1. Learning a Second Culture -H. Douglas Brown

2. Nature of acculturation
Content
Introduction 1
Nature of acculturation 2
Culture Shock 3
Social Distance 4

3. Second language learning
Second language learning is often second culture learning.
It involves the acquisition of a second identity.
Language has high social context.

4. Acculturation
Acculturation: the process of becoming adapted to a new culture.
French: cognitive-oriented
American: psychomotor-oriented
Spanish: affective-oriented

5. Acculturation To a European or South American,
American culture: frantic, practically no time for personal feeling and reflection
To an American,
French life: backward, ineffectual
Spanish activities: leisurely timelessness, appalling waste of time and human potential
To a Spanish,
Planned change in France seems cold-blooded

6. Acculturation
Language- the means for communication, the most visible and available expression of that culture.
A person’s world view, self-identity, system of thinking, acting, feeling, communication are disrupted by a change from one culture to another.

7. Acculturation 1. Learning a second (another) language.
a). within the culture of that second language (e.g.: an Arab learning English in the U.S).
b). Within one’s own native culture where the second language is an accepted lingua franca (e.g: learning English in HK, India, etc.)
2. Learning a foreign language- learning a non-native language in one’s own culture (e.g.: learning English in Taiwan, learning French in the U.S)

8. Second Language Learning Context
Learning a second language in a foreign culture (1a) involves the deepest form of acculturation.
Learning a second language in a native culture (1b) varies, depending on the country, the cultural and sociopolitical status of the language, motivations of the learners.

9. Second Language Learning Context
For example, learning English in India…..
does not involve taking on a new culture.
A child learning French in grammar school in French-speaking Africa ……..
may not face a cultural conflict.
but face more with a cognitive or ‘educational’ conflict by the necessary acquisition of new modes of communication within a education setting.

10. Second Language Learning Context
Learning a foreign language (type 2) produces the most variable degrees of acculturation.
Because they have a various reasons to learn a foreign language.
To communicate with people in another culture
To fulfill a foreign language requirement in a university
Out of personal interest

11. Second Language Learning Context
Learning a foreign language (1a) is more culturally loaded than learning a second language (1b).
Because language is learned in a context of understanding the people of another culture.

12. Culture Shock
A phenomena ranging from mild irritability to deep psychological panic and crisis
Associates with feelings of anger, hostility, indecision, frustration, unhappiness, sadness, loneliness, homesick…
Most experienced in 1a situation

13. Culture Shock
First, he feels comfortable, delighted with ‘exotic’ surroundings.
As soon as the newness wears off, cognitive and affective contradictions of foreign culture mount up, he becomes disoriented.
Second, he can perceptually filter his surroundings and internalize the environment in his own world view
Then he can feel ease.

14. 4 stages of culture shock
1st stage: the period of excitement over
the newness of surroundings
2nd stage: culture shock emerges, feeling the
intrusion of more cultural differences
into his own image of self and security,
seeking out for support from fellow countrymen
in the second culture,
complaining the local customs..
4 stages of culture
shock
3rd stage: some problems of acculturation
are solved which other problems continue
for some time. General progress, slowly but surely.
The person begins to accept the difference.
4th stage: near or full recovery,
accept of the new culture and
self-confidence in the new person.

15. What teacher can help?
Learners can find a cross-cultural experience to be positive or negative.
Teacher can help that experience to become one of increase cultural awareness and self-awareness for the learner
Teacher can help learners to move through stages of acculturation.

16. What teacher can help? Be a sensitive and perceptive teacher.
A teacher should not expect the learner to deny the anger, frustration, helpless, homeless..
A teacher can enable the learner to understand the source of his anger, to express , then gradually emerge from those depths to a personal form of learning.

17. Social Distance
Social distance refers to the cognitive and affective proximity of two cultures which come into contact within an individual.
‘Distance’ is to denote dissimilarity between two cultures.
(e.g.: American- Canadian, American-Chinese)

18. Social Distance
Relation to TL (target language) group vs. 2LL (second language learning) group
Integration pattern between TL and 2LL groups, assimilation, acculturation or preservation?

19. Social Distance Measuring factors:
dominance, integration pattern, cohesiveness, congruence, attitude, length of residence to describe ‘good’ and ‘bad’.
e.g.: bad situation: Americans
living in Saudi Arabia
good situation: American
Jewish immigrants living in
Israel.

20. Social Distance
The greater the social distance between two cultures, the greater the difficulty the leaner will have in learning second language and vice versa.

21. Social Distance How can one determine degrees of social distance?
Can it be quantifiable, comparable?
It’s rather subjective, which like empathy, self-esteem, and other psychological constructs.

22. Social Distance
William Action proposed a solution, perceiving social distance rather than measuring actual social distance.
When a learner encounters a new culture, his acculturation process will be a factor of how he perceives his own culture in relation to the culture of the target language, and vice versa.

23. Social Distance
If a learner perceived himself as either too close to or too distant from either the target culture or the native culture, he fell into the category of ‘bad’ language learner.
Implication: the successful language learner sees himself as maintaining some distance between himself and both cultures.

24. Cultural ‘critical period’?
Douglas Brown: an adult who fails to master a second language in a second culture may for have failed to synchronize linguistic and cultural development.
A young child who has not built up years of a culture-bound worldview, has fewer perceptive filters to readjust, and therefore moves through stages of acculturation more quickly, acquires the language more quickly too.

25. Language , thought and culture
Euphemisms: ‘telling it like it isn’t’
Garbage men/sanitary engineers, toilets/ rest rooms, slums/ substandard dwellings
Culture is an integral part of the interaction between language and thought.

26. Language , thought and culture
Example sentences:
‘ Did you see the /a broken headlight?’
‘Did you see some/any people watching the accident?
‘How fast was the car going when it hit the stop sign?’ (presupposing the car hit the sign)

27. Language , thought and culture
Language shapes thought? or thought shapes language?
For second language teachers, a knowledge of commonalities between two languages helps understand the total language learning process.

28. Language , thought and culture
Learning to think in another language may require a considerable degree of mastery of the language, but a 2LL does not have to learn to think all over again.
2LL can make positive learning by retaining which is valid and valuable for second culture learning and second language learning.