Teaching Culture in ...

Introduction

           Themes of culture can be ranked according to their levels and importance. For example, it can be looked; on the one hand, at grand themes such as great authors, important historical movements, and classical music, on the other hand, it can be also looked at more minor themes such as current popular trends or news items. These classifications of cultural themes into major or minor themes are frequently called Big “C” or little “c” culture (Jing, 2010: 18).

1. Big “C” Culture

             Great emphasis is put on distinguishing between cultural themes based on particular criteria. For Peterson (2004: 24), cultural themes can be ranked into two levels according to the importance scale. Big “C” culture is “the culture which represents a set of facts and statistics relating to the arts, history, geography, business, education, festivals and customs of the target speech community (Laohawiriyanon, 2012: 85).

             In this respect, any culture which focuses on the products and contributions to a society and its outstanding individuals, is often referred to as Large/Big/Capital/Macro “C” culture including politics, economy, history, literature, fine arts, sciences and geography (Jing, 2010: 5). (Lafayette, 1997) indicates those that fit the Big “C” category include recognizing geographical monuments, historical events, major institutions, and major artistic monuments. Brooks (1968) also defines “big-C” culture as the best in human life restricted to the elitists. Wintergerst and Mcveigh (2010) support Brooks’ view and maintain that the domain of big “C” culture is for the highly educated people. This social class has the power to understand big “C” culture themes because their nature implies a kind of intellectual efforts. Finally, big “C” culture is important in any research related to the issue of culture and language.

2. Small “c” Culture

             Small “c” culture is another aspect of cultural themes. It refers to the daily aspects of life that embody everything as a total way of life (Laohawiriyanon, 2011: 85). For Lee (2009: 78) this type of culture is “the invisible and deeper sense of a target culture” including attitudes or beliefs and assumptions. Peterson (2004: 24-25) defines little “c” culture as the culture focusing on common or minor themes. It includes themes of the two types; the first one is the invisible culture such as popular issues, opinions, viewpoints, preferences and tastes, certain knowledge (trivia, facts). The second type is the visible culture such as gestures, body posture, use of space, clothing style, food, hobbies, music, etc. According to Lafayette (1997), the Little “c” culture includes recognizing and explaining everyday active cultural patterns such as eating, shopping and greeting people; every passive pattern such as social stratification, marriage and work; and acting appropriately in common everyday situations (Jing, 2010: 5).

            It is clear by now that small “c” culture is not restricted to any particular social class but it is intended for all categories and individuals within any society. Little “c” cultural knowledge is essential for intercultural communication situations because it affects the ways of thinking and using a language. The socio-cultural values, norms, beliefs and assumptions entailed in small “c” culture assists members of a particular culture or society to use “appropriate and polite” language within the target society. Therefore, if EFL learners know about small “c” culture in the target culture, they will better comprehend how those in that culture communicate with each other (Laohiwiriyanon, 2011: 85).

3. The Intersection between Big “C” and Small “c” Culture

             All researchers agree that both Big “C” and little “c” cultural themes are interrelated to each other. (Peterson, 2004: 25) recommends that people have to study a variety of issues relating to both big “C” and little “c” areas of culture. (Wintergerst and Mcveigh, 2010) maintain that learners possessing both big “C” and little “c” culture can effectively take part in intercultural communication situations because it affects the way of thinking, behaving and using a language. Peterson (2004: 25) adds more insightful matters into this issue “my point is that you should not make the mistake of focusing on only one limited area when you begin learning about a culture. Pick and choose a variety of subjects to explore from all four quadrants of the table below”. The following table shows that there are various ways of thinking about cultures: 

Table 1: The Intersection between Big “C” and Small “c” Cultures

4. Importance of Big “C” and Small “c” Themes

                Corresponding with the concepts of big “C” and little “c” cultural themes, many cultural frameworks regarding specific aspects of cultural learning in EFL classroom were proposed in relevant research. Chen (2004), for example, carried out a survey to examine Chinese students’ attitudes towards cultural themes in EFL classroom setting. In his study, Chen proposed a cultural framework which includes seven (7) themes under Big “C” (music, social norms, education, economy, politics, history and geography) and nine (9) themes under little “c” (daily routine, life style, holiday, food, gesture, weather , greeting, custom and values).

              Another cultural framework was designed by Lee (2009) to examine how culture was taught in Korean EFL textbooks. Lee’s framework consisted on 22 themes for Big “C” for example art, agriculture, education, sports, and politics and 26 themes for little “c” such as freedom, materialism, informality, fairness, and competition.