Determinants of Culture
factors that most distinguish cultural groups

J. DeChicchis
1Languagel ngu ge f mily

• Language is the most important
determinant of culture.

• People who speak languages thatare genetically related (i.e.,languages which are members of
the same language family or of
the same genetic subgroup) haveother cultural similarities.

• The ability to speak a language isaaa

perhaps the most studied“learned collective behavior” ofhuman beings.

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Language
spr chbund• People in the same sprachbund haveother cultural similarities.

• A sprachbund is an area where, after along period of contact between
peoples who speak di erent languages,
the languages have formed similarities
due to a convergence of linguisticfeatures. In a sprachbund, such as inIndia, the people begin to share othercultural features: similarities of diet,religion, dress, architecture, music, etc.

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Religion
dividing

culture into subcultures• Many cultural di erences can be predicted byreligious di erences.

• Religious di erences can divide populations
into subcultures.

• Despite its small area, the population of

Lebanon has been divided because of civil
con ict due to religious di erences. This map
shows dominance areas of the country’s
seven important religions.

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tr nscultur l uni ier• Religion is also the basis of manytransnational cultural similarities.

• 1/3 of people are Christian.
• 1/5 of people are Muslim.
• 1/7 of people are Hindu.
• The majority Christianand Muslim areas span many
countries across the globe.

• Although Buddhism is culturally

faimportant in areas such as Thailand
and Mongolia, the global populationof Buddhists is relatively small.

aaReligion

5Agriculture
diet ry effects• The oldest Eurasian grain agricultures bothspread to India (from areas 1 and 2 on map)

• In India, a certain type of malnutrition
is strongly associatedwith eating rice, but notwith vegetarianism.

• Agricultural anda

associated dietary
patterns have been
historically importantin cultural development
and human health.

6Diet & Religion
speci l foods nd t boos

• Religion can also have a strong
a ect on a culture’s dietary
preferences.

• Eating pork is discouraged inIslamic areas.

• Some religions discourage thedrinking of alcohol.

• Italians typically eat sh on
Christmas Eve.

• Many religions designate specialfiaaa

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Alcohol & Religion
dry counties in Tex s• In Texas, it is illegal to sell alcoholic
beverages in the “dry” counties.

• In most counties, alcohol sales arepossible, but quite restricted.

DallamSherman Hansford Ochiltree Lipscomb

Hartley

Moore

Hutchinson

Roberts

HemphillOldhamPotterCarson

Gray

Wheeler

Deaf SmithRandall

Armstrong Donley

Parmer• There is a strong correlation between

BaileyCochranCastroLamb

SwisherHale

Hockley

Briscoe

Floyd

Southern Baptist
Catholic
Catholic and Southern Baptist over 25%

Collingsworth

HallUnited Methodist and S. Baptist over 25%
No group with more than 25%

Childress

MotleyLubbock Crosby

Dominant Faith

CottleDickens

King

Hardeman
Foard

Wilbarger Wichita

Knox

BaylorClay
Lamar

ArcherMontague Cooke

FanninCollinHuntRedRiver

Stonewall

HaskellThrockmorton

JackYoung

WiseDenton

DeltaHopkins

RockwallAndrews

Dawson BordenMartinScurry

HowardMitchellFisherNolan

Shackel- Stephens Palo
Pinto
ford

Jones

TaylorParkerDallasRains Wood

HoodJohnson

Hudspeth

Culberson

LovingReevesWinkler

Ward

Ector

Crane

MidlandUpton

Glasscock

Sterling Coke

Runnels

Coleman

Irion

TomGreen

Mills Hamilton
Concho

McCulloch

Schleicher

MenardMcLennan

Jeff Davis

SuttonTerrellPresidio

Val Verde

Edwards

Blanco Travis

BrazosBastrop

Comal

CaldwellGuadalupe

Medinaer
Wall

BanderaMontgomery

Washington
AustinGonzalesHarrisFayetteColorado

Counties in which areligious denomination
makes up more thana quarter of the population.

DimmitLa Salle

DeWitt

McMullen Live Bee
Oak

Duval

Victoria

Karnes

Webb
Jim
Wells

GoliadBrazoria

JacksonGalvestonMatagorda

CalhRefugioSan
Patricio

OrangeJefferson
Chambers

ounAransasNuecesKleberg
Zapata8

Atascosa

HardinLavacaWharton

Frio

Jim
Hogg

BrooksKenedy© Texas Almanac 2012

Starr
Hidalgo Willacy
CameronSabineLiberty

Fort
Bend

WilsonMaverick Zavala

Tyler

San
Jacinto

Lee

Hays

Bexar
UvaldeTrinity
MadisonPolk
WalkerBurleson

Kendall

KinneyAngelina

Milam

Kerr

Real

Freestone

Robertson

Williamson

Brewster

ShelbyNacogdoches

Houston

Llano

Gillespie

PanolaRusk
Cherokee

LeonBellKimble

MarionHarrisonAnderson

Falls

Burnet
Mason

Pecos

Limestone

Coryell
San Saba Lampasas

Crockett

NavarroBosqueCass

Gregg

Henderson
Hill

Brown Comanche

ReaganUpshurSmithEllis

Somervell
El PasoCamp

Kaufman Van
Zandt

Erath

Callahan Eastland

Tarrant

GrimesGaines

Titus

NewtonKent

San
Jasper Augustine

GarzaFranklin

Lynn

MorrisBowie
Yoakum Terrythe counties with alcohol sale
restrictions (the dry or partially wetcounties) and the counties dominatedby the Southern Baptist religion, but
the Catholic areas are wet.

aGraysonSocial Effects of Religion
m rri ge nd sexu l beh vior

• Religion can a ect patterns of marriage, sex, and genetics.
• For many years, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints permitted polygamy. Some old-fashion Mormons
continue to practice polygamy today. The Utah
Population Database run by the Huntsman Cancer
Institute at the University of Utah studies the DNA pro lesof over a million people married and raised in theMormon faith to better understand disease genetics, andhow marital delity and historic polygamy distinguish thispopulation from others.

• Currently, there is a debate in the USA over therecognition of polyamory, polygyny, and polyandry,and the legalization of polygamy.
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the polyg mous Brown f milySocial Effects of Language
sexu l beh vior nd fertility• Language, via communication, can a ect patterns of sex.
• The striking di erence in birthrates along the French-Germanborder in 1910 was not due to the dominance of Catholicism inFrance and Protestantism in Germany, because the Catholic andProtestant areas of Germany had similar birthrates.

• French-based “education” hadffffa

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spread sexual practices of fertility
regulation from Paris outward.
Such communicative di usion
has been globally replicated,and it has been more rapid in
newly modernizing societies.

10ttr ction nd self-segreg tion

• Very young children prefer otherchildren whose favorite songs arefamiliar to them, and they avoid children
who sing songs they do not know.

• Ethnomusicology research suggests that

• It is very important for workers in themusic serves to de ne and delimit socialgroups.

music industry to understand thesubcultures of musical taste in America.
[Click on the image to run the video.]• Christmas carol popularity can• Shared values about music or otherdistinguish cultural subgroups ofEuropeans.

arts can de ne a cultural subgroup.

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Music

Clothingm teri ls, we ving, sewing• Like food, clothing originallydepended on local hunting, gathering,
and agriculture for its raw materials.

• Technologies of spinning, weaving,knitting, crocheting, and sewing
developed in various places.

• Over time, cultural variation has been
extensive.

• Certain materials, technologies, andaaa

patterns have become emblematic ofcertain cultures.

12Shibboleth
linguistic emblems• A shibboleth is any custom ortradition that distinguishes one
cultural group from another.

• Typically, it is a linguistic behavior,such as a particular pronunciation orphrasing that is emblematic of agroup of people. In this photo, a man
challenges people to pronunce“Tchoupitoulas” in order to identify
his fellow citizens.

• In semiotics, nonlinguistic emblems
may also be called shibboleths.

13Determinants vs. Determinism
The S pir-Whorf Hypothesis• The cultural emblems which we display are determinants of our cultural a liations.
Learning our culture causes us to acquire and display those emblems.

• The values which we assign to various behaviors are also determinants of culture.
• We are often unconscious of the emblems and values of our native culture.
• We are typically conscious of the “foreign” (i.e., our nonnative) emblems and values
we adopt or express, especially when we are consciously trying to “ t in” or topretend that we belong to a cultural group in which we were not raised naturally.

• Determinism is the idea that our unconscious norms of behavior, especially ourunconscious ways of speaking, in uence or determine our ways of thinking. Thisidea is often called the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis.
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Edward Sapir“No two l ngu ges re ever suf iciently simil r to be considered s representing
the s me soci l re lity. The worlds in which different societies live re distinct
worlds, not merely the s me world with different l bels tt ched.”• According to Sapir, because di erent languages represented
reality di erently, it follows that the speakers of thosedi erent languages perceive reality di erently. Sapir and his
student Whorf seem to have held a “weak” view ofdeterminism (or linguistic relativity), which later theorists
contrasted with “strong” determinism.

• The Weak Thesis: Structural di erences between language
systems will, in general, be paralleled by nonlinguistic
cognitive di erences, of an unspeci ed sort, in the nativespeakers of the language.

• The Strong Thesis: The structure of anyone's nativeaaaaa

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language strongly in uences or fully determines theworldview he will acquire as he learns the language.
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“We dissect n ture long lines l id down by our n tive l ngu ge. The c tegoriesnd types th t we isol te from the world of phenomen we do not ind there
bec use they st re every observer in the f ce; on the contr ry, the world ispresented in k leidoscope lux of impressions which h s to be org nized by ourminds— nd this me ns l rgely by the linguistic systems of our minds.”• Using examples of how di erent languages
describe the same action or event in very
di erent ways, Whorf claimed that thosedi erent speakers conceptualized reality
di erently, e.g., the di erent ways that
English and Shawnee speakers thought
about cleaning a ri e.

• Whorf also gave examples suggesting thataafaaaaaaffaff

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ffa language’s patterns could misleadspeakers, as when English speakers
believed that limestone could not burnbecause it was “stone”.

ffaBenjamin Lee Whorf

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Linguistic/Cultural Relativity
How does culture in luence thought?

• Scholars before and after Sapir-Whorf have argued that ourculture, especially our language, in uences or determines ourthought. Wilhelm von Humboldt, Lev Vygotsky, and Alfred
Korzybski have been in uential.

• Willard Van Orman Quine’s position on the indeterminacy oftranslation resonates well with Sapir’s comments on crosstranslation, though Hilary Putnam’s caveats are noteworthy.

• George Lako reviewed arguments for Whor anism in his book

Women, Fire and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal About theMind.

• Computer scientists, such as Yukihiro Matsumoto, have been
inspired by the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis.

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Technological Determinism
technology nd thought• What is the degree to which human thought oraction is in uenced by technological factors?

• Marshall McLuhan: “The medium is themessage.” The medium used to communicatein uences the mind of the receiver.

• Langdon Winner:(1) The technology of a given society is afundamental in uencer of the various ways inwhich a society exists.
(2) Changes in technology are the primary andmost important source that leads to change inthe society.

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