Cultural emphasis

Cultural emphasis is defined as an important aspect of a culture which is often reflected though language and, more specifically, vocabulary (Ottenheimer, 2006, p. 266). This means that the vocabulary people use in a culture indicates what is important to that group of people. If there are a lot of words to describe a certain topic in a specific culture, then there is a good chance that that topic is considered important to that culture.

Background

The idea of cultural emphasis is rooted form the work of Franz Boas, who is considered to be one of the founders of American Anthropology (Ottenheimer, 2006, p. 15). Franz Boas developed and taught concepts such as cultural relativism and the "cultural unconscious", which allowed anthropologists who studied under him, like Edward Sapir and Ruth Benedict, to further study and develop ideas on language and culture (Hart, 2005, p. 179).

Application

One way in which cultural emphasis is exemplified is a populace talks about the weather. For example, in a place where it is cold and it snows a lot, a large collection of words to describe the snow would be expected.

For example: whiteout, blizzard, sleeting, snowdrift, powder snow, packed snow, fresh snow.

In a place where it is hot, a cornucopia of associated terms would be expected.

For example: dry heat, muggy, humid, sticky, monsoon season, sweltering.

A concentration of related terms for similar phenomena suggests the importance in distinguishing between them. Furthermore, if you are not from the area, or that culture, you might not have experienced or know the difference between, for example, a dry heat or a humid heat, when the difference may have huge implications for the outcome of a particular action.

References

Hart, W. B. (2005). Franz Boas and the roots of intercultural communication research. International and Intercultural Communication Annual, 28, 176-193.
Ottenheimer, H. J. (2006). The anthropology of language: An introduction to linguistic anthropology. Belmont: Thomson Higher Education.

Eskimo words for snow, popular urban legend that the Inuit or Eskimo have an unusually large number of words for snow
Linguistic relativity, or "Sapir–Whorf hypothesis", the idea that the varying cultural concepts and categories inherent in different languages affect the cognitive classification of the experienced world in such a way that speakers of different languages think and behave differently because of it

Culture

Outline

Sciences	Cultural anthropology Cultural astronomy Cultural ecology Cultural geography Cultural neuroscience Cultural studies Culturology Culture theory Neuroculture

Subfields	Bioculture Cross-cultural studies Cross-cultural communication Cross-cultural leadership Cross-cultural psychiatry Cross-cultural psychology Cultural analytics Cultural economics Cultural entomology Cultural health Cultural history Cultural mapping Cultural mediation Cultural psychology Culturomics Intercultural learning Intercultural relations Philosophy of culture Popular culture studies Semiotics of culture Sociology of culture Sound culture Theology of culture Transcultural nursing

Types	Constructed culture Dominant culture Folk culture High culture Individualistic culture Legal culture Low culture Microculture Official culture Political culture Civic Popular culture Urban Primitive culture Subculture Alternative culture list Super culture Vernacular culture Culture by location

Aspects	Acculturation Cultural appropriation Cultural area Cultural artifact Cultural baggage Cultural behavior Cultural bias Cultural capital Cross-cultural Cultural communication Cultural conflict Cultural cringe Cultural dissonance Cultural emphasis Cultural framework Cultural heritage Cultural icon Cultural identity Cultural industry Cultural invention Cultural landscape Cultural learning Cultural leveling Cultural memory Cultural pluralism Cultural practice Cultural property Cultural reproduction Cultural system Cultural technology Cultural universal Cultureme Enculturation High- and low-context cultures Interculturality Manuscript culture Material culture Non-material culture Organizational culture Print culture Protoculture Safety culture Technoculture Trans-cultural diffusion Transculturation Visual culture

Politics	Colonial mentality Consumer capitalism Cross cultural sensitivity Cultural assimilation Cultural attaché Cultural backwardness Cultural Bolshevism Cultural conservatism Cultural contracts Cultural deprivation Cultural diplomacy Cultural environmentalism Cultural exception Cultural feminism Cultural genocide Cultural globalization Cultural hegemony Cultural imperialism Cultural intelligence Cultural liberalism Cultural nationalism Cultural pessimism Cultural policy Cultural racism Cultural radicalism Cultural retention Cultural Revolution Cultural rights Cultural safety Cultural silence Cultural subsidy Cultural Zionism Culture change Culture minister Culture of fear Culture war Deculturalization Dominator culture Interculturalism Intraculturalism Monoculturalism Multiculturalism Biculturalism Pluriculturalism Security culture Transculturism

Related	Animal culture Archaeological culture Bennett scale Bullying culture Cannabis culture Circuit of culture Coffee culture Cross-cultural Cultural center Cultural Christian Cultural Mormon Cultural competence Cultural critic Cultural Detective Cultural determinism Cultural diversity Cultural encoding Cultural evolutionism Cultural homogenization Cultural institution Cultural jet lag Cultural Judaism Cultural lag Cultural literacy Cultural mosaic Cultural movement Cultural mulatto Cultural Muslim Cultural probe Cultural relativism Culture speculation Cultural tourism Pop-culture Cultural translation Cultural turn Cultural sensibility Culture and positive psychology Culture and social cognition Culture gap Culture hero Culture industry Culture shock Culturgen Children's culture Culturalism Cyberculture Death and culture Disability culture Deaf culture Emotions and culture Intercultural communication Intercultural competence Languaculture Living things in culture Media culture Oppositional culture Participatory culture Permission culture Rape culture Remix culture Tea culture Transformation of culture Urban culture Welfare culture

Category Portal Commons WikiProject changes

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 3/29/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.

Cultural emphasis

Background

Application

References

See also