CULTURE

1
CULTURE

• BASIL HATIM
• Hong Kong
• 2007

2
IDEATIONAL MEANINGS

• There is more to registers Field than
  Technicality
• Thompson (1996 28) We use language to talk
  about our experience of the world, including the
  worlds in our own minds, to describe events and
  states and the entities involved in them.

3
REALITY I

• For he approached these faces even of those
  near and dear as if they were abstract puzzles
  or tests. He did not relate to them, he did not
  behold.
• Sacks (1985)

4
REALITY II

• Photographs of 16 famous people, politicians,
  actors, etc., recognition of whom was expected
  for her educational level, were presented
  individually. She recognized only President
  Kennedy the first time, but not on subsequent
  occasions.

5
INTERPERSONAL MEANINGS

• There is more to registers Tenor than Formality
• We also use language to interact with other
  people, to establish and maintain relations with
  them, to influence their behaviour, to express
  our own viewpoint on things in the world, and to
  elicit or change theirs.

6
INTERACTION I

• How could he, on the one hand, mistake his wife
  for a hat and, on the other, function as a
  teacher at the Music School?
• Sacks (1985)

7
INTERACTION II

• She was observed to have severe memory impairment
  and difficulty naming objects.

8
TEXTUAL MEANINGS

• There is more to registers Mode than Spoken vs
  Written
• In using language, we organise our messages in
  ways which indicate how they fit in with the
  other messages around them and with the wider
  context in which we are talking or writing.

9
HUMAN TEXTUALIZING

• and yet it is precisely the downfall of
  judgment (whether in specific realms, as with Dr
  P., or more generally, as in patients with
  Korsakovs or frontal-lobe syndrome) which
  constitutes the essence of so many
  neuropsychological disorders
• Sacks (1985)

10
ROBOTIC TEXTUALIZING

• She was discovered to have severe visual agnosia
  in October 1967 during a naming task, and was
  institutionalized because of poor memory at the
  time.

11
THE TRANSLATION PROCESS

• In the translation process, the translator,
  consciously or unconsciously, often adjusts the
  original ideational/interpersonal and textual
  profiles with his or her own attitudes.

12
CONSPIRACY

• BUT IS IT ALWAYS THE CASE THAT MOTIVES ARE
  PERSONAL/ IDEOLOGICAL? DO WE ALWAYS HAVE TO
  ENTERTAIN A CONSPIRACY THEORY?

13
TRANSLATION TRADITION

• COULD THE REASON FOR THE ALTERATION SIMPLY BE THE
  DESIRE TO UPHOLD THE NORMS OF THE TL TRANSLATION
  TRADITION

14
RHETORICAL NORMS

• INDEED, COULD THE REASON FOR THE ALTERATION NOT
  BE THE DESIRE TO UPHOLD TL RHETORICAL NORMS (EG
  THE CONVENTIONS OF A PARTICULAR GENRE, A
  PARTICULAR DISCOURSE, OR A PARTICULAR MODE OF
  ARGUMENTATION)?

15
TEXT-GENRE-DISCOURSE TRIAD
DISCOURSE
GENRE
TEXT
16
CULTURE MAGNITUDE

• If culture is all that humankind creates, from
  mascara to myths, marriage vows to slang, then
  complexity comes as no surprise.

17
VANTAGE POINTS

• Civilization. Big C, heritage etc.
• Communication. Verbal and non-verbal
• Intercultural communication. The capacity to
  cater for other cultures
• Group or community interactions. Insiders and
  outsiders, haves and have-nots

18
VANTAGE POINTS

• Dynamic construction (of the other) including
  values or beliefs of self and others
• Evolutionary psychology. The nature and function
  of the human brain. Innate biological
  commonalities

19
CULTURE

• Culture is not a material phenomenon it does not
  consist of things, people, behaviour or emotions.
  It is rather an organization of these things.
• (Goodenough 196436).

20
CULTURE WITH A SMALL C

• 1) Ecology Animals, plants, local winds,
  mountains, etc.
• 2) Material culture Food, clothes, housing,
  transport and communications
• 3) Social culture Work and leisure

21
CULTURE WITH A SMALL C

• 4) Organizations, customs, ideas Political,
  social, legal, religious, artistic
• 5) Gestures and habits

22
CULTURE WITH A CAPITAL C

• It is the forms of things that people have in
  mind, their models for perceiving, relating, and
  otherwise interpreting them.
• (Goodenough 196436).

23
Language and Social Structure

• There is a dialectical interrelationship between
  language and social structure the varieties of
  linguistic usage are both products and practices

24
Products

• products of socio-economic forces and
  institutions - reflexes of such factors as power
  relations, occupational roles, social
  stratifications, etc. - and practices

25
Practices

• practices which are instrumental in forming and
  legitimating the same social forces and
  institutions

26
CULTURE REDEFINED

• Definitions of culture revolve around three
  poles of a triangle
• Products (artifacts, forms)
• Practices (behaviors, sociofacts)
• Perspectives (ideas, knowledge, mentifacts,
  meaning, pragmatic signs)

27
Products

• Artificats
• produced or adopted by persons/communities
• located in physical space,
• the environment (plants, animals, etc),

28
Products

• tangible objects (tool, clothing, written
  documents, buildings, etc)
• more elaborate yet still perceptible
  constructions (written/spoken language, music,
  family, education, economy, politics, religion,
  etc)

29
TWO TYPES OF PRODUCTS

• SOCIO-CULTURAL
• PRODUCTS
• TECHNO-CULTURAL
• PRODUCTS

30
Practices

• The full range of
• actions and interactions that members of the
  culture carry out, individually and with others,
• verbal and nonverbal language in different
  contexts of communication

31
Practices

• generic actions and communicative events
  associated with social groups, using cultural
  products, and governed by norms appropriateness

32
Perspectives

• The explicit or implicit perceptions, beliefs,
  values and attitudes that discursively
• underlie the products
• guide the practices of a culture,

33
Perspectives

• providing meaning
• constituting a unique outlook or orientation
  toward life a worldview

34
EXAMPLELAW ENFORCEMENT

• Objects. Handcuffs, tickets, badges, two-way
  radios, accident report forms, structures such as
  local government and the judicial system

35
EXAMPLELAW ENFORCEMENT

• Practices. Directing traffice, patrolling a beat,
  making arrests, gathering evidence, resolving
  disputes, reporting

36
EXAMPLELAW ENFORCEMENT

• Perspectives. Values, beliefs, views of the law,
  civic duty

37
THE MINUTES

• XXX Meeting Minutes
• DATE
• PLACE
• TIME
• __________________________________________________
  ___________________
• Chair XXX
• Attended XXX
• The Chair called the meeting to order at 10.15 am
• The meeting was called to order by the Chair at
  10.15 am
• Faculty unanimously approved last meetings
  minutes.
• Faculty unanimously approved the XX course
  syllabus.

38
DEGREES OF MARKEDNESS

• PASSIVE WITH NO AGENT
• PASSIVE WITH BY-AGENT
• ACTIVE

39
MINUTES

• Announcement the Chair announced the approval of
  XXX Course
• summarizing that we now have authorizations for 4
  undergraduate programs and 5 graduate programs.
• He also mentioned that the XXX and YYY courses
  are still in development
• and we will bring them to the faculty before
  seeking authorization from XXX.
• The Chair announced that Dr. X will be starting
  preparations of the XXX course

40
SOCIO-TEXTUAL PRACTICES

• social actions and communicative events (GENRES)
  associated with particular social groups,
• using cultural products (including TEXTS),
• conveying particular perspectives (DISCOURSE),
  and
• governed by NORMS of effective, efficient and
  appropriate language use

41
THE CONTEXTUAL MAP

• REGISTER
  PRAGMATICS
• ACTION
• Social Processes/ Institutions (Ideational Field)
  
• gt lt
• Power/Solidarity (Interpersonal Tenor)
  gt lt
• Physical Distance (Textual Mode)
  gt lt

• SEMIOTICS
• INTERACTION
• Socio-cultural Practices
• Socio-textual Practices
• Genre
• Text
• Discourse

42
TEXT

• A unit of sense which relates to how language
  users attend to particular rhetorical purposes
  and thus achieve a variety of rhetorical aims
  (e.g. arguing, narrating as texts).

43
TEXT AS MACRO SIGN

• To be sure Indonesia and Malaysia are far from
  perfectly open
• Still the countrys carefully monitored
  multiculturalism has allowed Malays, Chinese and
  Indians to rub shoulders and get to know one
  another without much rancor

44
TEXT AS MACRO SIGN

• Of course this does not mean that we should
  defend all clergymen. Dependent, pseudo and
  ossified clergy have not been, and are not, few
  in number. There are even persons in the
  seminaries who are active against the revolution
  and against pure Mohammedan Islam. There are some
  people nowadays who, under the guise of piety,
  strike such heavy blows at the roots of religion,
  revolution and the system, that you would think
  they have no other duty than this ...

45
TEXT AS MACRO SIGN

• Tomorrows meeting of OPEC is a different affair.
  Certainly, it is formally about prices.
  Certainly, it will also have immediate
  implications for the price of petrol.
• But this meeting is not primarily about selling
  arrangements. It is primarily about the future
  cohesion of the organization itself.

46
GENRE

• A unit of sense which entails having to
  operate within highly conventionalized text
  structure and texture and thus upholding the
  requirements of conventionalized communicative
  events or occasions (e.g. the compositional
  format of a cooking recipe as genre)

47
GENRE AS MACRO SIGN

• Take for example the case of translating a
  philosophical text which started with the
  illustrative statement when recently. In
  translation, this appeared as not so very long
  ago, a miscue erroneously conjuring up the image
  of a drastically different genre - a fairy tale
  (Fawcett 1997).

48
GENRE AS MACRO SIGN The Tourist Brochure

• The reptile and insect house has exhibits of many
  of the Arabian snakes, lizards, amphibians,
  common insects and arachnids. A huge aviary, with
  a waterfall cascading down rocks into a small
  lake and river, contains several species of local
  songbirds as well as some small raptors.

49
The English View

• The English guide objectifies the zoos contents
  as if these existed quite independently of any
  visitor, who is not even mentioned.

50
The English View

• The displays and rooms are expressed as Actors of
  Actions like having exhibits, containing
  species, and leading back.

51
The English View

• The text world depicted by the English text is
  one in which the visitor is held constant while
  the world is allowed to go round him or her.

52
An Arabic Rendering

• The visitor begins his tour by discovering the
  reptile department, which contains a variety of
  Arabian snakes and lizards. Then he continues the
  journey to find himself within a huge aviary,
  where waterfalls cascade on the rocks, a spacious
  place which contains different varieties of
  songbirds. The visitor continues his journey
  through a long corridor, which takes him to where
  there are baboons.

53
The Arabic View

• The Arabic guide allots great prominence to the
  visitor, who performs specific types of Action
  like beginning his tour, discovering the
  reptile department, and continuing his journey.

54
The Arabic View

• The text world emerging from this orientation is
  one in which the world is held constant while
  the visitor is allowed to go round it.

55
The Anatomy of Mills Boon

• Core Actions dash, rush, fly, hurry, scuttle vs.
  go, run
• Cliches They were entwined in a passionate
  embrace
• Over-Modification run quickly, dash hastily

56
Mills Boon

• Sizzling Metaphors definitely wasnt girlish
  infatuation!
• Embellishment A slow, sweet, sensual pleasure
  drowned her mind
• Fragmented Dialogue the wedding? Or the merger?

57
Mills Boon

• Excessively Vivid Descriptions glittering,
  rough, cool, broad, furious, loving,
  spine-chilling
• Simultaneity She sighed, remembering
• Non-Agency Tears shook her

58
DISCURSIVITY

• Tears sprang to her eyes, streaming, coursing
  down her cheeks.
• There is an implicit supposition that men like
  their stories to be action-packed, whereas
  women prefer a heart-warming tale

59
DISCURSIVITY

• Tears welled in her eyes
• Her heart missed a beat
• He looked deeply into her eyes
• It took her breath away
• They were entwined in a passionate embrace

60
DISCOURSE

• Discourse or the requirement that a particular
  attitude is conveyed

61
DISCOURSE AS A MACRO SIGN

• Consider how the translator of an Inuit legend
  decided to distort the source text by
  suppressing the concept of baby seals when
  rendering the legend in English simply as skins
  from seals less than a year old (Ireland 1989).

62
DISCOURSE AS A MACRO SIGN

• Had the translator been more faithful to the
  original, she would most certainly have given
  rise to the wrong discoursal inference, thereby
  doing the environment-loving natives a great
  disservice through presenting them in a bad light
  to an environmentally conscious western audience.
  

63
THE END
THANK YOU!