Cross Cultural Understanding - LANGUAGE AND CULTURE

Language (is) a symbolic guide to culture. Vocabulary is a very sensitive index of the culture of a people. (Edward Sapir taken from Wierzbicka, 1997: p1)

Understanding culture according to experts:
Culture indicates all aspects that members of a group share together. Children learn ways of doing things, ways of talking, smiling, laughing, liking, and disliking things. Culture determines people’s action, their social relationship, and their morality (Gurito, 2003: p 1).
Culture is that which the language learner needs to know in order to understand the meaning of the message in another language other than the formal properties of the language code (syntax, morphology, and phonology) (Dwyer, 1996: p.3).
In our daily life, whatever we do is a representation of our culture. The way we talk to friends, parents, teachers, or even strangers shows our culture. The way we dress, cook, eat, drink is also a representation of our culture.
For the example:

Karapan Sapi as one of celebration in Madura can also be considered as a  representation of Madura’s culture.

Rodeo is sometimes considered as representation of American culture, whereas Halloween is considered as western culture (not only American but also British culture).

 
A value is the importance that we attach to something. For instance, Americans highly value independence and self-reliance. So independence and self-reliance are important values for American culture. (Gurito, 2003: p.4)
 
Norms are standard rules and they are accepted by the members of the community. Norms consist of folkways and mores. Folkways, are the way of the people, the customs of the community which, when broken, do not have fatal consequences. The norms concerned are actively enforced by the community, either through a legal action or a social sanction. (Gurito, 2003: p. 5).
examples of Indonesian values.
Indonesians really value family and community, tend to live and do many things with family and neighbors, live with or close to family, parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts, get to know neighbors and also their families. often visit each other, help each other's neighbors.
Usually Indonesian cultural norms are a combination of culture and religion. For example, in Indonesia, living together between two unmarried people, a boy and a girl, is against the norm. Even though this phenomenon is common in western countries because it does not contradict their norms.

Taboo is the prohibitions or avoidance in any society of behavior believed to be harmful to its members in that it would cause the anxiety, embarrassment, or shame and euphemism is to avoid mentioning certain matters directly (Wardhaugh, 1998: p. 234).
Suyitno wrote that there are many ways to express „no‟, to reject, or to decline an offer or a request. Here are some of the ways people from various cultural background say ‟no‟
In Japan and Korea, people offer food and drink by using negative expression, like “Wouldn’t you like some more tea?” If the answer for this offer is “no” then it means the offer is accepted.
In France, the answer for that kind of offer is “Merci” which means
“Thanks”. But in this context “merci” means “No, thanks” which in American would be meant “Yes please”
(Suyitno, 2000: p. 154)
Suyitno also mentioned about the way people rejecting something that have a very close relation with their cultural background. In American culture, people tend to be direct when they are rejecting a request or an offer. They will use an explicit words to express their rejection, such as:
A: “Can I help you?”
B: “No, thank you. I can manage by myself‟
A: “Would you like something to drink?”
B: “No, thanks”
Unlike the Americans who are straightforward in expressing their rejection, the Javanese tend to avoid expressing their rejection openly. It is related to their culture in which it is considered impolite to say ‟no‟. Here are some expressions that are commonly used by Javanese people to reject a request or an offer:
A: “Apakah kamu bisa mengambilkan buku itu?”
B: “Bukunya jauh, saya sedang mengerjakan tugas”
Although I am Javanese, I have also rejected people's requests by using the word "no".

Anna Wierzbicka believes that there is a very close link between the life of a society and the lexicon of the language spoken by it. (Wierzbicka, 1997, p.1). She found many words in one language that are difficult to be translated into other language due to its strong cultural value. She did some studies on the relation between emotion words and culture. According to her, different culture encourages different attitudes towards emotions, and these different attitudes are reflected in the lexicon and the grammar of the language associated with the culture. (Wierzbicka, 1994).

Language is a symbol or word to communicate between people and between regions or between countries.
Culture is a way of life, customs, language, clothing that is passed down from previous generations to future generations.

References

Riyanti, Rahayu Dwi and Darminah, and Chandrawati, Titi and Arifin, Tajul (2013) Cross Cultural Understanding. In: What Is Culture. Universitas Terbuka, Jakarta, pp. 1-34. ISBN 979011057X

Austen, Jane, 1987, Pride and Prejudice, Galley Press, Leicester.

Adams, Penny, Brian Heaton and Peter Howarth, 1989, Socio-Cultural issues in English for Academic Purposes, MacMillan Pub, London

Byram, Michael, 1997, Cultural Studies and Foreign Language Teaching, in Susan Bassnett (ed), Studying British Cultures, Routledge, London.

Dwyer, Davis, Antonia Schleicher and Lioba Moshi, 1996, The role of culture: In the language classroom, __

Goddard, Cliff, 1996, The “Social Emotions” of Malay (Bahasa Melayu. Ethos 24 (3): 426-464.

____________, 1997, Congtrastive Semantics and Cultural Psychology: „Surprise‟ in Malay and English. Culture and Psychology Vol 3 (2):153-181.

Gurito, A, 2003, Culture, unpublished paper.

Mingkid, Hermanus Karel dan Sudradjat S, 1995, English for the SLTP, M2S, Bandung

Suyitno, Imam, 2000, Pemahaman Aspek Budaya dalam Tindak Berbahasa, Bahasa dan Seni 28 (2): 147-159.

Wardhaugh, Ronald, 1998, An introduction to sociolinguistics, Blackwell, Massachusetts.

Wierzbicka, Anna, 1992, Emotion, Language , and Cultural Script, in Shinobu Kitayama and Hazel Rose Markus, Emotion and Culture: empirical studies of mutual influence, American Psychological Association, Washington.

______________, 1997, Understanding cultures through their key words, Oxford University Press, New York.