論文

What is culture?
A Brief Look at the Development of “Culture”
and its Understanding in Language Teaching

Nicholas BRADLEY

ABSTRACT「文化」の定義は，人，時間，状況によってさまざまである。言語教授の見地から「文化」を理解することが望まれている (e.g. Atkinson, 1999:2013)

教師が授業で扱う「文化」は，論文や研究からの概念ではなく一般的に思い浮かぶ「文化」である。新たな視点で「文化」を理解するとしたら，どのように「文化」を捉えるか。ここでは，異なった文化理解，特に応用言語学の観点から「文化」と教授法について説明する。
Keywords: culture（文化）, intercultural communication（異文化コミュニケーション）, small cultures, language teaching（語学教育）

Introduction.
“American academics are waging culture wars. (Not many dead). Politicians urge
cultural revolution. Apparently a seismic cultural change is needed to resolve theproblems of poverty, drug abuse, crime, illegitimacy, and industrial competitiveness.
There is talk of cultural differences between the sexes and the generations, between
football teams, or between advertising agencies. When a merger between two
companies fails, it is explained that their cultures were not compatible. The beauty of itis that everyone understands.” (Kuper, 1999. p1)

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No. 31This paper will look at what is understood as culture, particularly what is understood asculture in field of applied linguistics and how this relates to classroom practice. Whenlooking at attempts to define culture, it becomes early on that culture is a nebulous term andthat scholars of various disciplines use culture widely (Japanese culture, business culture,
educational culture, cyber culture etc.) but have struggled to pin it down in a way that is
satisfactory to all. Indeed, it is even said that “the word “culture” often brings up more
problems than it solves” (Scollon & Scollon, 1995. pp138). When researching culture you
sometimes find that writers often attempt to identify culture through anecdotes giving thereader a clear feeling of what culture is but not increasing confidence in actually knowing
what it is. The connected problems of a lack of clarity and culture being a “hyper-referential
word” has lead some to suggest that culture as a term should be avoided and replaced(Kuper, 1999). Though several alternatives to culture have been offered – identity, hybridity,
knowledge, etc.,- culture is still a concept that is very much used, considered andunderstood, if still somewhat differently. However, that being said, there are somecharacteristics which seem consistent through out various attempts at definition and which
can possibly be said to be key elements or constituents of culture.

In the beginning.
One of the problems at identifying culture is that culture seems to mean different things
to different people at different times. Indeed, Monaghan & Just (2000) claim that there areprobably as many definitions of culture as there are anthropologists. It is from the disciplineof anthropology that most definitions of culture spring and these definitions have been
influential in shaping the definitions offered by scholars of other disciplines. The pivotal
definition of culture is often regarded as coming from British anthropologist Edward Tyler(Avruch, 1998: Monaghan & Just, 2000) Prior to Tyler, ideas of culture were largely
understood to be the artistic or intellectual products of a people, what is also known as big C
culture or upper case culture (Bennett, 1998) or a culture rather than just culture (Kuper,1999). The leaders of society were the people in possession of culture as it was these “menof culture” who cultivated society through their work. Culture is derived from the Latin
cultura meaning ‘cultivation’ and this idea of culture was very much connected to its
linguistic roots albeit with society replacing crops. Under this notion of culture, Roman or
British culture, for example, may be placed higher than Celtic or Aboriginal culture, for― 2 ―What is culture? A Brief Look at the Development of “Culture” and its Understanding in Language Teachingexample, due to the formers’ capacity to produce lasting cultural artefacts, complex cities,
tomes of knowledge and scientific theory. In such a definition, culture is synonymous withcivilization and since the ancient era has been cited as a justification for domination.
Tylor’s work, Primitive Culture (1903) made this purely aesthetic idea of culture
obsolete. Although culture is still strongly connected with ideas of civilization, in the
opening of his book Tyler gives the following definition of culture which may not sound too
distant to what may be widely understood as culture by many people today:“Culture or civilization, taken in its broad ethnographic sense, is 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.” (Tylor, 1903. p1)

From this definition we can see that Tylor introduces three very important aspects tothe notion of culture. Firstly, Tylor sees culture as much more than simply the intellectualand artistic output of a society by adding behaviour and the beliefs and morals that drive
them as aspects of culture. Secondly, Tylor suggests that culture is acquired in some way by
being a member of a society rather than being something that is manufactured by a specificgroup people. Thirdly, Tylor seems to predict the years of debate and dissatisfaction withdefinitions of culture by acknowledging that culture is a “complex whole” which includes ahuge array of interacting and overlapping aspects of human existence.
Although Tylor’s definition may represent a turning point and stand as a foundation
upon which later scholars would build, it was not without problems. In some respects,
Tylor’s idea of culture was very much a product of the Victorian era. Although Tylor
suggested that all ‘cultures’ had the same potential to evolve, they were effectively ranked
and seen as subject to scientific law by being placed on a development continuum from“savagery” on to “barbarism” and “civilization” (Tylor, 1903).
Tylor’s attempt at establishing a scientific foundation for culture was not welcomed by
all in the field. Franz Boas (1940) rejected the judgements found within the work of Tylor
and those before him and their view that cultures can be compared and ranked. Boas saw
culture as the peculiar way a group of people think and act rather than being something
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which evolves from primitive to advanced along a continuum. In the introduction to thework of another prominent anthropologist he writes,“It is felt more and more that hardly any trait of culture can be understood when takenout of its general setting….We must understand the individual as living in his culture,and the culture as lived by individuals.” (Boas in Benedict, 1934, ppxx).

In this regard, Boas was perhaps the first to view culture as something that describes apeople rather than evaluates them. Boas saw a society’s culture as being unique and to betaken on its own merits rather than compared to others and judged. Boas put forward theidea of “kulturbrille”, the invisible lenses which we all wear and through which we view
and interpret the world (Monaghan and Just, 2000). The “kulturbrille” we wear are
determined by how we learned to see the world. The simple things in life such as eating orsocializing are all a result of how we learned to view and interact with the world around us
and can therefore be no worse or better than any other. Boas’ definition of culture was
groundbreaking, not only because it removed the assigning of value to different cultures, butalso because it focused predominantly on the idea of culture as something that we wear or
carry with us and which shapes our behaviour, ideas and responses. The physical productsof culture were given a much less important position.
With the growth of anthropology in the twentieth century there has been no shortage ofsuggestions, tweaks, additions, and realignments of the definition of culture. In 1952,
Kroeber & Kluckhohn (in Kluckholn, 1962) conducted a review of hundreds of definitions
and statements of culture. From analyzing these concepts of culture they found that the
major variability was not as wide as expected but centred on which elements were stressedand how explicitly comprehensive a definition was. Having viewed these definitions, they
offered their own:
"Culture consists of patterns, explicit and implicit, of and for behaviour acquired andtransmitted by symbols, constituting the distinctive achievements of human groups,
including their embodiments in artefacts; the essential core of culture consists oftraditional (i.e. historically derived and selected) ideas and especially their attachedvalues; culture systems may, on the one hand, be considered as products of action, andon the other as conditioning elements of further action." (Kluckholn, 1962:73)― 4 ―What is culture? A Brief Look at the Development of “Culture” and its Understanding in Language Teaching

Despite the reduced importance of the physical products of culture compared withearly definitions, we can still see a place in the culture concept for the cultural artefact;
albeit as evidence of the underlying cultural forces that created it. What is new to the idea ofculture here is that culture is given a strong temporal significance as something that is a
result of the past and something which shapes the future. In this sense, culture can be seen
as fluid, changing over time but with changes connected to what was before.
The review of culture definitions by Kroeber & Kluckhohn is timely because it
coincides with the beginning of the field of applied linguistics (Kramsch, 2011).
Although some work such as Kaplan (1966) points to the fact that some applied
linguists were already researching the language-culture connection, Kramsch (2011)
suggests that research relating to culture as a concept connected to language teaching was
taken up in earnest from the 1970s. However, having looked at the early development of theconcept of culture and before examining its further development and understanding to thoseengaged in the fields connected to language teaching, it is worth taking time to identify
some commonly accepted aspects of culture beyond those offered by Kroeber & Kluckholn.
When considering elements of culture, it is worth bearing in mind that they are notuniversally agreed upon, but rather constitute popular and enduing notions of culture.

Culture is only available in grey.
Perhaps the first point that should be made, and one that is often made explicitly in all
attempts at definition is that there is no black and white certainty in culture. In my previous
life as an historian I clearly remember my history professor telling me that there is no truthin history, there is only interpretation. Culture would appear to be the same. In its popularform, culture is an interpretation of difference and is, therefore, identified in opposition tosomething. In this sense, Kuper (1999, p19) seems correct to say that culture is “a fiction
written by the ethnographer.” Though we may feel culture is real, our understanding of
culture- how we divide culture, classify culture or identify culture as a place that can bevisited, a phenomenon that can be experienced or a process that can be witnessed – we cannever hope to capture the complex reality of culture. As such, most ideas of culture are justthat, ideas.

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Culture should be described but not judged.
Cultures may be different, but any assessment of culture should avoid judgements ascultures can only be understood in its own context. Cultures can differ in complexity, suchas rather simple hunter gather cultures or a complex information culture (Triandis, 2001),
but levels of complexity do not have to contain value judgements.

Culture is a social construct which influences behaviour and interpretation.
We all possess culture, so how do we get it? There is a general consensus that it issocial construction. How this learning takes place and what is actually learned has differedslightly over time. Tylor’s (1903) view was that explicit education is key; by a society
becoming more educated and intellectually advanced, culture will develop along apredetermined line of advancement upon which all cultures currently find themselves. Morerecent views highlight the unconscious side of learning culture as much as, if not more, thanthe conscious side (Boas, 1940; Triandis, 2001). When we travel overseas or enter a meetingwith people of a different profession, for example, the things that strike us as odd or the
discoveries we have about our own preferences and behaviour all point to unconscious
learning. Explicit culture learning takes place also though this often comes in the forms ofadherence to a behavioural norm rather than understanding of a value. For example, I
always instruct my children to say “hello” to their teacher, classmates and other parents
when we cross paths around school and in town. Saying “hello” with a smile is the norm
and it is what I am explicitly instructing my children to do, yet implicit in it is the value offriendliness, politeness and acknowledging someone. The value that is often implicit may or
may not be consciously understood.

Culture changes.
Observation of any culture will show that culture is not static and is subject to change.
Cultural change is partly historically bound as new ideas, inventions, practices and priorities
arise and these are often influenced by the existing culture, or may be a reaction against it.
Cultural change does not have to come from within as the new ideas, practices andinventions may be forced introduced from outside (Herskovits, 1945). This point is― 6 ―What is culture? A Brief Look at the Development of “Culture” and its Understanding in Language Teachingparticularly worth noting given the increasingly global and interconnected world in which
we live.
Although culture is always changing, it may be the case that the different elements
within a culture do not change at the same speed. The core values of a culture which may or
may not exist at an unconscious level, such as respect for elders, are subject to a muchslower pace of change than certain surface practices and more visible manifestations ofculture such as fashion or etiquette (Hofstede, 2001).
Whether it comes from inside or outside, or is quick or slow, change does happen andoften produces what could be termed cultural knock-on effects. Changes to values may
result in behavioural shifts and changes to practices established upon those values,
alternatively, new inventions such as the smartphone may change attitudes to time,
availability and information and alter the existing learned behaviour accordingly. Looking at
cultural change from this perspective also illustrates the interconnectedness of elements
within a culture and between different cultures.

Culture is present in different layers.
Culture is understood to be much more than just surface differences. Most of culture
can not be seen. The analogy of the cultural iceberg by Hall (1976) was an early illustrationof this aspect of culture. The observable elements such as artefacts and observable behaviour
are found only in the visible tip of the iceberg. The beliefs and values of a culture, the vast
majority of culture, are largely buried beneath the surface.

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The idea of layers is similarly expressed in the model of culture offered by
Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner (1998) and Hofstede (2001). These models of culture,
however, offer a more causal explanation of the different layers beyond simple what is andis not visible. The easily identifiable artefacts of culture are seen as a reflection of the norms
and values of a society, which is in turn a result of the basic assumptions at the very core ofexistence; “Because different groups of people have developed in different geographic
regions, they have also formed different sets of logical assumptions (Trompenaars &Hampden-Turner, 1998).

Culture is both universal and specific.
Culture is seen by many (Murdock, 1945: Triandis, 1994: Monaghan & Just, 2000:
Trompenaars & Hampden-Turner, 1998) as having universal criteria within which great
cultural difference can develop. This notion is highlighted by Murdock (1945)“The following is a partial list of items, arranged in alphabetical order to emphasise
their variety, which occur, so far as the author’s knowledge goes, in every culture
known to history or ethnography: age-grading, athletic sports, bodily adornment,
calendar, cleanliness training, community organization, cooking, cooperative labor,
cosmology, courtship, dancing, decorative art, divination, division of labor, dreaminterpretation, education, eschatology, ethics, ethnobotany, etiquette, faith healing,family, feasting, fire making, folklore, food taboos, inheritance rules, joking, kin-

― 8 ―What is culture? A Brief Look at the Development of “Culture” and its Understanding in Language Teachinggroups, kinship nomenclature, language, law, luck superstition, magic, marriage,
mealtimes, medicine, modesty concerning natural functions, mourning, music,
mythology, numerals, obstetrics, penal sanctions, personal names, population policy,
postnatal care, pregnancy uses, property rights, propitiation of supernatural beings,
puberty customs, religious ritual, residence rules, sexual restrictions, soul concepts,
status differentiation, surgery, tool making, trade, visiting, weaning, and weather
control.” (Murdock, 1945. p124.)

In this epic, but not exhaustive list Murdock quite clearly makes the point that culture,
as well as being a divider of people, can actually be seen as a unifier. People may do things
differently but the difference is contained within universal aspects of culture that are
constrained by the realities of human existence (Triandis, 1994: Monaghan & Just, 2000).
Psychologist Trandis (1994) terms the universal aspects and specific differences withinculture as “etics” and “emics” and offers a further example;“…all humans experience social distance from out-groups (an etic factor). That is,they feel closer to their family and kin and to those whom they see as similar to themthan those whom they see as different. But the basis of social distance is often an emic
attribute: In some cultures, it is based only on tribe or race; in others it is based on
combinations of religion, social class, and nationality…” pg 20

These examples highlight the universal and specific elements of culture, but they also
hint at the limits of difference within culture. Cultural difference cannot be infinite ascultural differences are bound by the limits of the world around us and our own physical andcognitive limitations.
The etic-emic distinction is also implicit in the work of other scholars who try to offer
criteria in which to classify certain cultures. Perhaps the most well-known and frequently
cited, certainly in the field of business, are the cultural dimensions offered by social
psychologist Gert Hofstede. Hofstede (1991), examining employees of IBM across 50
countries, identified five main dimensions of culture:

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Similar classifications can be seen in the seven dimensions of culture offered by management
theorists
High Power Distance versus Low Power Distance.
The level at which inequality is present or a fact of life. In HPD cultures, authority
is questioned less than in LPD cultures, privileges of power are common, signs ofstatus of clearer and contact is usually initiated by superiors.
Individualism versus collectivism.
Whether a person’s concern is more focused on himself/herself or the group falls under theindividualism-collectivism divide. Members of cultures said to have high individualism
are more likely to voice their opinions, emphasise individual initiative and achievement,
and classify themselves by their own characteristics rather than group membership.
High Uncertainty Avoidance versus Low Uncertainty Avoidance.
Uncertainty avoidance attempts to capture the tolerance (or lack of it) for ambiguity andformal rules. HUA cultures tend to take less risks, follow rules more rigidly and fear
failure more than LUA cultures.
Masculinity versus femininity.
Masculine societies are seen as separating gender roles more clearly and robustly thanfeminine societies.
Long term orientation versus short term orientation.
LTO cultures place a greater importance on the future than STO cultures. Additionally,
what constitutes “the future” is something much longer and further away than STO
cultures which look much more to the here and now and view the future as something
more immediate.
Trompenaars & Hampden-Turner (1998), eleven dimensions offered by psychologist
Trandis (2001), and earlier in the work of Edward T Hall (1959) who described different
certain national and ethnic cultures as being either monochromic or polychromic in theirattitudes to time, or high-context or low-context in their communication preferences. All
these attempts at classification, which curiously only choose but a select few of thecategories available and highlighted by Murdock earlier, look to capture cultural difference(emics) but are framed by the universal categories of culture (etics).

Social groups are central to culture.
If culture is socially learned behaviour as mentioned before, then it must be associatedin some way with social groups. A social group consists of at least two people and so culture― 10 ―

What is culture? A Brief Look at the Development of “Culture” and its Understanding in Language Teachingrequires at least two people. As we have seen from the examples of Hofstede, Trompennars& Hampde-Turner, and Hall above, the social group for them is largely at the national level
and therefore glosses over the fact that many different and often competing cultures are atwork within the huge national entity. Despite, Hofstede justifying the focus on the national
level, he did acknowledge that people were members of different cultural groups at the sametime although the national level of culture is seen as the most enduring and powerful(Hofstede, 2001). Although discussions of culture in the literature as well as in classrooms,
bars, and peoples’ homes, may use the national / ethnic level of culture to illustrate key
points, most academics would seem to agree that smaller social groups (gender, profession,
regional, hobbies, etc) also constitute cultures.

Culture differs from nature and personality.
As we have seen, most definitions of culture state what it is. However, Hofstede
produced a simple model of culture which also clearly shows what culture is not.

Hofstede separates culture from human nature and personality. Personality sits at the
top of pyramid as the aspects of an individual that influence behaviour such as the learning
provided by experience or damage done through injury or disease.
Human nature is the universal biological elements of existence which we all share. All
humans feel fear and pain or require sustenance, shelter and rest. Culture differs fromuniversal traits as it is represents the divergent ways people, as part of a group, learn tosatisfy these needs and express these feelings, it is not the biological needs or impulses― 11 ―

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has also been contrast with nature (what is born and grows organically) as a way ofunderstanding the phenomenon (Kramsch, 1998).

Culture in applied linguistics.
From the work of Tylor and Boas the basic premise of culture as being ‘the way we dothings’, our systems of beliefs, values and attitudes that have been socially learned has
become widely accepted. However, Tylor and Boas’ ideas of culture, as groundbreaking as
they were, were still all encompassing and required a great deal of clarification. With therise of the social sciences in the twentieth century, each discipline refined the idea of culture
in line with their own field and, as Kramsch (2011) points out, applied linguistics was no
exception.
However, the strong connection between language and culture was identified long
before applied linguistics came into being with Boas (1940) as far back as 1898 proclaimingthat “the history of language reflects the history of culture”. Perhaps the most famous of theanthropologist linguists of the first half of the twentieth century were Edward Sapir andBenjamin Whorf. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis of linguistic relativity offered a clear, if
debatable, connection between language and culture. The hypothesis gave rise to the theoryof linguistic determinism which claimed that the peculiarities of the language a person
speaks determines the way a speaker understands the world.
The idea of language influencing culture was expanded by Hall (1959) to include, notonly the signs of language, but also the process of language use. Hall, suggested that
“Culture is communication and communication is culture” (Hall, 1959, pp186). This two
way process of language use and culture is well supported (Scollon & Scollon, 1995). In
this understanding, communication as the transfer of meaning will usually conform tolearned patterns and ways of expressing meaning (culture). Additionally, communicationinfluences and is representative of culture as culture cannot exist without communication.
Culture cannot be evidenced without communication, and communication needs a system of
meaning supplied by culture.

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Kramsch (2011) suggests that in the early days of applied linguistics, researchers wereinterested in communication, particularly how culture influenced discourse, rather thandifferences in particular language items or the specific meanings associated with themhighlighted in the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. In the early days of applied linguistics culture
was understood as the contextual pressures that impact discourse and were focused aroundthe tradition, history and ideology of discourse groups (Lado, 1959: Kramsch, 2011). As
such, the idea of culture in applied linguistics was limited and seen mostly in national or
ethnic terms and interested primarily in the variety of language used.
From the 1970s, increased academic interest in fields such as discourse andconversation analysis, cross-cultural pragmatics and intercultural communication brought
culture to a position of great importance in applied linguistics (Kramsch, 2011). Kramschsuggests that from this time until the 1990s a new understanding of culture came to the fore:“Culture was to be found not in the institutional monuments and artifacts, nor in artistic
products, but in the meaning that speakers and listeners, writers and readers gave themthrough the discourse of verbal exchanges, newspaper articles, or political speeches.”

In this sense, culture is seen in a similar way to Boas over half a century earlier. With
little attention paid to the artefacts and physical products of culture (although it could besaid that a text in any form is an artefact), language here is a manifestation of culture, a kindof reverse linguistic version of kulturbrille. Just as kulterbrille are the culture glasses
through which people interpret the world, language is the conduit through which theyexpress, implicitly or explicitly, culture.
Kramsch continues;“To understand culture, one had to understand both the universal and the culturespecific-constraints on language in use in discourse: for example, how social actors
initiate and end conversations, how they manage or avoid topics, how they relate text
to content.” (Kramsch, 2011 pp306)

Again, we see that the idea of culture in applied linguistics is not so far removed fromthe notion of culture in other fields as the universal-specific or etic-emic distinction is clear― 13 ―

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to see, albeit applied exclusively to manifestations of communication.
Focus on issues of communication and at the expense of other cultural artefacts andforms of behaviour is perhaps the greatest difference between applied linguistics and otherfields, though one which is hardly surprising. Applied linguistics is less concerned withrituals and ceremonies and more concerned with turn taking, discourse organization or
apologizing norms across cultures. Despite this, however, we can see that the general
understanding of what culture is, the shared way a group has learned to make sense andinteract with the world, is largely consistent with other fields.
These areas of research are still of great interest to many in the field (Scollon &Scollon, 1995), yet different avenues of research have opened up which have impacted on
considerations of culture in applied linguistics. The increasing awareness of world Englishes
and the role of English as a lingua franca (Jenkins, 2007) have led to a reconsidering of thefundamental unit of culture. As language is seen as being closely connected to culture,learning a culture inevitably means assuming some culture connected to the language being
learned. This has given rise to the idea that second/foreign language learners become bicultural (Kanno, 2011), develop a hybrid culture (Bhaba, 1994) or operate in a ‘third culture’
which exists as an anomaly between the native culture and the culture associated with thelanguage being learned/ used Kramsch (1993). The problems experienced with Japanese
returnees (Kanno, 2011) or indeed anyone who has lived for an extended period in a foreignculture and finds themselves in a cultural limbo of not feeling quite at home in either culture
would support such ideas. However, these ideas are largely based on a notion of culture
where the nation is the primary unit of division and this understanding of culture is being
increasingly cautioned against for its potential to lead students to essentializing culture andstereotyping others (Baker, 2011: Kumaravadivelu, 2008: Holliday, 2011).
One of the leading and most prolific applied linguists engaged in the culture debate,
Adrian Holliday, suggests that, instead of viewing culture from a top-down perspective withnation or ethnicity as the primary unit of comparison, we should instead be considering abottom-up view of culture. This bottom-up view of culture he proposes is based on his
grammar of culture (Holliday, 2011, 2013), which in turn, which in turn developed from thenotion of small cultures (Holliday, 1999).
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Holliday’s (2013) grammar of culture.
The small cultures theory sees culture as action in a similar way to Street (1993) who
suggested that culture is better understood as a verb. The idea of small cultures, which
occupies the central area of Holliday’s (2013) grammar, is that culture exists where everthere is cohesive behaviour (Holliday, 1999). In a simplified sense, culture is the social
processes that emerge as a result of this cohesive behaviour whenever people come together.
This small culture notion is also seen by Holliday as being ‘small’ in regards to theimposition it makes on reality (Holliday, 1999). Large monolithic nation based cultures cut
up reality along national borders and place diverse groups under a single cultural banner.
Small culture does not assign characteristics to group members as a starting point, but only
once they have emerged through interaction.
There is undoubtedly merit in the work of Holliday, Kramsch and many others who
have contributed to our understanding of culture. Despite this, as a language teacher who
agrees that culture should be an integral part of language education, I remain unsure as to
how this better understanding translates into classroom practice. It would appear that I am
not alone. The large number of textbooks featuring explicit cultural content indicates that
there is a desire among teachers for culture in their classes. However, particularly among
textbooks in Japan, a large number are simply cross-cultural works contrasting ahomogenous essentialized national entity with a homogeneous essentialized Japan. In most― 15 ―

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and perpetuate such beliefs of the other, rather than simply exploit them for linguistic gain.
Indeed, the many textbooks that pass my desk for inspection usually display a conceptof culture more inline with that of Tylor (1903) than Holliday (2011, 2013) or Kramsch(1993), no doubt in the belief that these notions of culture are the most likely to recognised
by students and get them to engage with the language.
The lack of development in culture pedagogy has not been missed by all. Atkinson(1999) made a call for a better understanding and definition of culture in TESOL, a call hereiterated again recently (Atkinson & Sohn, 2013). Atkinson’s call for TESOL to moveaway from the top-down, or received view of culture as he called it, seems to have been
largely missed by the large publishing houses and the materials they create. It has not been
missed, however, by some actively engaged in teaching. Baker (2012a, 2012b), for example,
suggests an approach of intercultural awareness. In such an approach cultural content inclass should revolve around a greater understanding and investigation of the students’ ownnational culture. By understanding the cultural divisions, diversity and change within theirown national culture Baker (2012a, 2012b) suggests that students will come to view thenational unit in less essentialist terms and, when they move to an examination of a foreignculture, transfer this understanding of diversity, division and change onto other national
cultural groupings.

Light at the end of the tunnel?
The goals of an intercultural awareness approach are laudable and it is clear that they
are possible in the foreign language classroom. Although such an approach does notencompass all the developments in the concept of culture (i.e. the small culture concept), it
is compatible with most of the more recent developments and recognises culture as fluid,changing and recognises the national unit as largely imagined. Additionally, an intercultural
approach is consistent with the more recent understanding of the role of English as a lingua
franca.

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Ultimately, the value of such an approach and the fact that it is clearly something thatis possible in the classroom seems to have alerted other teachers to it. At the 2013 JALT
conference held in Kobe I attended a number of presentations showing how teachers havebeen making their own courses and materials in an attempt to guide their students’ to agreater understanding of the divisions and diversity within their own national culture.
Although these exciting intercultural approaches have not yet manifest themselves in thematerials of publishing houses to any great degree, the increasing number of teachersconsidering such options suggests that they may well be soon.
References.
Avruch, K. (1998) Culture and Conflict Resolution. Washington: US Institute of Peace Press.
Baker, W. (2012a) Global cultures and identities: refocusing the aims of ELT in Asia throughintercultural awareness. In, Muller, T., Herdes, S., Adamson., J & Shigeo Brown, P. Innovating
EFL Education in Asia. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillian.
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