Communication 484
Cultural Codes in Communication

Introduction

When people speak face-to-face, their words and gestures often express far more than a simple literal meaning. This course examines communication as a process of face-to-face interaction in which people express and negotiate social meanings and social relationships and apply cultural codes of communication.

Here's an example to illustrate what I mean by the phrases express social meanings and cultural codes of communication. A man who is an Apache Indian has encountered several of what he would call "Whitemen" on his Indian reservation in the American Southwest, and he has this to say about the encounters:

Lots of Whitemen, you can tell right away they looking down at you. They look too much, talk right away, shake your hand like that. Some make lots of questions right away. No good. They just doing it for themselves. So we try to get away fast¹.

¹ In an interview with an ethnographer in Keith H. Basso's Portraits of "the Whiteman": Linguistic Play and Cultural Symbols Among the Western Apache (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979)

The Apache man thought some Whitemen were "saying" something beyond their literal words. In the view of the Apaches, the Whitemen expressed condescension in the guise of a too-easy friendliness. In expressing his judgment about the Whitemen, the Apache man used a communication code. Likewise the "Whitemen" were themselves using, whether they knew it or not, a code: both used largely unspoken standards for interpreting and judging their own and others' communication. It is such codes about communication, and how they work in our lives, that will concern us in this course.

Fig. I.1:—Representation of the Role of a Code of Communication

 

The Importance of Cultural Codes of Communication

By our choices to communicate in one way instead of another, we convey important social meanings: intentions, values, and attitudes concerning our relationships. We can choose, as did the Whitemen, to greet another person with a wide grin and ready handshake and to ask right away, "How are you doing?" Or we can come into others' presence, see them, watch them watching us, wait a few minutes while sensing their mood, and then approach them and speak a verbal greeting. Just as these two approaches can have significantly different meanings, so it is with many aspects of our communicative conduct-what language we use, whether we speak formally or in a more relaxed manner, or whether we speak at all. All of these particular choices are potentially meaningful and therefore are potentially consequential for us.

How we select, interpret, and judge the communications we produce with each other are governed by distinctive cultural codes. Throughout this course we will be developing a definition of cultural codes of communication. I'll give here a definition to begin with: codes are more or less systematic ways or standards for producing and evaluating our communicative choices. As part of this definition, I want to emphasize that these codes differ from culture to culture. The Whitemen's greeting described had one meaning when judged according to the Apache code of communication and a different meaning when judged by the Whiteman code. These are cultural differences. They are systematic, they are learned, and they are important.

About the Online Environment

Your online course offers several advantages to the traditional classroom, including the comprehensive Online Student Handbook, the ability to communicate electronically with students and with your instructor, and links to a rich array of online resources

Online Student Handbook

This handbook answers questions about your online learning course, such as how to purchase your text, schedule an exam, obtain a transcript, and get technical help if you need it. The handbook also provides additional resources, such as how to order books or journals from the library and how to study for an online course.

Communication with Your Instructor and Student Peers

This course includes an online student discussion forum. It is the place for you to informally share your reflections about the course material with other students and build a sense of community with them. Feel free to post biographical information about yourself and tell other students about articles, books, or television programs that you have seen that relate to the course material. Your participation in the forum is not graded. I will occasionally look at the forum, but please use e-mail to ask me all questions about course materials and policies.

Online Resources

As an online student, you have access to a wealth of Web resources compiled to provide fast, easy access to information that supports your online learning experience. Online Resources link you to sites with help for writing and research, study skills, language learning, and library reference materials. All links have been assessed for credibility and reliability, and they are regularly monitored to ensure their usability.

Your Active Role as Student

We can learn to become more sensitive and more appreciative of the diverse codes we experience in the world around us. In this course, we shall test the assumption that it is possible to learn about cultural codes of communication by examining case studies that reflect primarily the cultural diversity within the United States of America. We will work with examples of face-to-face communication from a variety of cultures to build a body of theory and vocabulary useful for understanding cultural codes of communication.

You will gain skill in using this theory and vocabulary to build insight into cultural codes at work in your daily life, in films, and in readings. That is, you will be asked to comment on the following:

• the types of communication you observe;
• the premises about communication that participants express; and
• the rules people use to judge their own and others' communicative behavior.

In doing so, you will take on the role of an ethnographer of speaking-one who analyzes and compares speech of different cultures.

The figure below illustrates the kinds of thinking you will be doing in this course to understand cultural codes of communication.

Fig. I.2 —Strategies for Studying Cultural Codes of Communication

 

 

Goals and Objectives of the Course

The goal of the course is to help you achieve a deeper understanding of the nature of culture, of how cultures affect our relations with others, and of the diversity of cultural codes in the United States. Through your readings, observations, and writing, I expect you to meet the following three objectives:

• to demonstrate a working knowledge of vocabulary for the study of cultural codes in communication by defining key terms and illustrating these with examples from readings, films, and daily life;
• to identify and recall patterns of communicative conduct and codes of communication from at least three cultures within the United States of America; and
• to write well-organized paragraphs and short essays that analyze case studies of communication, using the vocabulary and theory of the study of cultural codes.

Course Materials

Textbooks and Reading

• Gerry Philipsen, Speaking Culturally: Explorations in Social Communication. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992.
• Richard Rodriguez, Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez. New York: Bantam Books, 1982.
• Ella Cara Deloria, Waterlily. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1988.
• Bea Medicine, “Ella Cara Deloria: Early Lakota Ethnologist (Newly Discovered Novelist),” [pdf] in Theorizing the Americanist Tradition, editors Lisa Philips Valentine and Regna Darnell (Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1999). (The article is provide online as a PDF document. If you do not have the free Acrobat reader already installed on your computer, you can download it here.)

Why did I pick these books? First, I like them and I look forward to reading what you have to say in response to questions based on them. Second, each of these books is used at many United States and international universities in courses like this one. Third, these books, taken together, will provide an interesting and challenging exposure to the process of thinking about cultural codes in communication. They are rich in living examples of the process of communicating.

Videos

Each of the following films also plays an important role in this course:

• Pygmalion (Public Media Home Vision), the 1938 film of the classic G. B. Shaw play, raises important issues about how people use and react to the use of language in social life. It reveals people who think, speak, and respond to each others' communications in very subtly coded ways.
• Daley: The Last Boss (WGBH), a documentary prepared for PBS, provides a gripping and detailed exposure of the workings of a political culture in the U.S. The subject of the film, the late Mayor Richard J. Daley of Chicago, was a lifelong resident of the neighborhood whose culture you will read about in chapters 2 and 3 of Speaking Culturally. It provides both a historical and a visual perspective on these assigned readings.
• Kramer vs. Kramer (Columbia Tristar Home Video), a 1979 Oscar-winning feature film, presents what I call an American myth, one that is analyzed in chapter 5 of Speaking Culturally. Seeing the movie will provide a rich background to your reading of chapters 4 and 5 and to your understanding of a powerful myth in contemporary American culture.

See the video rental agreement for information on renting these videos from UWEO Program Support. Students in the Seattle are may check out and watch the videos at the Odegaard Undergraduate Library Media Center. If you wish to rent or borrow these videos on your own, some or all of them may be available at your local public or school library or video rental store.

Course Organization, Lessons, Exam

This course consists of eight lessons plus a final exam. You will complete and submit one written assignment for each of the first seven lessons. In Lesson Eight you will submit a practice final examination for evaluation, followed by your proctored final examination (Assignment 9). The following is an overview of the content of each lesson.

Lesson Topics

Lesson One: The Nature of Cultural Codes introduces the idea of culture as a code. It begins with an exposition of the idea of a cultural code, with explicit definitions, taking what is called the "cowboy code" as an extended example. Key terms in the lesson are code and culture.

Lesson Two: Cultural Rules of Communication will focus your attention on the unwritten (or written) rules that people use to interpret and judge how they and others communicate. For example, when someone says "He's a good child. He never talks back to his parents," he or she is using a communication rule-a rule that says how a child should and should not communicate. The key term in this lesson is rule of communication.

Lesson Three: Cultural Terms refers to the key words that reveal what is important to people. In particular, we shall focus on terms that have special reference to the process of communication. Such words as communication, talking dugri (an Israeli expression), and heated speech (from colonial times in the United States) often reveal special meanings that help to characterize a people or a place or time. Key terms in this lesson are key word and ethnographic definition.

Lesson Four: Social Dramas refers to everyday or public events that unfold in a way similar to a play, although the course of action in them is very real. There is tension in social dramas because they begin and are played out when someone violates a rule of the group and other people challenge this violation. Key terms in the lesson are social drama, account, excuse, justification, and code of honor.

Lesson Five: Cultural Stories refers to stories that express a very cultural-and very distinctive-view of the world. This is particularly evident with regard to human relationships. Key terms are story and code of dignity.

Lesson Six: Communicating across Cultures gives an analysis of situations in which communicators use the same language but at the same time have fundamentally different ways of viewing the world and communicating with other people. The key term for the lesson is cross-cultural communication.

Lesson Seven: Codes is our final topic. We will have been studying codes all through the course, but in this lesson we pull together the thinking of all the previous lessons. You will apply what we'll have covered in the course thus far to a very interesting novel, Waterlily, a story about a fictional Dakota Sioux woman.

Lesson Eight: Preparing for the Final Examination is review and preparation for the final exam. For this lesson you will work on your own to answer all the questions of a practice final. This practice final will have the same length, types of questions, and difficulty level of the real final exam. This practice final will be graded and returned to you to help you prepare for the your final task in the course-the proctored final examination.

For the Final Examination, you will schedule and take a proctored final. It will be a comprehensive exam over the entire course; Lesson Eight will have prepared you to take it successfully. Please consult the Online Student Handbook for instructions about scheduling your exam.

Lesson Format

The lessons are designed to build your understanding of theory and vocabulary and to develop your skills in applying this knowledge to case studies.

Reading Assignment. Each lesson gives you strategies for reading a chapter or chapters from the assigned books. In one case, Lesson Seven, your reading assignment is an entire book, the novel Waterlily.

Viewing and Listening Assignment. Lessons One, Four, and Five have a viewing and listening assignment that involve one of the feature films on videocassette. You should treat these viewing and listening assignments in much the same way that you treat a reading assignment. You will be given specific instructions as to what to look and listen for in the film.

Objectives. Each lesson specifies an objective or objectives. You should read these carefully to help you glean the most important parts of the readings and films.

Key Terms. Each lesson specifies one or more key terms. Taking all the lessons together, this collection of key terms provides you a working vocabulary for the study of cultural codes in communication. I encourage you to think about these key terms, to approach each one as a learning challenge, and to try, as the course unfolds for you, to think about how these terms relate to each other to form a coherent vocabulary. I expect you to learn the definitions I present and to be able to illustrate them. I also consider that my definitions are not necessarily the best ones. But they provide a starting point for thinking about the subject.

Written Assignment. A written assignment is an important part of each lesson. There is both uniformity and variety in the assignments of the course. For each of the units you will be asked to answer questions based on the readings, to demonstrate your understanding. Also in each unit you will be asked to apply your knowledge of the unit by analyzing and interpreting what you read or see and hear on film. Thus, the assignments are designed to help you acquire information but also to exercise analytical and critical thinking skills at every step of the course. I have organized the course so that if you do a good job on these assignments, you cannot help but learn the material. The assignments prepare you for the final exam.

The Final Examination

You will take a proctored final examination after completing Lessons One through Eight. You will submit a practice exam in Lesson Eight, which I will evaluate and return to you. You must submit all of the assignments before taking the final.

The final exam is comprehensive and draws on chapters 1 through 6 of Speaking Culturally and all of Waterlily. The exam is closed book and is worth 40 points toward your final grade. You will have two hours to complete the exam. See Lesson Eight for detailed information on the final examination.

Criteria for Evaluating Written Assignments

This is a "W" course. It satisfies a writing requirement for the University of Washington. As such, you will be evaluated not only on the substance of your written work but also on the clarity and appropriateness of your writing. Additional criteria for evaluating your written assignments are as follows:

1. You should make specific reference to key vocabulary items that are specified as most pertinent for the particular assignment.
2. The answers/comments should be written clearly and the text proofread to correct typographical and spelling errors.

Grading

The requirements for the course and their relative weight in determining the grade are as follows:

• 8 written assignments, 10 points each (80 points possible)
• Final exam, 40 points
• Possible total of 120 points

Your decimal grade will be based on the following standard:

For instance, 95%=114 points out of a total possible of 120 points and earns a 4.0.

Submitting Assignments

Please see the "About Your Instructor" page on the course syllabus for instructions on submitting assignments.

Practice Written Assignment

Following is a practice assignment that is based on material in this online course introduction. Ordinarily, you will have a great deal more reading to do for an assignment, and thus the questions will draw from more material. This, then, is a much-reduced version of the typical assignment for the course, but it does give you an idea of what the assignments are like and what will be expected of you.

For this practice assignment there are four questions. The first two are short answer questions that test your comprehension of the material. The third question asks you to apply your understanding of the material. There are ten points possible in the lesson. You will not submit this practice assignment to me.

Assignment: Re-read this online introduction to the course and answer these questions as best you can on a separate sheet of paper. Then, compare your answers to the sample answers written by a beginning student of this course, found in the appendix to this course.

1. In this online introduction to the course, the expression social meanings was introduced. Based on your reading of this online introduction to the course, how would you define that expression? State your answer in the form of a definition: "Social meanings are . . ." in one complete sentence. Then, provide one example of a social meaning based on the Apache and Whiteman example discussed in the introduction. 2 points
2. In this online introduction to the course, the expression cultural codes of communication was introduced. Based on your reading of the introduction, how would you define that expression? State your answer in the form of a definition: "Cultural codes of communication are . . ." in one complete sentence. Then, provide an example of how social meanings help give us a clue to cultural codes of communication, drawing from the Apace and Whiteman example. 2 points
3. In the Apache and Whiteman example quoted in the introduction, there are several terms and phrases that refer to some aspect of communication. These could includes such words as "talk" and such expressions as "talk right away," "make lots of questions," and so forth. Write a two-paragraph statement about how you think this Apache man's statement reveals his particular understanding about the nature of good communication and bad communication behavior. You may, for example, write about what you think he would consider good communicative etiquette. You will need to be a bit creative here, paying close attention to the words of the man's statement and then making some interpretations of your own as to what he was saying or expressing. There are no "right" answers to this question. Your answer should be two paragraphs of three to five sentences each. 6 points

About the Course Developer, Gerry Philipsen

I am a Professor of Communication at the University of Washington, where I have been on the faculty since 1978. Prior to that I was on the faculty at the University of California, Santa Barbara, from 1972 to 1978. I received my BA in Speech and in Social Science from the University of Denver in 1967, and my Ph.D., which focused on the ethnography of communication, in 1972 from Northwestern University.

There are many aspects of communication studies that interest me. My research specialization is the study of different cultures and their ways of speaking, with a particular emphasis on United States cultures and subcultures—this is the subject of Speech Communication 484, the course you are now taking. I also have long-term interests in effective decision-making within discussion groups, in communications as a means to enhance cooperation, and in public speaking and persuasion.

At the University of Washington, I teach many undergraduate and graduate courses. I was honored to receive a Distinguished Teaching Award for this work in 1984.

Student Information Form

Now, I'd like to find out more about you. Please fill out the Student Information Form. You'll find a link to it on the syllabus for this course.

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