Everything you always wanted to know about culture | Saba Safdar | TEDxGuelphU

a colleague of mine wants to start his talk by saying if I were American I would start by telling a joke if I were Japanese I would start by apologizing given that I am English I would start by apologizing for not having a joke in my case I am Iranian Canadian so I thought to represent my Iranian side I start with widely exaggerated claim as you see on the title and then I apologize for it to represent my Canadian Asst clearly you are not going to learn everything there is to know about culture in the next 15-20 minutes that I have but I'm going to talk about two aspects of how culture demonstrate itself manifest itself in our everyday life had through communication and to a specific one communication in terms of insult and humor for what is culture it's a fuzzy concept it is it's it's like water to fish them we are we have difficulty defining it especially defining our own culture because it's all we know there are dozens of definition has been offered by social scientists than recording defining culture and this definition that I usually use it is given by one of the pioneers in the area of cross-cultural psychology and Henry triandos he talks about it in terms of human made part of the environment it is the tangible aspect of our environment is what we we can see that the classroom we have built the parks we have the high base that's the material aspect of our culture but it's also the subjective aspect of our culture it is how we perceive our social environment how we function in our families how we perceive our notion of self the social norms the marital laws the educational framework the legal system we narrow our culture through socialization of course we you are not born with this particular culture there are multiple ways of looking at the examining culture and one of them one of the best ways is or one of the ways that have been studied quite extensively is through looking at cultural values values or preferences and the tendencies we have in our life and again it is instill in us at early as a stage of our life it tell us what is what is important what is valuable in a culture there is a very significant value dimension that has been studied and is quite powerful in terms of examining cultural issues and that's the notion of individualism collectivism suggested by great hopes that a Dutch cross-cultural psychologist on one hand we have individualistic societies Canada is being one of the top five individualistic country we know of in the globe and between these societies we find that the notion of AI is highly emphasized the way we talk about them that the way individualism is understood is that that ma'am very loose social framework where the person the individual is considered to be very important we look after ourselves and our immediate family the eye is highlighted the connection that we are be celebrate or the notion that we celebrate is the notion of and the individuality the uniqueness is valued and being autonomous and is valued and preferred on the other hand of this spectrum we have the notion of collectivism where it is a very tight social framework the we is highlighted the preference is for the individual to contribute to the notion of family obligation well and family connection is highly preferred and expected um I thought in order to illustrate this notion of individualism collectivism I would talk about two aspects that are from communication where we see how culture plays a role in terms of social interaction we have everyday social interaction two of those types are an insult and human so in terms of em insult examining verbal abuse is quite revealing in terms of because a lot about culture because when you look at verbal abuse we know what aspect of a person is highly emphasized in that culture that by denying it we are stripping the person from those characteristic so in an individualistic society where a person is highly valued and emphasized as you and unique we would expect a different individualistic abuse or insult verbal abuse than in collectivistic society I have a study to illustrate that but before before I talk about that that math this classical study I would like the audience to just shout out some insult that they have heard of or they use or they are aware of as as a Canadian could I hear a few insults please what is it slacker thank you and anything else mehran fantastic so we have slacker these are pupil things like that so look at some of these individualistic insults we are aware of and the to large extent it is used in our culture Canadian culture idiot cruel what we are saying here we are stripping the person from psychological characteristic that we consider to be important we have you're denying a person physical characteristic ugly fat that again we celebrate in our culture we are denying a person a notion of civility lack of manner by saying person is rude we are talking about the blurring the difference between human and animal like a pig dirty and of course we have sexual insults as well and then these are some of those then activities that our culture looks down on or be considered not appropriate this is precisely what two researchers Italian researchers are start looking at in Italy they looked at three different regions of Italy then the southern part Catania which is considered to be very bad collectivistic region of Italy and three years northern eastern part of Italy and again the northern part is associated to be the individualistic heart of Italy generally in Europe the norther you get the more individualistic you are or the more individualistic values you hold and they looked at Bologna or central Italy where they had it is not specifically either associated with either individualistic or collectivist take what they did they asked participants to write a page of any insult in Italian language that they are aware of or they are may use they have heard but interest what they found was that the individualistic insult that Mayor you did you just saw in a couple of them you you mentioned it was highly used it was more used than another type of insult that they refer to as relational insult this is mostly used in southern part and would be something like this you are queer and so is your father it is a sexual insult that is attributed to the person and others who are also highly important as the notion of who we are and the connection the person has wish a cancer on you and all your relatives in fact there was an insult saying that which illness on you and 36 members of your relatives so if there was a number inserted in there i insult your sexual insult to the family members rather than just the target person talking about the blurring between an animal and humanity but aband individual but then talking I'm associating the person's relative to an animal and of course incestuous ask them which is again is considered to be quite quite offensive subsequently we know from other studies that is not just people in collectivistic societies that they are they use these more so than individualistic insult they also find them more offensive in a study in Hong Kong they looked at participants and they these participants through various tasks they were given different types of insult insult opposed to do with individual insult I you are stupid and some of the other insult was you are stupid and I suspect and all members of your department or a stupid and these participants they found the second insult much more frustrating and insulting and then than the first one people even show how your physiology her reaction when there is a when we make that distinction the second concept that is just shows this notion of path the importance of culture in our as social interaction is humor characters that can is humor and the characteristic here of humor it has been due to its characteristic it has been argued that it's one of the most challenging forms of communication you most of you probably if not all of you probably are aware that generally jokes don't translate across culture very well that's not to say there are no international jokes then there are some humor that translates internationally and they have gained international acceptance mr. bean is one of those the visual physical type of humor it works cross culturally but there is something about characteristic of humor that makes it difficult to go from one culture to another it has been suggested that the key characteristic of humor is the notion of incongruent elements the more the two elements that in a joke we have are incongruent from what we expect to find the funnier it has so generally in a joke we should expect two scripts if these are scripts go against our expectation we find that funny but what is interesting here is what is incongruent depends on culture let me illustrate this in a in a cartoon a far side cartoon that some I have here is them we find this mildly funny they find this mind--if funny because here is there is one script that there are group of scientists they're all looking pretty nerds wearing glasses white coat lab in this kind of working environment where it's just a bunch of them at all these test tubes and there and the second assumption and the script that is going on is that there is a breakthrough there is a celebration and let's toast for that and let's have a drink but what is funny is just the science is drinking out of that lab till but we are all aware of that we these are the cultural assumptions we have we don't discuss this and that's why it's partly funny to be we all know what is going on but both of these assumptions it's questionable don't translate well in a different culture the first assumption that scientists are nerds but that's that something gets pretty much in most Western societies we are aware of but that doesn't exist in and in for example Taiwan in Taiwan scientists don't have that counts the stereotype of being nerds rather the group who is considered to be nerd or officers whose task is to measure hair lengths of high-school students if they are violating the regulation for it so already we don't we don't have that that concept here so this doesn't translate that the second aspect is many you are celebrating when you are having em and you have a breakthrough what you do you open a bottle of champagne you drink this is also questionable in some culture you kill a goat you don't necessarily have a champagne but it is also even more interesting when we are talking about human that is to do with with language so the language bound aspect of humor that makes it even more complicated than the visual humor such as this I have a one-minute video to show you so the Dalai Lama walks into a pizza shop cause a shocker Pizza oh yeah pizza pizza shop and says can you make me one with everything what's that oh yes do you know what I mean can you make me one Oh with everything Oh how did you get here possible oh I knew that wouldn't work of course it's funny even now on the level that a newscaster is telling a joke about Dalai Lama - Dalai Lama that's that's one one aspect of this is anyone find this funny but the reason that the joke is not working when it is translated to Dalai Lama man it's because again there are two scripts here one is we are talking about going to a pizza shop various specific contexts using a specific language one with everything every topic but we are all aware of that we are coming from pizza culture but then also there is there is another current script going on this is about a spirituality and enlightenment and it's just when it is translated that doesn't work yet Dalai Lama me know he's highly intelligent person he would get that but it's just the funniness of it it tends to disappear so in in conclusion the way people communicate with each other it reflects an mam or cultural orientation what we find offensive what we find funny what we find important in our life what to say and what not to say reflects what culture we come from which we learn at a very very early stage of our socialization and it is this cultural type diversity that worth exploring because diversity is not something that is going to go away tomorrow and the good news is we are capable of understanding that diversity thank you

Channel: TEDx Talks

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Keywords: ted, University of Guelph, Safdar, Psychology, tedx talk, Saba Safdar, tedx, tedx talks, Guelph, Humour, TEDx GuelphU, Culture, ted talk, ted talks, ted x, GuelphU

Id: FaOJ71czAGQ

Length: 17min 36sec (1056 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 30 2012