Cultural emphasis
Cultural emphasis is an important aspect of a culture which is often reflected though language and, more specifically, vocabulary.[1] This means that the vocabulary people use in a culture indicates what is important to that group of people. If there are many words to describe a certain topic in a specific culture, then there is a good chance that that topic is considered important to that culture.
Background
The idea of cultural emphasis is rooted form the work of Franz Boas, who is considered to be one of the founders of American Anthropology.[2] Franz Boas developed and taught concepts such as cultural relativism and the "cultural unconscious", which allowed anthropologists who studied under him, like Edward Sapir and Ruth Benedict, to further study and develop ideas on language and culture.[3]
Application
One way in which cultural emphasis is exemplified is a populace talks about the weather. For example, in a place where it is cold and it snows a lot, a large collection of words to describe the snow would be expected.
- For example: whiteout, blizzard, sleeting, snowdrift, powder snow, packed snow, fresh snow.
In a place where it is hot, a cornucopia of associated terms would be expected.
- For example: dry heat, muggy, humid, sticky, monsoon season, sweltering.
A concentration of related terms for similar phenomena suggests the importance in distinguishing between them. Furthermore, if you are not from the area, or that culture, you might not have experienced or know the difference between, for example, a dry heat or a humid heat, when the difference may have huge implications for the outcome of a particular action.
See also
- Eskimo words for snow, popular urban legend that the Inuit or Eskimo have an unusually large number of words for snow
- Linguistic relativity, or "Sapir–Whorf hypothesis", the idea that the varying cultural concepts and categories inherent in different languages affect the cognitive classification of the experienced world in such a way that speakers of different languages think and behave differently because of it
References
- Hart, W.B. (2005). "Franz Boas and the roots of intercultural communication research". International and Intercultural Communication Annual (28): 176–193.
- Ottenheimer, H.J. (2006). The anthropology of language: An introduction to linguistic anthropology. Belmont: Thomson Higher Education.
- ^ Ottenheimer 2006, p. 266.
- ^ Ottenheimer 2006, p. 15.
- ^ Hart 2005, p. 179.
- v
- t
- e
- Cultural anthropology
- Cultural astronomy
- Cultural ecology
- Cultural geography
- Cultural neuroscience
- Cultural studies
- Culturology
- Culture theory
- Bioculture
- Cross-cultural studies
- Cultural analytics
- Cultural economics
- Cultural entomology
- Cultural history
- Cultural mapping
- Cultural mediation
- Cultural psychology
- Cultural values
- Culturomics
- Intercultural learning
- Intercultural relations
- Internet culture
- Philosophy of culture
- Popular culture studies
- Postcritique
- Semiotics of culture
- Sociology of culture
- Sound culture
- Theology of culture
- Transcultural nursing
- Acculturation
- Cultural appreciation
- Cultural appropriation
- Cultural area
- Cultural artifact
- Cultural baggage
- Cultural behavior
- Cultural bias
- Cultural capital
- Cultural communication
- Cultural conflict
- Cultural cringe
- Cultural dissonance
- Cultural emphasis
- Cultural framework
- Cultural heritage
- Cultural icon
- Cultural identity
- Cultural industry
- Cultural invention
- Cultural landscape
- Cultural learning
- Cultural leveling
- Cultural memory
- Cultural pluralism
- Cultural practice
- Cultural property
- Cultural reproduction
- Cultural system
- Cultural technology
- Cultural universal
- Cultureme
- Enculturation
- High- and low-context cultures
- Interculturality
- Manuscript culture
- Material culture
- Non-material culture
- Organizational culture
- Print culture
- Protoculture
- Relational mobility
- Safety culture
- Technoculture
- Trans-cultural diffusion
- Transculturation
- Visual culture
- Colonial mentality
- Consumer capitalism
- Cross cultural sensitivity
- Cultural assimilation
- Cultural attaché
- Cultural backwardness
- Cultural Bolshevism
- Cultural conservatism
- Cultural contracts
- Cultural deprivation
- Cultural diplomacy
- Cultural environmentalism
- Cultural exception
- Cultural feminism
- Cultural genocide
- Cultural globalization
- Cultural hegemony
- Cultural imperialism
- Cultural intelligence
- Cultural liberalism
- Cultural nationalism
- Cultural pessimism
- Cultural policy
- Cultural racism
- Cultural radicalism
- Cultural retention
- Cultural Revolution
- Cultural rights
- Cultural safety
- Cultural silence
- Cultural subsidy
- Cultural Zionism
- Culture change
- Culture minister
- Culture of fear
- Culture war
- Deculturalization
- Dominator culture
- Interculturalism
- Monoculturalism
- Multiculturalism
- Multiracial democracy
- Pluriculturalism
- Polyculturalism
- Transculturism
- Animal culture
- Archaeological culture
- Bennett scale
- Cannabis culture
- Circuit of culture
- Civilization
- Coffee culture
- Cross-cultural
- Cultural center
- Cultural competence
- Cultural critic
- Cultural determinism
- Cultural diversity
- Cultural evolutionism
- Cultural homogenization
- Cultural institution
- Cultural jet lag
- Cultural lag
- Cultural literacy
- Cultural mosaic
- Cultural movement
- Cultural mulatto
- Cultural probe
- Cultural relativism
- Culture speculation
- Cultural tourism
- Cultural translation
- Cultural turn
- Cultural sensibility
- Culture and menstruation
- Culture and positive psychology
- Culture and social cognition
- Culture gap
- Culture hero
- Culture industry
- Culture shock
- Culturgen
- Children's culture
- Culturalism
- Cyberculture
- Death and culture
- Disability culture
- Drinking culture
- Drug culture
- Eastern culture
- Emotions and culture
- Intercultural communication
- Intercultural competence
- Languaculture
- Living things in culture
- Media culture
- Oppositional culture
- Participatory culture
- Permission culture
- Rape culture
- Remix culture
- Tea culture
- Transformation of culture
- Urban culture
- Welfare culture
- Western culture
- Youth culture
- Category
- Commons
- WikiProject
- Changes