Cultural Values — страница 2
- Категория Иностранные языки Культурология
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than traditional methods and represents the entire value chain of a broadly defined industry from suppliers to end products, including supporting services and specialized infrastructure. Stereotype is a fixed set of ideas about what a particular type of person or thing is like, which is (wrongly) believed to be true in all cases. INTRODUCTION The subject of my diploma work is cultural values. Our perception of foreign cultures is usually based not on their complex reality, but on the simplified image they project. The clearer and more sharply defined that image is, the more convinced we will be that we are intimately acquainted with it: it is a mere outward confirmation of knowledge we already possess. All cultures have been designed to meet universal human needs: for shelter - for love — for friendship. While they have commonalties, they have great variety too! Values - universal feature of culture, how they might vary within and between cultures. One universal feature of culture is values. A value is something that is important to people — like honesty, harmony, respect for elders, or thinking of your family first. We can't see values directly, but we can see them reflected in people's ordinary, day to day behavior. What we value shapes what we do. If respect for elders is important to me, I might listen very patiently to grandmother's stories and not argue with her. In fact, I might turn to her for valuable and wise advice. If I value honesty, I will hope that my friends will tell me the truth and not what they think I want to hear. If harmony is more important to me, I prefer to say things that make people happy, even if those things are not exactly true. In the course of human interaction, evaluations are assigned to given types of behavior, attitudes, and kinds of social contact. Taken together they form the belief and value system, the cultural premises and assumptions, and the foundation for law, order, and the world view of given cultural groups. These systems embrace a number of assumptions about how the world is put together. Some values and norms, differentiate between good and evil, right and wrong. Some of these assumptions are made explicit in the beliefs and myths of the people. Beliefs, value systems, and world view often combine with other features of social and cultural organization to provide shared cultural symbols. The actuality and novelty of a theme consist in the following points. Problems of the intercultural communications and cultural values are "young". Scientists started to consider them rather recently. In Russia researches have begun only in the 80th years. In such a way, there is not enough literature and materials on the given questions. Therefore any new works and researches make the significant contribution to studying these problems. Objects of research in my diploma work are behavioral samples and cultural clusters. 1. DEFINITIONS: BELIEFS, VALUES It is useful at this juncture to make some distinctions between beliefs and values. BELIEFS Beliefs are generally taken to mean a mental acceptance or conviction in the truth or actuality of something. A belief links an object or event and the characteristics that distinguish it from others. The degree to which we believe that an event or object possesses certain characteristics reflects the level of our subjective probability (belief) and, consequently, the depth or intensity of our belief. The more certain we are in a belief, the greater is the intensity of that belief. This is well attested to in the power of religious beliefs. There are three types of beliefs, all of which are of concern to us. They are experiential, informational, and inferential. Experiential beliefs come from direct personal experience, of course; they are integrated at the intrapersonal level. The second type involves information. This is transferred on the interpersonal level and shows great cultural variation. Here cultural beliefs are stated, transferred, learned, and practiced. Informational beliefs are connected with what are called "authority belief," or credible information sources. If a group of people believes that exercising increases the individual's physical and mental well-being, these believers may also be willing to accept athletes as authority figures even though the testimonies of these idols range beyond their physical prowess. Witness the selling success of Olympic champions and football stars in promoting breakfast food or panty hose. Inferential beliefs are those which go beyond direct observation and information. These concern rules of logic, argumentation, rhetoric, and even establishment of facts (the scientific method). Although
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