Learning a Second Culture -H Douglas Brown

Learning a Second Culture -H. Douglas Brown

Content 1 2 Introduction Nature of acculturation 3 Culture Shock 4 Social Distance

Second language learning • Second language learning is often second culture learning. • It involves the acquisition of a second identity. • Language has high social context.

Acculturation • Acculturation: the process of becoming adapted to a new culture. • French: cognitive-oriented • American: psychomotororiented • Spanish: affective-oriented

Acculturation • To a European or South American, American culture: frantic, practically no time for personal feeling and reflection • To an American, • French life: backward, ineffectual • Spanish activities: leisurely timelessness, appalling waste of time and human potential • To a Spanish, • Planned change in France seems coldblooded

Acculturation • Language- the means for communication, the most visible and available expression of that culture. • A person’s world view, selfidentity, system of thinking, acting, feeling, communication are disrupted by a change from one culture to another.

Acculturation • 1. Learning a second (another) language. • a). within the culture of that second language (e. g. : an Arab learning English in the U. S). • b). Within one’s own native culture where the second language is an accepted lingua franca (e. g: learning English in HK, India, etc. ) • 2. Learning a foreign languagelearning a non-native language in one’s own culture (e. g. : learning English in Taiwan, learning French in the U. S)

Second Language Learning Context • Learning a second language in a foreign culture (1 a) involves the deepest form of acculturation. • Learning a second language in a native culture (1 b) varies, depending on the country, the cultural and sociopolitical status of the language, motivations of the learners.

Second Language Learning Context • For example, learning English in India…. . • does not involve taking on a new culture. A child learning French in grammar school in Frenchspeaking Africa ……. . may not face a cultural conflict. but face more with a cognitive or ‘educational’ conflict by the necessary acquisition of new modes of communication within a education setting.

Second Language Learning Context • Learning a foreign language (type 2) produces the most variable degrees of acculturation. • Because they have a various reasons to learn a foreign language. • To communicate with people in another culture • To fulfill a foreign language requirement in a university • Out of personal interest

Second Language Learning Context • Learning a foreign language (1 a) is more culturally loaded than learning a second language (1 b). • Because language is learned in a context of understanding the people of another culture.

Culture Shock • A phenomena ranging from mild irritability to deep psychological panic and crisis • Associates with feelings of anger, hostility, indecision, frustration, unhappiness, sadness, loneliness, homesick… • Most experienced in 1 a situation

Culture Shock • First, he feels comfortable, delighted with ‘exotic’ surroundings. • As soon as the newness wears off, cognitive and affective contradictions of foreign culture mount up, he becomes disoriented. • Second, he can perceptually filter his surroundings and internalize the environment in his own world view • Then he can feel ease.

1 st stage: the period of excitement over the newness of surroundings 4 stages of culture shock 2 nd stage: culture shock emerges, feeling the intrusion of more cultural differences into his own image of self and security, seeking out for support from fellow countrymen in the second culture, complaining the local customs. . 3 rd stage: some problems of acculturation are solved which other problems continue for some time. General progress, slowly but surely. The person begins to accept the difference. 4 th stage: near or full recovery, accept of the new culture and self-confidence in the new person.

What teacher can help? • Learners can find a crosscultural experience to be positive or negative. • Teacher can help that experience to become one of increase cultural awareness and selfawareness for the learner • Teacher can help learners to move through stages of acculturation.

What teacher can help? • Be a sensitive and perceptive teacher. • A teacher should not expect the learner to deny the anger, frustration, helpless, homeless. . • A teacher can enable the learner to understand the source of his anger, to express , then gradually emerge from those depths to a personal form of learning.

Social Distance • Social distance refers to the cognitive and affective proximity of two cultures which come into contact within an individual. • ‘Distance’ is to denote dissimilarity between two cultures. (e. g. : American- Canadian, American-Chinese)

Social Distance • Relation to TL (target language) group vs. 2 LL (second language learning) group • Integration pattern between TL and 2 LL groups, assimilation, acculturation or preservation?

Social Distance • Measuring factors: dominance, integration pattern, cohesiveness, congruence, attitude, length of residence to describe ‘good’ and ‘bad’. e. g. : bad situation: Americans living in Saudi Arabia good situation: American Jewish immigrants living in Israel.

Social Distance • The greater the social distance between two cultures, the greater the difficulty the leaner will have in learning second language and vice versa.

Social Distance • How can one determine degrees of social distance? • Can it be quantifiable, comparable? • It’s rather subjective, which like empathy, self-esteem, and other psychological constructs.

Social Distance • William Action proposed a solution, perceiving social distance rather than measuring actual social distance. • When a learner encounters a new culture, his acculturation process will be a factor of how he perceives his own culture in relation to the culture of the target language, and vice versa.

Social Distance • If a learner perceived himself as either too close to or too distant from either the target culture or the native culture, he fell into the category of ‘bad’ language learner. • Implication: the successful language learner sees himself as maintaining some distance between himself and both cultures.

Cultural ‘critical period’? • Douglas Brown: an adult who fails to master a second language in a second culture may for have failed to synchronize linguistic and cultural development. • A young child who has not built up years of a culture-bound worldview, has fewer perceptive filters to readjust, and therefore moves through stages of acculturation more quickly, acquires the language more quickly too.

Language , thought and culture • Euphemisms: ‘telling it like it isn’t’ • Garbage men/sanitary engineers, toilets/ rest rooms, slums/ substandard dwellings • Culture is an integral part of the interaction between language and thought.

Language , thought and culture • Example sentences: ‘ Did you see the /a broken headlight? ’ ‘Did you see some/any people watching the accident? ‘How fast was the car going when it hit the stop sign? ’ (presupposing the car hit the sign)

Language , thought and culture • Language shapes thought? or thought shapes language? • For second language teachers, a knowledge of commonalities between two languages helps understand the total language learning process.

Language , thought and culture • Learning to think in another language may require a considerable degree of mastery of the language, but a 2 LL does not have to learn to think all over again. • 2 LL can make positive learning by retaining which is valid and valuable for second culture learning and second language learning.