跨文化交际(英文).ppt

Definitions of culture Culture is a term used in confusing and contradictory ways. There is no standard definition of culture. In 1952 Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of more than 164 definitions of culture in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions. Different definitions of “culture” reflect different theoretical bases for understanding, or criteria for evaluating, human activity. Anthropologists most commonly use the term “culture” to refer to the universal human capacity to classify, codify（把…编成法典） and communicate their experiences symbolically. This capacity is long been taken as a defining feature of the genus Homo. The Modern Chinese Dictionary: 1) The total sum of material and spiritual wealth created by the mankind in the process of the social and historical development, esp,literature, art, science, education, etc. (From this we can see culture includes everything, material and spiritural, created by human beings) 2) The ability to use the written language and possession of book knowledge . 1、 Sir Edward B. Tylor writing from the perspective of social anthropology in the UK in 1871 described culture in the following way: “Culture or civilization, taken in its wide ethnographic（人种志研究的） sense, is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society. 2、 More recently, the United Nations Economic, Social and Cultural Organization UNESCO (2002) described culture as follows: ... culture should be regarded as the set of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual and emotional features of society or a social group, and that it encompasses, in addition to art and literature, lifestyles, ways of living together, value systems, traditions and beliefs. 3.Kluckhohn’s definition: Culture consists in patterned ways of thinking, feeling and reacting acquired and transmited mainly by symbol