helping students to enter into appropriate conduct during conversations will eventually help them to integrate into other societies without being viewed as the ethnocentric cowboys that most people think Americans are!

Here Lantolf (1999) picks up the baton and runs with the linguistic door-opener: we are not learning language-culture so we can better assimilate, but so that we can better understand ourselves!  Second language learners' "development of tolerance and understanding  of other cultures as well as in the degree to which the study of other cultures enhances cultural self-awareness" (28) shows interesting insight to our opening issue of culture as glue or means of dissent.  Here I think it is important for teachers of languages to realize that it is the tone, manner, and acceptance that they portray while discussing culture in the classroom that will lead students to see other cultural attitudes and mannerisms as either bizarre or as acceptable.

We are mirrors.

I found Kumaravadivelu's discussion on "Culture and Language" interesting, but somewhat obvious.  Our language does not define who we are, rather we define ourselves for the audience on paper (or listeners) through the choices of language we employ.
For me, this means I discuss banking, health, economics, and fashion in English.  I discuss food, cooking, literature, and farm equipment in French.
This does not mean that I have a split personality, it means that my life experiences have lead me to learn certain vocabulary for things, which already touched me personally, in different languages.

So while I dance Gangnam-style, my mother boogies, and my roommate salsas, we all manage to dance, and we all like to party!

Playing in the Background

Is it the soundtrack to our lives?  The rhythm of unasked and unanswered questions which follow each individual's every moment and every action echoes each person's separate and interconnected, hidden in plain sight, cultures.
Morgan (2001) puts a decoder ring in the hands of the reader in detailing how culture is hidden in plain sight and how one may approach each gesture, line of text, song lyric, clothing choice, etc., as an opportunity for anthropological analysis.  It is in looking past the actions, products, and words themselves to the motivation which lies underneath.  These motivations are at the heart of culture.  But there are even further layers to be examined... the actions, products, and words which motivate the motivation of the individual who then performs a task, utters a reactionary statement, or purchases the Toms with the purple zebra print.

For example:

------------------------ surface ------------------------------
What is observed? --- Franklin stops mid stride to bend down and tie his shoelaces.
What motivates the observed phenomena? --- Franklin is wearing shoes with laces and one became untied.
What motivates...? --- Franklin does not want his laces to drag on the sidewalk as he just changed the laces to a sweet checkered pattern pair.
...? --- Other kids at school have similar laces and Franklin has a desire to fit-in with his peers
------------------------deeper----------------------------------
--- A recent marketing campaign for these shoes with interchangeable laces focused on boys between the ages of 12 and 16; this line of shoes under this campaign provided the mall where Franklin and his friends shop with the line of shoes.
--- Shopping at the mall is a common collective activity for Franklin and his friends.
--- Wearing certain items are symbols of status.

The questions one could ask regarding the motivation of any of the above steps in a thought process could go in thousands of different directions.  Rather than asking why Franklin is wearing that particular pair of shoes, we might examine his upbringing in relation to tying shoes?  Is there some sort of connection between socioeconomic status and whether or not a person decides to retie his shoes?  Is there cultural relativity as to whether he starts with one bunny ear or two?

In class last week, when I related culture to water, you (Dr Lisya Seloni) asked me whether or not the water held the shape of its container even once removed.  Thinking on this, and on this week's reading, I would say yes, but only to an extent.  We are like ice cubes, forming since birth within a certain shapely confine: some round, some square, some heart or seahorse-shaped.  Once we are removed from our specific local cultures, like the ice cube removed from the freezer tray, we melt over time.  We may then re-form in a similar, but never quite the same shape, or we may take a new perspective-shape completely.  However, we are still water and will always carry with us the minerals of our source (or in the case of my freezer here, little pieces of broccoli or spinach that we keep frozen for later use and which somehow always finds its way into the cubes).

Morgan (2001) discusses language as a means by which we make that which is hidden, explicit.  We may choose to define ourselves through our choice in words.  Likewise, the language-and-culture which encapsules us from birth forms our perspectives, relationships, self-definitions, communitites, etc.  Language is power.

Whereas the author had the experience of being corrected from 'tu' to 'vous', I have experienced the opposite.  I am a self-corrector and have become very aware of the social constructs around formal and informal language, especially in the presence of my future in-laws.  While spending the summer with them, at the table over lunch, I accidentally 'tutoi'ed Thérèse, only to catch myself and switch to 'vous' a second later. She decided to address this inner battle I'd had with the remark that she likes the feeling of closeness that 'tu' provides and that I could feel free to use it.  Normally, if someone my age were to say this to me, I would use 'tu' from then on.  Being that this is someone of a different generation, and my future mother-in-law, it would be inappropriate for me to make the switch, and keeping with 'vous' honors her as the wonderful person who brought the love of my life into this world.
'Vous' is still problematic however.  It can be used, in my mind, as a means of distancing oneself formally from another party out of either respect or distaste, or the opposite: a means of respecting someone you are very close to.

Morgan discusses using language to unificate and to separate.  We choose words that others will understand so as to show our part in the whole that includes the listeners.  We also choose words that demonstrate our differences from the larger culture surrounding us, or to reach out to other listeners who might engage more specifically with different terminology.

I find the idea that "language is the central means of learning culture in the language classroom" (Morgan, 38) is true, but realize that the extent to what is teachable simply through language is mountainous!  Like the tip of the iceberg metaphor which Morgan utilizes, I believe that what is learned is only the tip.  One must experience the people, products, practices, perspectives, and communities in order to begin to FEEL the cultures available through the language studied.  One has to sit at the table with many generations, experience embarrassment and laugh at mistakes in word choice, and fall in love with the view from a café terrace, or really hate the amount of dog droppings on a particular sidewalk, in order to understand and absorb new cultural aspects.

What is Culture?

Culture is like... water? tacos? donuts? a wardrobe? hiking?

Today in Cross-Cultural Issues in TESOL with Lisya Seloni we discussed our concepts of both Culture and culture.  What we expect of others under views of essentialism and how we might prefer to define ourselves under non-essentialism.