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we need to recognize that there are two kinds: discussingperspectives, \\1/hen W emic and etic (Damen, 1,987). Emicperspectives are those articulated by members of the culture to explain themselvesand their culture, while etic perspectives are those of outsiders to the culture who use their own criteria to explain the others' culture. Etic perspectivesinclude those of visitors to the culture, the criteria they use to describe and explain what they encounter, as well as categoriesfor crosscultural description and analysisestablishedby anthropologists and other cultural researchersto describe many cultures. At one end of the continuum, etic perspectives consist of simple explanations from one's own cultural background. This is a common reaction to cultural phenomena-explaining them in terms of perceived similarities or differences to one's own culture, better known consist of as ethnocentrism.At the other end of rhe spectrum. etic perspectives categoriesthat can be used to describe any and all cultures. Some of these categories are drawn from notions of cultural universals and read like the table of contents of introductory cultural anthropology textbooks. They reflect cultural practices and products: institutions like family, kinship, economy, leisure, music, or government. Other etic classifications come from theories of cultural perspectives: value orientations such as individualism/collectivism, lowcontext/high-context, polychronic/monochronic, and the like. therefore, provide frameworks to describe,analyze, and Etic perspectives, explain a culture from the outside.Each etic category carriesassumptionsaboLlt the nature of culture, and it is important to bring out theseassumptions. Emic explanations are perspectivesthat members of the culture use to do not necess:rrilv describeor explain their own way of life. These perspectives for nor does rhe terminology that the rnembersr-rse correspondto etic categories, their explanations. \(/hen asked, members m:ry eirsily expressthe reasons for pcrcultural products and pracrices.Or, given that many fundamental cultr-rral iceberg, bulk of the cultr"rral like the sr-rbrnerged spectives are outside awareness, membersmay have difficulty finding words to fully explain them, just as I had no explanation on American toilet training practices. perspectives on the same touchParfait Awono illustratesthe insider/outsider ing behaviors seen from two different cultures, his native Cameroon and tl're U.S. studentsin his French class.

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In my French I class,we were reviewing greetings.After the usual I asked them horv bonjour, salut, etc.,I introduced handshakir-rg. often they shakehands with their friends.The answer was rarely to u'or.ild never.I then explained to them hor'v friends in Cameroon 'Whenever the)r the same day times during hands several shake Studentssaid they would realwould meet, they u'ould shakehands. 'We explored the possible reasons ly be uncomfortable to be touched. why Camerooniansshakehands so tnuch, with the main one being in Cameroon. themselves the limited personalspacepeopleallo'uv brothers, slsters To make things worse, I told them that frier-rds, Cameroon, without that having walk hand in hand-literally-in any connotation. When they heard this, most studentswere

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*tudent' He saidthat on a exceptfor a Korean-American shocked, hold;"n handsevervwhere' triD to SouthKorea htlx#i;;"pi" lie refusedto hold Ht,t1a h. thought.u.'yioa"v *"1!"f was iust a weird he thought the! "r,i handswith his.ourins, and ttttvra trv holding handsonlv if Americankid. stuaenil ffii;;;i they had to. I havenoticedthat people living in this country., As a Cameroonian rare occai""i i""tn eachoiher a lot' The in the United States are when others touching ;;pl. sionsthat I have.br;;

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friends eivins each other deal (handshuk.); fo' "iatt*tfiitttg); ob'eruid thlt holding ii'*;;i;t hue to comfort t". ;;;ht;' parents hold younger.kids situations: haids occurs i" ,fr. f.lfo*ing h"ttds ai a sign of intimate attecwhen crossing ,o"a'iil;;;^illd individuals of the same gention. Although not tl;liti;;*ht"'*o countrv alwavs consider this in ;;;;il der are seen holding;ffi;] them love Partners' biased negative perception ot' Sar In view of the unfortunate and not culturil circles' studentsdo and lesbian life in malf n-ttit"" of use of issue lesbian' The want people to think they are Bay.or here' In eeneral' people in personal ,pu.. tputt' Touching infringes "t'o*t;;:t;;ff;lay Pt;i"ul ihe united s,"r., '"'t!i';;;;t that freedom. the different interpretationsthe Mv eoal was to show students to cultures' one behav,u^i p..ron"l bth^';-:;;';;;;;tttrdine wantand unmirked in another' I ior can be marked ;;;;;i;;re they and closer' are in Cameroon ed to stresstn. t^tt'ihlii";pt; acquaintances' I' think my io"ttting tottche'd-bi ing be tolera te ever "tia differenle' I that if iri-rtt lgle ,they students became bunchrct "*"it surrourded by a find themselvesin Cameroon or

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ReuiewParfaitAworto'saccountandidentifytlteemicandeticperspectiues' Basedontbecultures,'ouk'o*'whatotherperspectiues(emicoretic)canyou describes? add to the touching behauiot he

' 81 CuLtuReL PE,RsPr-c-rtvr,s

Etic Iterspectiues: Perceptions It is a daunting task to identify the perspectives of a culrure.Fortunatelyfor lerpguage teachers, anthropologists, interculturalists.and others have devised frameworks for examining cultures. These frameworks, becausethey apply to all cultures, are examples of etic perspectives. A number of rnodelsof etic perspectives ?rc prcv-rent in the field. In essence, these models presume that there is a finite set of realities that all cultures must address.These realities are part of the human condition. Different cultures perceivetheserealities in distinct ways. These distinct perceprions,in turn, lead to different beliefs,values, attitudes, and practices-in a word, to different worldviews. For example, a fundamental reality of the human condition is nature. Therefore, a basic etic perspectiveis the perception of humankind in relationship to nature. Do the people of a culture seethemselvesin control over nature? Or do they see nature as controlling them? Each of theseperceptionswill lead to different values, beliefs, attitudes, and practices. By determining how cultures perceive this and other aspectsof the human condition, we are able to identify worldviews. The models of etic perspectivesare thus very useful in attaining cultural understanding. These models include perceptions of humankind, humankind and nature, time, acrivity, social relationships (Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck, Formodelsof etic 19601;perceptions of self and others-"individualism/collectivism" (Hofstede, perspectrves, see 1'984);perceptions of uncertainty-<.rtr..rtainty avoidance" (Hofstede, 19g4); Appendix A, p. perceptions of inequity-"power disrance" (Hofstede, 1984); "masculinity/femiL57. ninity" (Hofstede, 1984), and others. To summarize at this juncture, cultural perspectives are both explicit and tacit. Members of the culture have their own explanations, emic perspectives. Outsiders bring etic perspectives,their own ways of explaining others' cultures using criteria that they apply to all cultures. The interplay between emic and etic perspectives is crucial to cultural comparisons and to cultural understanding. The central challenge in this process is to make tacit perspectivesexplicit. VrEwporNTS oN CurruRRL PERSpECTTvES Once these emic and etic perspectivesare brought to light, however, there is still a significant obstacle in the pathway to cultural understanding: point of view. To illustrate this obstacle,let me describea researchtask I assignedto a group of language teachers. Their task was to research the culture surrounding football at a nearby high school. \7e all amendeda game on a windy, frigid night in October and observed the action that unfolded, on and off the field of play. From this observation,.the teachersdecided on persons to interview about football. They supplementedtheir interview findings with readings and discussions,and amemptedto make explanations about U.S. culture basedon their research. The task was to discoverand articulate cultural perspectives,using the framework of products, practices, communities, and persons. The teachers chose a wide variety of involved people to interview: coache's, players,parents, a referee,pep band members,rt,td.nl bystanders,even a radio announcer at the game. As the teachersshared their results in class, an intriguing picture began to appear. Informants, members of the culture. ."presJ.d
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s ( ) l l l cs l l i l r ' ( ' (ll) c r s l ) c c t1 f o c l t b a l l ,w h i c h w a s t o b e c x p e c t c d .I l ' r ' c v c r i '',t divergent,cven corrflicting, views also emerged. lJanclltlcrnbcrswerc criri,'rrlof footbarllarrd the amount of monev that the school dcvoted to tl-ris sport at the expenseof other extracurricul", fo, ".iiuiti.s other students. Somedislikedtlre attitude of cerrainfootball players ""d;;;_ tus they errjoyedin the sclroo^ as they walked down the halls. One coach talked about the importance of character-building, teamwork, discipline, achieuinn goals, and learning other lessonsfor responsibleadulthood, which *... ,..] ondary to football itself. The only female member of the football team saw her task as one of achieving equality with the boys, gaining acceptance. A teacher/coach recognizedthe inherent contradiction of valuing the physical violence of the game and educating for citizenship at the same time. One student cared little about the game and was only interestedin the evenr as an opportunity to socializewith friends and to meet girls. A parent saw the competirion as a necessary evil, something that her son would have to do if he was to succeed in life after graduation from high school, even though she disliked the aggression of football and worried about her son getting hurt. This posed a dilemma for many of the languagereachers, who did not know how to resolve this multiplicity of perspectives. Americans seemedto hold different perceptions, values, beliefs, and attitudes about the cultural practice of football. What was the "American" perspectiveon football? Whar was the answer? Part of the difficulty in determining such a unifying perspective is that rhere are many points of view, multiple perspectives on the nature of culture. Earlier, I described an examination of cultural anthropology t[at I carried out and the many schools of thought, or theories of culture, that I encountered. Although rhere are many dilfureqces among these various schools, they differ most significantly in the area of perspectives.That is to say, these schools offer different explanations of cultural meaning-the perceptions, values, and beliefs of the culture. These varied explanations, can be abstract and philosophical. For example, cultural materialism holds that the values members share derive ultimately from the economic realities of their culture, whereas structuralism maintains that culture consists primarily of the myths createdby membersof the culture and the duality of mental constructssuch as raw and cooked, male and female. How to reconcilesuch points of view? Understanding perspectives, in my opinion, representsthe most challenging aspectof teaching culture. The task, simply pur, is to identify the perceptions,values, beliefs, and attitudes of the culture. However, culture consists of numerous communities, all coexisting under the umbrella of a national culture. These communities, in theory at least, sharecommon perspectives. In fact, by its very nature, the national culture presumessuch common perspectives. In practice, on the other hand, these various communities often hold different perspectives.Some of them are in opposition-sometimes in open conflict, as in pro- and anti-abortion communities,pro-environmentand pro-development groups, criminals and police, or vying political parties. It boils down to this: cultural perspectives depend on your point of view. I'm using point of view literally, in rerms of how you choose ro view cultural perspectives. Given shifting points of view, how can languageteachershope to offer accurateexplzrnations of cultural perspectives?

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. 83 PEnspl,c-rtvEs

T n r t E E [ ) o t t ur s v p V t p w o N C u u r u R p -T.h" vvorkingsolurion I proposeis to presentalternativeviewpointsas part of there rrc "'?rll . lthor,rgh I k , , , , i ,i , r E , , 1 . . , o r d i s c o v e r i n gi n t e r p r e t a t i o u sA viewpoints and theoriesof culture, I will reduce theseto three broad approach' es (adaptcdfr.,-' artin and Nakayama, 1,997lto explainingcultural perclectives: tte functionalist view, the interpretive view, the conflict view. In sunple as culture as a unified whole, culture as rerms, thesecan be defined respectively distinct communities, and culture as a competingcommunities'

onGulture of Yiew Iigure ?.3:Three Points

Perspectives

InterpretiveView View Functionalist cultureas an integrated, cultureas definedby distinct and members communities whole harmonious THr

ConflictView cultureas separate in conflict communities

FUNCTIoNALIST VIEw The functionalist view takes the broad view of culture, most often at the national level, using the nation as the focal point. Drawn from social sciencetheory, it assumesa national cultural community, a national way of life. This perspective to ensure holds that a society constructs systems or structures-institutionsof the institutions the Accordingly, society. of that the harmonious functioning as a the culture culture establish the key products, practices, and perspectivesof whole, as the following diagram illustrates.

Yiew of Gulture Functionalist 7.4: The Figure

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'Tlre vier,v functiorralist l)crtainsrtt thr' ,-r',,'rffiHll.rr"l, culture and society are likely to encounter, or visitctrs such as an tourists broadest-what tlrcir rrt involvement with the laws and governsysterrt. educirtiorral riencewith the expe parttcipation in the economic sysrrent, encounterswith the liealth care system, that the culture is an integrattem, and the like. The functionalist view assumes ed, harmoniouswhole, and that it tends to bc sL..rc.There is also an assumptiol of peacefulcoexistence,of resolution of conflicts for the common good. It is at this level that politicians talk about "the people"-an appeal to those who supposedlyconstitute the heart of the culture, or to that dimension that unites all members of the culture. Even though the functionalist view bypassesthe existence or role of other communiti"r *ithin the culture, it does address a common question that arises in culture learning. This question is about national culture. What makes the generalFrench French?Mexicans Mexican? Italians Italian? And so on' Broad 'We have to community' izations about the way of life apply to this national assumethat there is something that all members of any national culture share, by virtue of having participatedin its social institutions. The to varying degrees, history oi , *lr.tte or nation, particularly in terms of its political, social, and The functioneconomic development,revealsmuch of its cultural perspectives. alist view, in effect, is the culture that dominates most language/culture textbooks and materials. earlier tend to addressthe funcdiscussed Also, most of the etic perspectives tionalist view; they are often applied to national culture. Applying these etic perlike these: "Americans spectivesto the national culture leads to generaLizations activityfutufe-oriented, tend to be individualists, monochronic, low-context' collecbe oriented, informal, and tend to value equality;" "Japanese tend to tivist, hlgh-context, being-oriented, formal, and tend to value hierarchy'" Similarly,-the notion of *o.ldrriew is often presentedat the level of the national culture community; hence it supports a functionalist view of culture. In the case of the high rchooi football study, the functionalist point of view would seek to identify the broad national culture perspectivesand determine where and how they are reflected in this microcosm of the larger culture. The belief that sacrifice,hard work, competition, and teamwork make for success' held by all those for example, would be used as a predictor of the perspectives with the sport in the high school. associated Key Questions portrayed in the institutions of r What are the cultural perspectives the culture? o How are theseperspectives reflectedin the cultural phenomenon under study? r How are theseperspectives reflectedin groups or communities? r How are theseperspectives reflectedin individuals?

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Find a source that describestha "natir>nnl characteristics" 6ee Brake et al.. 1995) of your culture of origin. Being honest, apply each of tbese national characteristics to yowrself to seewbicb ones drp .'zlatiuelydccurdte. Apply thesecharacteristics to ntembers of your family or othcrs you krcow from your culture. To contrdst this, find a source of characteristicsfrom another national cwlture and apply these to )', ,,rself. What obseruations cdn you mal<.e about the fwnctionalist uiew?

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The interpretive view assumesthat cultural meanings or perspectivesare defined by the members of the culture in the circumstancesin which they find themselves,either as individuals or as members of communities. Since many communities comprise a culture, there are an equal number of cultural perspectives. The interpretiveview does not addressthe notion of a national culture commurrity.All culture, in the interpretiveview, is local (Geertz,1973).

pretive point of view presumesthat there will be mulriple perspectives, as many as there are participants. ptF 8 6 . T n a c ; H l N cC u t - . l u t i . F pnnclrcu : tr{st,ECTIV IE NS

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The interprerive view places grear emphasis on the emic perspective,rhe insider's view, and assumesthat this is the view that matters most. Insiders are exactly that: those who are members of the communities in question. If members of the national culture are not membersof a particular community, they are not really insiders of that community and are not in a position to offer views on behalf of that group. In the football researchproject, taking the interpretive point of view would assumethat each of the groups associated with the phenomenon of football has a valid perspective.The band members have their view, just as the players, the

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Key Questions involvedin this phenomenon? .lrVl-ratare the groups or col-lllrlunities or communitiesview the r How do the participantsin these{:r()ups phenomenon? view the phenomenon? . F[,rw do individual participants

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Currunp: lNrPRrRrrtNGCoMMUNITIES tneRNING of which you are a member'For Draw up a listof a few groupsor communities and carried out by its members, an euentsponsored each community,describe this including yourielf. Composea brief speechin which you briefly recount member' euentaid explain its importanceto this community and to you as a 'Work to one another,and then ask each Deliueryour speeches with a colleague. beld by this community and their maniabiut the perspectiues other questions of compdrethe perspectiues foilo*lrg theseinteruiews, festatiins in the euent. -What uietu interpretiue the canyou makeabout obseruations your communities. of culture? llpl
Trtr CoNFLICT Vtrw make up the culThe conflict view purs rhe emphasis on the communities that its institutions ture, particularly on their interactions with the core culture and has its urrd'"rrrorrgthemselves.Although this view acceptsthat each community Tci them' among relationships harmonious o*r, p.rrp-.ctives, it does 1-rot "Jr,r-. one with or conflict the contrary, it assumesthat thesegroups are in competition for influence' power' or control' The conflict view perceives ".roth.r,u. "yi"g ,ri.*, culture as a place where struggles for ih. ..rrtral feature power ".rd power among communities are played out'

the society' The core culture is the communitY that controls the institutions of groups of of consist Microcultures, cocultures' or other cultural communities participate They distinctsetsof practicesand perspectives. personswho possess

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l l . lt l l c ' c ( ) r c c t l l t t l r ( ' \ ' c tf h ( ' n J r s p e c t i v ecso m e i n t o c o n f l i c tw i t h t h 1 ; s c 9t 1;ther. -l'his cotnnruttitics in tltc cttltutc. view underscores the dynamic, evolvingnature of culturc. The conflicts are points of potential changein cultural p.rr"p".tiu., and pl actices. Looking ar tlre football project in rerms of rhe conflict point of view, it appears that the bancl p.,,o. rn and its members are in competition wirfi rfic football program for school funding, status, and influence in the school. There also seemto be issues of equality betweenthe male playersand the femaleplayer. Key Questions o What are the groups or communities involved in the cultural phenomenon? o How do thesegroups or communities perceive themselves in relation to other participating groups? o what are the issuesof power (authoritS dominance, or influence) between or among thesegroups? o How do individuals perceiveissuesof power (authority, dominance, or influence) in rhis phenomenon?

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Scan a feru newspapers, both local and national. Make a short list of the disagreements, conflicts, competitions, disputes, negotiations, confrontations, alliAnces' or collaborations described in tbe news. Next to eacb item on your list, identify tbe groups or communities inuolued. If the community has a-n officiatl name or title, write this down; otherwise, assign a nAme. As best you cyn, list the issuesof power that are inuolued, from tbe uiewpoint of eacb of the communities. 'what obseruations can you make about tbe conulict uiew of culture? The advantage of these three perspectivesis that each offers a distinct viewpoint '$fhen on cultural phenomena. we look at culture from differenc viewpointi our understanding is increased. By acknowledging and seeking multiple p.rrp..tives, we begin to grasp the compiexity of culture. \Webegin io ,.. that there are many possible explanations,nor jusr one right answer.

SuggestedReadings
.|amesBanks (1991), in TeachingStrategiesfor Ethnic Studies, has developed an approach to teaching a muldcultural curriculum that is based in part on examining events from multiple perspectives. He describeshow an issue such as social protest can be explored from a variety of viewpoints: the political system, social institutions, literature, language, music, and ari. Even though Brake, \Talker and \)Talker (1995) wrote Doing Business Internationatty: ihe Guide to CrossCultural Successfor businesspersons, they present an excellent synthesis of 10 cultural orientations (etic perspectives) drawn from a number of research.r,l" cultural studies, anthropology, and intercultural communication. They explain thesein a clear,succinctmanner and use fhem as a frame for comparing cultures

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