Cultura Anglo Americana

Helena Maria Gramiscelli Magalhães

Cultura Anglo-Americana

Montes Claros/MG - 2012

Helena Maria Gramiscelli Magalhães

Cultura Anglo-Americana

Catalogação: Biblioteca Central Professor Antônio Jorge - UnimontesFicha Catalográfica:

Copyright ©: Universidade Estadual de Montes Claros

UNIVERSIDADE ESTADUAL DE MONTES CLAROS - UNIMONTES

REITORJoão dos Reis Canela

VICE-REITORAMaria Ivete Soares de Almeida

DIRETOR DE DOCUMENTAÇÃO E INFORMAÇÕESHuagner Cardoso da Silva

CONSELHO EDITORIALMaria Cleonice Souto de FreitasRosivaldo Antônio GonçalvesSílvio Fernando Guimarães de CarvalhoWanderlino Arruda

REVISÃO DE LÍNGUA PORTUGUESAÂngela Heloiza BuxtonArlete Ribeiro NepomucenoAurinete Barbosa TiagoCarla Roselma Athayde MoraesLuci Kikuchi VelosoMaria Cristina Ruas de Abreu MaiaMaria Lêda Clementino MarquesUbiratan da Silva Meireles

REVISÃO TÉCNICAAdmilson Eustáquio PratesCláudia de Jesus MaiaJosiane Santos BrantKaren Tôrres Corrêa Lafetá de AlmeidaKáthia Silva GomesMarcos Henrique de Oliveira

DESIGN EDITORIAL E CONTROLE DE PRODUÇÃO DE CONTEÚDOAndréia Santos DiasCamilla Maria Silva RodriguesClésio Robert Almeida CaldeiraFernando Guilherme Veloso QueirozFrancielly Sousa e SilvaHugo Daniel Duarte SilvaMarcos Aurélio de Almeida e MaiaMagda Lima de OliveiraSanzio Mendonça HenriquesTatiane Fernandes PinheiroTátylla Ap. Pimenta FariaVinícius Antônio Alencar BatistaWendell Brito MineiroZilmar Santos Cardoso

2012Proibida a reprodução total ou parcial.

Os infratores serão processados na forma da lei.

EDITORA UNIMONTESCampus Universitário Professor Darcy Ribeiro

s/n - Vila Mauricéia - Montes Claros (MG)Caixa Postal: 126 - CEP: 39.401-089

Correio eletrônico: [email protected] - Telefone: (38) 3229-8214

Chefe do Departamento de Ciências BiológicasGuilherme Victor Nippes Pereira

Chefe do Departamento de Ciências SociaisMaria da Luz Alves Ferreira

Chefe do Departamento de GeociênciasGuilherme Augusto Guimarães Oliveira

Chefe do Departamento de HistóriaDonizette Lima do Nascimento

Chefe do Departamento de Comunicação e LetrasAna Cristina Santos Peixoto

Chefe do Departamento de EducaçãoAndréa Lafetá de Melo Franco

Coordenadora do Curso a Distância de Artes VisuaisMaria Elvira Curty Romero Christoff

Coordenador do Curso a Distância de Ciências BiológicasAfrânio Farias de Melo Junior

Coordenadora do Curso a Distância de Ciências SociaisCláudia Regina Santos de Almeida

Coordenadora do Curso a Distância de GeografiaJanete Aparecida Gomes Zuba

Coordenadora do Curso a Distância de HistóriaJonice dos Reis Procópio

Coordenadora do Curso a Distância de Letras/EspanholOrlanda Miranda Santos

Coordenadora do Curso a Distância de Letras/InglêsHejaine de Oliveira Fonseca

Coordenadora do Curso a Distância de Letras/PortuguêsAna Cristina Santos Peixoto

Coordenadora do Curso a Distância de PedagogiaMaria Narduce da Silva

Ministro da EducaçãoFernando Haddad

Presidente Geral da CAPESJorge Almeida Guimarães

Diretor de Educação a Distância da CAPESJoão Carlos Teatini de Souza Clímaco

Governador do Estado de Minas GeraisAntônio Augusto Junho Anastasia

Vice-Governador do Estado de Minas GeraisAlberto Pinto Coelho Júnior

Secretário de Estado de Ciência, Tecnologia e Ensino SuperiorNárcio Rodrigues

Reitor da Universidade Estadual de Montes Claros - UnimontesJoão dos Reis Canela

Vice-Reitora da UnimontesMaria Ivete Soares de Almeida

Pró-Reitora de EnsinoAnete Marília Pereira

Diretor do Centro de Educação a DistânciaJânio Marques Dias

Coordenadora da UAB/UnimontesMaria Ângela Lopes Dumont Macedo

Coordenadora Adjunta da UAB/UnimontesBetânia Maria Araújo Passos

Diretor do Centro de Ciências Humanas - CCHAntônio Wagner Veloso Rocha

Diretora do Centro de Ciências Biológicas da Saúde - CCBSMaria das Mercês Borem Correa Machado

Diretor do Centro de Ciências Sociais Aplicadas - CCSAPaulo Cesar Mendes Barbosa

Chefe do Departamento de ArtesMaristela Cardoso Freitas

Autora

Helena Maria Gramiscelli MagalhãesPhD in Linguistics and Portuguese Language (Pontifícia Universidade Católica de Minas Gerais (PUC-MINAS). M.A. in English language (Universidade Federal

de Minas Gerais).Graduation in Letters (Portuguese, English and German, Pontifícia Universidade Católica de Minas Gerais (PUC-MINAS). Teaching

License in Portuguese and English. Author published two books: O Ensino e Aprendizagem de Língua Estrangeira (UFMG Publisher, December 1987), in

partenership with Dr Reinildes Dias, and Aprendendo com Humor (Mercado de Letras Publishers, December, 2010). Currently author is a lecturer and

reviewer of academic texts (books, articles, dissertations, theses) and a content writer for UAB/Unimontes courses both in the Portuguese and in

English languages. Author is also a specialist in evaluating Post Graduation courses for the Conselho Estadual de Educação de Minas Gerais.

SumárioApresentação . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9

Unit 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .13What is this all about?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .13

1.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .13

1.2 Anglo. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14

1.3 Anglo- saxon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14

1.4 Anglo- america . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14

1.5 Anglo-American . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15

1.6 On language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .16

1.7 On culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20

References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26

Unit 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .27Where do these things come from? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .27

2.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .27

2.2 America . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .27

2.3 The USA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .27

References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .45

Unit 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .47Where does this all lead us to? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .47

3.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .47

3.2 Some small talk: american culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .47

3.3 Some cultural traits and the literary text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .52

3.4 Miscellaneous other American cultural traits.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .55

3.5 The performing arts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60

3.6 Culture in second language teaching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .63

3.7 Culture and language teaching policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66

References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .69

Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .71

References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .75

Learning activities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .81

9

Letras/Inglês - Cultura Anglo-Americana

Apresentação

By way of presentation

Those who know nothing of foreign languages know nothing of their own (Goethe).

Hi, there? Dear students, I want you to read the following text and be prepared for some dis-cussion on Anglo-American Culture, one of the disciplines you will study this semester.

TEXT

Three men, an Italian, a French man and a Portuguese went for a job interview in England. Before the interview, they are told that they must compose one sentence in English containing three main words: GREEN, PINK, and YELLOW

The Italian was the first: “I wake up in the morning. I see the YELLOW sun. I see the GREEN grass, andI think to myself,

I hope it will be a PINK day.”

The French was the next: “I wake up in the morning, I eat a YELLOW banana, a GREEN pepper and in the evening I

watch the PINK panther on TV”.The last one was the Portuguese: “I wake up in the morning; I hear the phone GREEN... GREEN... GREEN..., I PINK up the phone

and I say YELLOW?”

◄

Figure 1: Colors represented and USA‘s President Barack Obama.Source: Available at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flower. Access in Feb. 13th, 2011.

10

UAB/Unimontes - 7º Período

To understand this joke you must have a good knowledge of the Anglo-American culture as well as communicative competence in English, since translating the text into Portuguese would be of no use for its interpretation. Why would it be so?

In the text, humor is triggered by linguistic games involving onomatopoeias and phonologi-cal ambiguity specifically provoked through the use of some colors:• Green, green, green - phonological ambiguity – similarity in sound to the ringing of tele-

phones and bells.• Pink – phonological ambiguity – similarity in sound to the word pick, the latter being a verb

which means “take the telephone handle and answer it”.• Yellow-phonological ambiguity – similarity in sound with a language phatic function (Hel-

lo?).

Eventually, what makes the text funny is your knowledge of English, of the world and of the cultural aspects involved. Did you know that?

And yet, some points must be considered and discussed such as: would the words GREEN GREN sound for the Anglo-American people in the same way as they sound for the Brazilian in-dividuals, something like TRIM, TRIM? I mean, would the USA people hear/feel this same sound when a telephone rings? Would they mishear PINK for PICK? Would they hear the words YELLOW and HELLO as having identical sounds? What do you think, dear students?

All these things considered would result in an amazing question: Could you guess the na-tionality of the joke’s author? Find the answer for this question at the end of this unit.

In this textbook, intended for a 90-hour course, I argue that culture underlies and consti-tutes an indispensable factor for the efficient learning and teaching of a foreign language (FL) - English. Having this in mind, we are about to enter the magic world of amazing cultural manifes-tations which invariably (would) intrigue us and interfere in the process of learning the English language. My objective is to show you how this process takes place, how culture and language are tightly intertwined to make language learning pleasurable and effective.

In sum, I demonstrate that language and culture are partners who will help you accom-plish your goal of learning and teaching English properly. It follows that another purpose will be achieved as your minds open to receive different views of distinct countries and societies and their peoples’ intentions, views of the world, habits, Art, and peculiar ways of living and saying things. This knowledge can be acquired delightfully with no pain and lots of gain.

It will be evidenced that culture builds language which in its turn builds culture. The asser-tion seems complex but it is not: language depends on culture that depends on language, that is, they are interdependent. If you disregard culture, the learning of English as a second language will be innocuous, insipid.

We will also approach some concepts pertinent to the relation of culture to language revisit-ing different notions and postulates proposed by contemporary linguists and scholars.

I want you to track this textbook and dive into the richness and beauty of the Anglo-Amer-ican culture and language so that at the end of the course on this discipline you will have been convinced that merging culture and language is fundamental for both teaching learning English, and I hope you will take this conviction with you through your life long.

It is always well to remember that the teaching of any content must always depart from the student’s previous knowledge, and that the central aim of teaching must be the holistic forma-tion of that individual.

The purpose of teaching with these objectives is to form a responsible, cooperative, and crit-ical individual who will be able to change himself and transform society.

Having all this in mind I define for the discipline Anglo-American culture the following ob-jectives:

General objective: to point out the role of culture in the process of teaching and learning English as a foreign language.

Specific objectives: • •DiscusstheconceptsoftheexpressionsAnglo,Anglo-Saxon,Anglo-AmericaandAnglo-• American.• •Revisitsomeconceptsoflanguage.• •Discussgeneralnotionsofculture• •Detect,listanddiscusssomeaspectsoftheAnglo-Americancultureindistincttexts.• •Analyzeandevaluate culturalphenomenaandmanifestations in literary andnon-literary

texts;• •DiscussandevaluatethenatureofinterculturalityfortheteachingofanFL.

Glossary trigger: produce im-

mediate results. Ono-matopoeias: the rep-

resentation of sounds produced by nature,

animals and things as culturally heard, like

meow (of cats), honk, honk (of car horns),

bang, bang (of shooting with a gun), crash (of cars, trains or planes hitting something or

someone or something breaking); Ambiguity: a word having more than

one meaning.

phatic function-language usually used

(only?) to maintain communication, or

fulfill spaces between dialogical moments of communication.

Examples: Hello? Hi?, Hey? Good morning. How are you doing?

Bye, see you soon, Good day etc.

holistic: integral, total, complete.

11


By the time, we have reached these objectives and you have learned the content proposed in this textbook, you will have realized that culture performs a central role in the study and learn-ing of any language and how the latter operates and subsidies any sort of analysis, linguistic, dis-cursive, syntactical, you wish to make.

This Anglo- American Culture textbook is divided into three (03) Units which are also divid-ed in subunits as follows:

Unit 1: What is this all about?1.1. Introducton1.2 Anglo1.3 Anglo- saxon 1.6 Anglo- america1.5 Anglo-american1.6 On language1.6.1 Language is unique and arbitrary.1.6.2 Language concepts and related notions.1.7 On Culture1.7.1 The Relation of Language to Culture1.7.2 Language is determined by Culture1.7.3 Language is part of Culture1.7.4 Language and culture intertwined1.8 References

Unit 2: Where do these things come from?2.1 Introduction2.2 America2.3 The USA2.3.1 Demographics2.3.2 US languages2.3.3 The US symbols: The Flag, The Bald Eagle, The Great Seal and The Star-Spangled Banner2.3.4 Anglo-Americans2.3.5 The (North) Americans: Ethnicity, religious beliefs, rituals, and sacred places2.3.5.1 The Afro-Americans: demography, religious beliefs, economic status, politics, social

issues and education2.3.5.2 Hispanic and Latino Americans2.3.5.3 Immigration and the Whites2.4 References

Unit 3: Where does it all lead us to?3.1 Introduction3.2 Some small talk: American Culture3.2.1 The Spanish Holy Office3.2.2 Witch Hunts in America3.3 Some cultural traits and the literary text3.4 Miscellaneous other American cultural traits3.5 The Performing Arts3.5.1 Last but not least; Musical Theater, Musicals3.6Culture in second language teaching3.7 Culture and second language policy3.8 References

The content of this textbook is grounded on these units and subunits. The topics suggested for debates and discussions complement that content.

To support your work I will provide you with some illustrative analyses of texts and will de-mand you to do tasks in which I include various types of texts as the literary, non-literary and some humoristic ones the latter with the intention of demonstrating how humor is highly de-pendent on culture and on linguistic phenomena.

12


Clue: phenomena - the plural form for phenomenon. The word is originated from Greek. Other examples of words that make their plural in the same way are: automaton/ automata; crite-rion/ criteria.

To know more: Research about the plural of foreign words in the traditional grammar Es-sential English for foreign students, by C. E. Eckersley Essential English is a course in four books, of which this is the first, for the teaching of English to adult foreign students. It aims at giving the student a sound knowledge of the essentials of both spoken and written English and at taking him on the way to a mastery of idiomatic conversational and literary English.

This textbook offers you interactive icons through which you can test your knowledge (tasks), give it a second thought (To learn more), check the meaning of some (most probably unknown) words and expressions that the material contains (glossary), and orient you to deal with the topics better and indicate sites in the Web and virtual libraries which aim at supporting learning (clues). All these interactive icons are suggested along the text and identified as follows:

CLUES TO LEARN MORE TASKS GLOSSARY

I hope, dear students, that you are a little more prepared to deal with the Anglo-American culture, specifically that of the USA, and its implications for the teaching and learning of English. Anglo-American culture is an intriguing and not hard subject to learn.

It is fundamental that you take both the content and the activities of this textbook seriously and read the texts suggested for extra reading. They all constitute basic elements not only for the development of your knowledge, for supporting eventual debates, but mainly for grounding your learning of the cultural aspects involving the English language learning and teaching.

From now on, dear students, investigate all notions and concepts contemplated in this text-book, question them, suggest alternatives for analysis, discuss the topics, try new things and ways, make a difference and emerge from the course with a broader knowledge of the Anglo-American culture, of the English language and about your own one.

This textbook is not intended, and no one would be that pretentious, to exhaust the issues involved in the Anglo-American Culture, or in any other.

The author

GLOSSARYTasks: Activities and

exercises done dur-ing the course. Clue: anything that serves

to guide or orient in the solution of a question, problem, mystery etc. (corre-spondent to Dica in

Portuguese).

13


UNIT 1 What is this all about?

1.1 IntroductionTo understand where all the assumptions

discussed in By Way of Presentation come from, I will approach some concepts and notions about language and culture. Still, some histori-cal, geographical, political, social and religious aspects will be pointed out as they contribute for the formation of the American people and help determine the involvement of culture with language. To achieve such a goal I will re-visit expressions such as Anglo, Anglo- Saxon, Anglo-America, and Anglo-American and will

make considerations on the intimate relation of culture to language demonstrating how language influences culture and how culture helps build language and how both of them intertwine to denude society and explain the social web. Comparisons with Brazilian culture are inevitable and duly provided to enhance your understanding of the content of the dis-cipline Anglo-American Culture. Let us take a look at the following cartoon.

Can you point out what would be consid-ered traits of the Anglo-American culture in this cartoon? If you cannot don’t worry about it; maybe it is because we have not so far dis-cussed these expressions. Anyway, check the answer in the Clue inserted in this page, as it will provide you with some basic knowledge about the American culture.

Based upon your empiricist, epistemo-logical and linguistic knowledge let us revisit some terms crucial for the understanding of what underlies the study of the issues in the discipline in question. After all, what is this all about? Let us learn more about some words and expressions involved in the content An-glo- American Culture.

CLUEThe husband’s use of the word honey, the clothes the men characters are wear-ing. Would Brazilians be dressed like those Americans at home? Moreover also the uncontrollable habit of buying anything from the EBay site is a trait of the (humor in) Ameri-can culture. But would buying things on the Internet be a trait of the American culture only? Of course it would not. But the husband seems indifferent towards his wife behavior – she bought a man! Buying people through the Internet is incongruous. So he used American humor and irony.

TASKFind on the Internet either one article, or news, comment or pa-per which discusses the causes of the American economy problems. Seek for new words and expressions in this material clearly created in face of and from the situation the Americans have been through since 2008.

◄

Figure 2: Humoristic charge-textSource: It appears ver-tically on the left side of the charge. Access 1 May, 2010.

GLOSSARY empiricist: knowledge of the world, from your experience and through media.

Epistemological: knowledge acquired from books, and E-books on the Internet, the scientific knowl-edge.

14


1.2 AngloThe Angles are probably originated from Angeln (in modern Germany). Bede, a Benedictine

monk, wrote that their whole nation/tribe came to Britain, leaving their former land empty. The name England (Old English: Engla land or Ængla land) originates from this tribe.

1.3 Anglo- saxon

Historians use this term to designate the Germanic tribes who invaded the south and east of Great Britain in the early 5th century AD, and the period from their creation of the English nation to the Norman Conquest. The Anglo-Saxon is the period of English history between about 550 and 1066 AD. The expres-sion is also used for the language called Old English, spoken and written by the Anglo-Sax-

ons and their descendants in much of what is now England and some of southeastern Scot-land( between at least the mid-5th century and the mid-12th century).

But the focus here is the expression An-glo which, to a certain extent, comes to de-note all English-speaking people and their descendants, no matter their prior ethnic background.

1.4 Anglo- america

▲Figure 4: North America Map, North America Countries: Mexico, Canada, and the USA.Source: Available at www.wikipedia.worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/na.Access in 11th March, 2011.

Figure 3: People in their costumes during the

Anglo-Saxon era which lasted about 700 AD to

1066.Source: BBC - Pri-

mary History - Anglo-Saxons; Available

at www.bbc.co.uk/schools/primaryhis-tory/anglo_saxons/

- En cache

►

15


Anglo-America refers to a region in the Americas where English is a main language – US and Canada - or one which has significant British historical, ethnic, linguistic, and cultural links. But North America is divided into Anglo-America and Latin America, the latter referring to Mexico, country of North America in which Spanish is spoken. In Canada variably English and French are spoken as native languages.

The noun phrase (expression) Anglo-America concentrates two of the most rich and powerful countries of the world, Canada and the USA, was named by the German car-tographers Martin Waldseemüller and Mat-thias Ringmann after the Italian explorer Americo Vespucci. He explored South America between 1497 and 1502 and was the first Eu-ropean to suggest that the Americas were not the East Indies, but a different territory previ-ously unknown by Europeans. The expression sometimes is a reference to the two countries together. And, although Quebec, the French region of Canada, has a French-speaking ma-jority, it is considered part of Anglo-America due to cultural, historical, economic, geo-graphical and political aspects.

The USA and Canada present different forms of culture manifestations that are rep-resentations of the multiplicity of scenarios which stand before us and are conveyed through language. Obviously there are simi-larities and differences between the cultures of Anglo-American countries because they

share many social, historical and political facts that can be interpreted differently by human beings as unique creatures. Because it would be a very extensive task to proceed with the study of the cultural manifestations of both countries included in the term Anglo-America, in this textbook I will approach only the USA culture which is in itself a kaleidoscope of po-litical, social, cultural, economic, artistic, philo-sophical, historical and traditional aspects, to name only a few.

In this scenario language throughout times denudes the formation of an identity exclusively American and determined by the multiple and multifaceted cultural and linguis-tic manifestations. Therefore language and culture become inseparable.

To prove this fact, dear students, consider that if you see an American movie or sitcom/series attentively and concentrate on lan-guage you will find many cultural aspects in terms of behavior, addressing the interlocutor, ways of viewing the world, familial relations, Art, and realize that those aspects differ from the Brazilian ones. An example is that Ameri-cans think people change. In Brazil such as-sertive would not be consensual. This means that to compare cultures can sometimes be an unviable task. On account of that, some differ-ences and similarities between the American and Brazilian cultures will be dealt with mainly during the analysis and discussion of various topics and sorts of texts.

1.5 Anglo-American The noun phrase (expression) Anglo-

American is generally used to denote the cul-tural atmosphere shared by the United States and English Canada. But the Anglo-American culture is obviously different from the French culture also disseminated in the French Cana-da. Some political leaders (The ex-American President Ronald Reagan and the former Min-ister Winston Churchill for instance) long ago used the expression to discuss the relationship of the United States to the United Kingdom, especially if you have in mind that the Ameri-can territory was colonized by the English,

among other foreigners who reached America before the English had set foot on the Ameri-can soil.

The expression Anglo-American is also used to describe English American, North American persons of English origin, or back-ground. It serves too to define the “relations between the United Kingdom on one hand, and the Americas, in particular the United States, on the other. For example, “Anglo-American relations were tense before the War of 1812”. (Available at www.facebook.com/pages/...America. Access in 17th May, 2011).

TASKSee the film American Beauty and also one of the episodes of the sitcom/series Two and a Half Men (Warner Chan-nel). You will find inter-esting cultural manifes-tations not commonly found in the Brazilian culture or, if manifested in it, it would be in a rather different way. Detect some of them, write them down and discuss them with your tutor and classmates.

TO LEARN MOREWar of 1812 - refers to a military conflict between the United States of America and the British Empire. The Americans declared war for several reasons: ‘a desire for expansion into the Northwest Ter-ritory, trade restrictions because of Britain’s ongoing war with France, impressment of American merchant sailors into the Royal Navy, British support of American Indian tribes against American expansion, and the humiliation of Ameri-can honor’ available at: www.facebook.com/pages/...America. Read this site to obtain more information about the War of 1812.

16


1.6 On languageThe English word language derives from

Latin lingua, “language and tongue”. There is a metaphoric relation between language and the tongue in many languages and it testifies to the historical prominence of spoken lan-guages.

But would we know for sure how many languages are there in the world? It is hard to say. Some people say that there are ap-proximately 5 billion. And whichever is your language among these 5 billion you talk, lis-ten to, and think it is in the special way it has been shaped by your culture (over)loaded with social historical aspects, experiences, be-havior, identities, ethos, mores and attitudes. ‘The chance of meeting someone who talks your language as you do is quite remote.’ (By an anonymous, available at www.developing-teachers.com/quotes/q1.htm. Access in 11th January. 2011.)

However, natural languages can also be based on visual rather than auditive stimuli, for example in sign languages (non-verbal lan-guage) and written language. Codes and other kinds of artificially constructed communica-tion systems such as those used for computer programming can also be called languages. A language in this sense is a system of signs for encoding and decoding information.

The word language has two meanings: as a general concept (including verbal and non-verbal expressions) and a language, (a specific linguistic system, or code, e.g. Italian). Languages other than English often have two separate words for these distinct concepts. French for example, following Saussure’s di-chotomy uses the word langue for language as a concept and parole as the specific in-stance of language, speech. The former is so-cial, homogenous system of rules and part of collectivity. The latter is individual, variable, heterogeneous, not systematic and concrete; it is through speech that language evolves. According to Saussure language is an abstract system and speech the concretization of this system which is in the mind of the speaker who makes it concrete by means of speech. In Brazilian Portuguese we use lingual for the lin-guistic system of rules and linguagem to refer to any form of expression or communication (verbal and non-verbal).

As a general concept, the linguistic phe-nomenon can be defined in distinct ways. One definition sees language as the mental faculty that allows humans to express linguistic be-

havior, learn languages, produce and under-stand utterances. This concept evidences the universality of language to all humans and the biological basis of the human capacity for lan-guage as a unique development of the human brain. This view understands language as in-nate, as Chomsky postulated.

Another definition describes language as a formal closed structural system of symbols ruled by grammatical rules that relate particu-lar signs to particular meanings, that is, Struc-turalism. As you already know, the structural-ist theory was firstly introduced by the linguist Ferdinand de Saussure. This view of language had adepts as Noam Chomsky who intro-duced the generative grammar and defined language as a particular set of sentences that can be generated from a particular set of rules. In the philosophy of language these views are commonly associated with famous philoso-phers such as Bertrand Russell, early Wittgen-stein, Alfred Tarski and Gottlob Frege.

Language is also seen as an instrument for communication that enables humans to cooperate and share experiences. This defini-tion stresses the social functions of language and the fact that humans use it to express themselves and communicate. This view of language is also associated with the study of language in a functional, or pragmatic and sociolinguistic framework. In the Philosophy of language these views are often associated with Wittgenstein’s later works and with lan-guage philosophers such as G. E. Moore, Paul Grice, J. L. Austin and John Searle.

It is well known that the first form of writ-ten language is called cuneiform, but spoken language has been seen as a predator of writ-ing for almost two centuries. Language may refer both to the human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communica-tion, and to a specific instance of such a sys-tem of complex communication. The scientific study of language in any of its senses is called Linguistics.

The human language faculty is thought to be fundamentally different from and of much higher complexity than those of other species. It is highly complex in that it is based on a set of rules relating symbols to their meanings, thereby forming an infinite number of possible innovative utterances from a finite number of elements.

Language origin would date back to the period when early hominids first started co-

CLUEChomsky’s works of 1957,

1955, and 1965 contain what you need to know

about the Innatist theory he advocates in his

Universal Grammar. Such assumption, that language

is innate, is also applied by studies of language in Neurolinguistics and

Cognitive Science.

TASK Find out and explain why the first written

language is called CUNEIFORM. Discuss

it with classmates and tutor.

17


operating and adapting earlier systems of communication based on expressive signs to include a theory of other minds and shared intentionality. This development is thought to have coincided with an increase in brain vol-ume. Language is processed in many different locations in the human brain, but especially in Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas.

Humans acquire language through social interaction in early childhood, and children generally speak fluently when they are around three years old. The use of language has be-come deeply entrenched in human culture and, apart from being used to communicate and share information it also has social and cultural uses, such as signifying group iden-tity, social stratification and for social groom-ing and entertainment. The word language can also be used to describe the set of rules (grammar) that makes this possible, or the set of utterances that can be produced from those rules (syntax), that is, the linguistic code.

However, language is “more than speech and writing, it is the making and sharing of meaning with ourselves and others”, accord-ing to Emmitt and Pollock (1997, p.19).

Languages invariably rely on the process of semiosis to relate a sign with a particular meaning. Spoken and signed languages con-tain a phonological system that governs how sounds or visual symbols are used to form se-

quences known as words or morphemes, and a syntactic system that rules how words and morphemes are used to form phrases and ut-terances. Written languages use visual sym-bols that represent the sounds of the spoken languages, but they still require syntactic rules that govern the production of meaning from sequences of words.

Languages evolve and diversify over time, and the history of their evolution can be re-constructed by comparing modern languages to determine which traits their ancestral lan-guages must have had for the later stages to have occurred. The languages that are mostly spoken in the world today belong to the Indo-European family, which includes languages such as English, Spanish, Russian and a vast range of other groups of languages all over the world.

To conclude, language has a relation to thinking and cognition. Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897-1941), an American linguist already quot-ed in this textbook and famous for discussing this issue stated elsewhere that “language shapes the way we think, and determines what we can think about”, to which Albrecht would add: “Change your language and you change your thoughts” (www.dgtladyKarlAl-brechtquotes). I wonder…How about you, my friends?

1.6.1 Language is unique and arbitrary

Where does this uniqueness of human language come from? It is unique in that if compared to other forms of communication, such as those used by other animals (that can only express a finite number of utterances that are mostly genetically transmitted), it allows us to produce an infinite set of utterances. Moreover, the symbols and grammatical rules of any particular language are largely arbitrary. In sum, human language is unique in that un-like other systems of communication its com-plex structure has evolved to serve a wider range of functions.

How do names attach themselves to particular objects and people? This question dates back to Plato and can still be posed in contemporary times intrigued with the ques-tion: does, and how, this connection mean anything? Today, books have discussed the subject, and Names to Give Your Baby or Read-er’s Digest columns of apt names and profession-als is a good example. The question of naming is a subset of the larger but equally relevant subject of language: is language arbitrary and

conventional (it is simply an agreed label for a pre-existing entity) or is it motivated (it cre-ates the entity which it names)? Do cultural attitudes influence naming practices across centuries and continents, exploring what they mean to someone? Do peoples bear the names they do out of nothing, or are they as-sociated to something or attitudes? The dis-cussion would include psychological analysis, social anthropology, etymology, baptismal trends, ‘different cultures and periods’ social practices.

To cut the long story short, why are lan-guages arbitrary? They are arbitrary in that there is no necessary or natural relationship between the words of a given language and the concepts that they represent. For example, there is nothing in the word “tree” that con-nects it to the concept of a tree; which is why Portuguese and Brazilians can use a totally dif-ferent sign for the same concept: “árvore”; and so on with other languages. Also, languages are arbitrary because the rules for the combi-nation of signs in order to produce complete

TASKAnswer: What are Wernicke’s and Broca’s areas? Search about them, write the information and discuss them with your tutor.

Glossary morpheme: Term used in Morphology. A morpheme is com-posed by phoneme(s), the smallest linguisti-cally distinctive units of sound in spoken language, that has semantic meaning. Example: unbelievable: has three morphemes: “un-”, a bound mor-pheme. (Available at: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morpheme.

TASKAt this point, dear stu-dents, I ask you to take a second reading of the Textbook on Mor-phology of the English Language (2010) writ-ten for your course by Martins, de Souza and Ferreira de Souza to review interesting de-tails about morphemes and related issues and words.

To Expand lEarninGrefer to one of the latest book on this mat-ter: The Way we think, Conceptual Blending and the Mind’s Hidden Complexities, by Gilles Faucconnier and Mark Turner, 2002.

18


thoughts are different from one language to the other, and no set of rules can claim to be the “right” one. For example, in English you say “I like beer”, whereas in Spanish you would say “Me gusta la cerveza” and the translation of the latter into English would be something like: “Beer is agreeable to me”, or [is agree-able to me the beer], which sounds strange in English. But make no mistake: neither of these

formulations has a better claim to accuracy, correctness or truth than the other. In simple words, the arbitrariness of language is the fact that there is no direct connection between the sound or form of any word and the object which it represents in such a way that the sys-tem can only be acquired through social inter-action.

1.6.2 Language concepts and related notions.

Animals and even plants communicate with each other, so some respectful scien-tists say. Therefore, humans are not unique in this capability; however, human language is unique in being a symbolic communica-tion system that is learned instead of biologi-cal inheritance. The users give meaning to symbols/signs that are sounds or things. You must have studied in the discipline Introduc-tion to Linguistics, dear student, that origi-nally, the sign and its meaning are arbitrary. For instance, the English word “cat” does not physically resemble the animal it stands for. Meaning cannot be discovered by mere ex-amination of their forms though symbols have a material form. Why? It is because signs and

symbols are abstractions. An example for that would be: Do the following words resemble the cat mentioned here: Feles/felis, gato, der kate and chat? Of course not because lan-guage is arbitrary: there is no direct relation between the word and the object/sign/sym-bol it refers to. By the way, these are words for cat in Latin, Portuguese/Spanish, German and French respectively.

Undoubtedly language is the most im-portant component of culture because much of the rest of it is normally transmitted orally. To understand the subtle nuances and mean-ings of another culture you must know its lan-guage well. So, take a look at the song below. Shall we sing it?

ChuyệntìnhmâygióTa yêunhaungàyđóAnhlàgióemlàmâyGióđirongđóđâyGióđitìmmâyGióđưamâyđiđâyđiđó

NơinàocógióNơiđósẽcómâyNếunơiđâycómâyEmsẽtìm thấy gióVìgióluônđâuđóYêumâychờmâyvàtìmđếnmây. (Author: the Vietnamese NguyễnThanhHiếu)

Did you sing it? No? Why?

Now, take a look at the following pictures.

Figures 5, 6, 7: Tropical Summer

Source:http://office.micro-soft.com/en-us/images/?CTT=6&ver=14&app=win

word.exe

►

19


Dear students, how is it that a North Pole citizen would understand a summer like the one portrayed in the Figures above? If it is not pertaining to his culture, how could he ex-press himself in his language before such land-scapes with a Delta wing, people surfing and a raft in the northeast of Brazil, if he lives sur-rounded by ice? This enlightens the notion of the relation of culture to language.

Early childhood, children are inherently capable of learning the necessary phonemes, morphemes, and syntax only as they mature. In other words, they have a genetic propensity to learn language aspects already discussed by Chomsky (1962), that is, the innatist theory.

Specialists in this matter claim that hu-man beings come into the world with an ea-gerness to learn, and that same eagerness for language acquisition is a major aspect of this learning. However it is not entirely clear, how humans learn a language. Many linguists would agree that they do it by firstly listening to the adult speakers and trying to communi-cate with them, that is, in their early stages of learning the language they imitate the pho-nemes, the intonation and stress. And later, also through imitation, they start learning grammar.

Early studies demonstrate that American children learn fast in the early years of their life. At one year of age they can use three words consisting of single morphemes (such as eat, mom). At six, they are already able to use about 2,500 morphemes and build simple sentence constructions (for instance “more milk”) which have begun at two. In the early stages, children start by using a vocabulary and grammar largely of their own construc-tion. This is only their attempt to systematize and organize their own simple speech.

When children start to learn standard grammar, they tend to over-regularize it, I mean they learn a general rule and apply it in all situations. For instance, the past tense of 97% of the English verbs is made by adding the suffix -ed, as in talk- talked. Children will often use it to irregular verbs as well. It follows that, obviously, take becomes taked, bring be-comes bringed, drink becomes drinked. This is a dangerous rule to follow as, unfortunately, for these children English has about 165 irreg-ular verbs that must be memorized. To make things worse the 10 most frequently used verbs in English are irregular (be, have, do, go, say, can, will, see, take, and get). Language is far more than a mere means of communica-tion same as our thought and cultural pro-cesses are highly influenced by our language.

American linguists and anthropologists in the last forty years have seen language as being more important than it really is because they say it shapes (and reveals) our perception of reality.

In this line of thought, Edward Sapir and his student Benjamin Whorf (Sapir-Whorf hy-pothesis) claimed that language predeter-mines what we see in the world around us, that is, language filters reality. In sum, you see the real world only in the categories of your language. Sapir and Whorf used the words which symbolize colors to cross cultural com-parisons to give evidence of their hypothesis. They postulate that when you perceive color with your eyes, you sense that visible light which is a portion of electromagnetic radia-tion. As a matter of fact, according to Physics, the spectrum of visible light is a continuum of light waves with frequencies that increase at a continuous rate from one end to the other. In other words, nature has no distinct colors like blue and red. It is our culture and our lan-guage that orient us to seeing the spectrum in terms of the arbitrary established categories we name colors. This spectrum may be di-vided up in different cultures in distinct ways. This statement can easily be proved in the comparison of some English language colors with other counterparts in many other lan-guages. A simple example is the English word for the color RED: rojo, vermelho, rosso, rouge, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and French corre-spondents to red, respectively.

But what the linguists Sapir-Whorf em-phasized in their hypothesis was that the shades of colors were seen differently from culture to culture. It is known that the Eskimos use many terms to symbolize snow, and that Tiv language of Nigeria has only one term to symbolize different colors. In sum people see colors differently. After all, the Eskimos name snow with so many words because they live with it daily, day and night. Following this line of thought, I wonder what words and expres-sions they would use to symbolize lingerie, bi-kini, green pastures, extreme heat, cotton, sum-mer, spring etc.

However, it seems that the linguists have taken their research too far, after all normal men share similar sense perceptions of color despite differences in color terminology from one language to another. Moreover, human eyes have essentially the same physiology. Therefore, all of us can see subtle shades of color and can comprehend other ways of di-viding up the spectrum of visible light.

20


Nevertheless, as economy and technol-ogy increase in complexity all over the world, the number of color terms increase in the same proportion, I mean, the spectrum of vis-ible light is subdivided into many more cat-egories. Still, as the environment changes, language and culture respond accordingly by creating new terminology to describe it.

Sapir and Whorf concluded that these data indicated that colors are not objective, not naturally determined segments of reality, but predetermined by what your culture pre-pares you to see. Do you want some evidence of that? Make the following test: What color is the girl’s blouse in the following picture? (Check the answer in the next Clue.)

Did you answer pink, light pink, light wine, dark pink, Italian grape, violet? If you did it is all right in your Brazilian culture but not in the American.

Now, let’s very briefly revisit some basic concepts of culture because this basic content must have been discussed in disciplines such as Introduction to Linguistics and Semantics during your course.

1.7 On cultureWhat would be the correspondent in English to the following cartoon originally written in

Portuguese? Are you ready to translate it into English? Yes? No? Why?

It is agreed that culture is the sum of all forms of art, love and of thought, which, in the course or centuries, have enabled man to be less enslaved. Nevertheless, some people would simply define culture as what every-body knows, and what everybody else knows,

within a given group. Others would advocate that culture is what lies at the core of an indi-vidual’s behavior and his degree of assimila-tion within a particular environment or social group. Experts have also described culture as the result of the mixture between the system

TASKFind out the English expression for “azul

marinho” in Portu-guese. You will see that

the origin is the same in both languages. Dis-

cuss the subject with your tutor.

Figure 8: Japanese girl wearing a sweater.

Illustration credits by Dennis O’Neil.

Availableat:www.anthro.palomar.edu/language/

language_5.htm. Access in 6th July 2011. ►

CLUEIf you answered mauve

or lavender you did well. You showed some

learning about an American trait. Both

the terms for this color are correct In American

English. They do not see/feel pink in the

girl’s blouse as we do.

TASKRe-read and review

these aspects in the textbooks mentioned.

◄

Figure 9: On Brazilian soccer and fans.Source: www.gazetado-povo.com.br/charges/

TASK What would be the

aspects in the Brazilian culture not shared by

the American cul-ture? And how is that

language conveys such differences? Discuss

them with your tutor.

21


of social institutions, traditions, and beliefs and that complex whole including knowledge, belief, art, law, social moral customs, religion, and ethics and values.

The word values used here does not mean absolute facts, or true occurrences, but

rather traits, beliefs, desires, ways of being that would be more openly and obviously recog-nized, accepted and practiced by the majority in a group. Let’s see how some of these values apply to the American culture.

1.7.1 The Relation of Language to Culture

In some cultures too much use of cursing is considered impolite. This is the case in many Anglo-American nations though you can hear in the America films an excessive use of “fuck you”. The word bloody, used by the student in the charge, is a term for cursing in British

English, and generally used by the 1940s low-er class people in London who made use of a dialect called cockney highly disseminated all over England today. The word bloody is typical of cockney speakers but its repetition, togeth-er with the student attitude is a sign of impo-liteness in any English speaking countries and in America as well. And when addressed to au-thorities, as the teacher in the cartoon above, it becomes a more offensive verbal behavior.

Cockney is competently dealt with by the Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw in his play Pygmalion (1912), according to Shaw a ro-mance in Five Acts, in which Henry Higgins, a Professor of phonetics, bets his friend Picker-ing that he can train a sloppy Cockney flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, to pass for a duchess at an ambassador’s garden party in London by teaching her to assume the figure of gentility and poseur, through the most important ele-ment, he believes, is impeccable speech.

▲Figure11: First American (serialized) publication, Everybody’s Magazine, November 1914.Source;www.bartleby.com/138, wikipedia.Figure12: Mrs. Patrick Campbell to whom Shaw would have written the role of Eliza Doolittle.Source: Pygmalion – Wikipedia, free encyclopedia. pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/PygmalionFigure 13: Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady (1964), film based on the Broadway musical,Source: The Broadway Musical Home - My Fair Lady.www.broadwaymusicalhome.com/shows/myfairlady.htm

▲Figure 10: Different Pond, different fishSource: www .ialf .edu/differentponddifferentfish .html - En cache

22


Packaged as a romantic comedy, the play is a sharp satire of the rigid British class system and a criticism on women’s independence. The play artistic versions include films (1938), an adaptation by Shaw and others, and My Fair Lady (1964), a film version of the musical star-ring Audrey Hepburn as Eliza and Rex Harrison as Higgins. On TV, there were at least three or four productions of the play in 1963, 1983 and 1985.

Based on the 1938 film, Shaw’s play be-came a Broadway musical (1956) of huge suc-cess because of its beautiful musical score and lyrics, by Allan Jay Lerner and Frederick Lowe respectively. A non-English language version of the musical was performed in Brazil (Minha Querida dama,1963) with a convincing Portu-guese translation and the competent featur-ing of Bibi Ferreira as Eliza and Paulo Autran as Higgins, to name only some of the famous Brazilian actors and actresses of that time per-forming in the musical.

Let us now go back to the cartoon and take a look at the teacher’s surprising long face, especially his eyes, to confirm our as-sumption that language intertwines culture. That is why “language and culture cannot be separated, for language is vital to understand-ing our unique cultural perspectives. Lan-guage is a tool that is used to explore and experience our cultures and the perspectives that are embedded in our cultures.” (Buffy Sainte-Marie, American Singer and Song Writer. Available at:www.anthro.palomar.edu/language/language_5.htm, access in 6th July 2011.).

We are starting to realize the relation of

language to culture, that is, the role culture plays in learning or teaching a language.

In any culture the use of language in-volves much more than controlling semantics, much more than what the spoken word or the written language can mean or contain. This becomes especially clear when we study an FL and learn the ways of a particular culture as the use of introductions, salutations, everyday sayings, protocols etc. Such uses in particular give more weight to culture then to the words themselves.

The fact is that anybody studying an FL has to be both bicultural and bilingual to speak the language he wants to learn in a way that does not disparage to the culture and its origin because language is not limited to the use or meaning of words associated to a culture words represent in terms of beliefs and history. Culture and language (grammar/syntax, semantics, morphology, phonology, punctuation, intonation and stress etc.) must intertwine so that words must be used accord-ingly and language achieve (one of) its goals, communication. (Available at: www.thepaper-experts.com).

Language and culture are related in vari-ous ways and because both phenomena are unique to humans they have also been the focus of a great deal of anthropological, so-ciological and ethno-linguistic studies. Cul-ture determines language, but to what extent this takes place is still under debate. Some researchers say language is culture. It follows that to some degree culture is determined by language.

1.7.2 Language is determined by Culture

As I have already mentioned, “language is determined by culture though the extent to which this is true is polemical. The converse, to some degree, would be also true: culture is determined by language” (Language and Cul-ture, available at www.library.thinkquest.org/C004367/la5.shtml.) Culture really determines language, or at least certain of its facets.

It is known that uncivilized tribes which lived in Europe in the time of the Roman Em-pire did not have words for tribunes, gladia-tors, Caesar, praetors, or any other expression referring to Roman administration or govern-ment because these positions and type of sol-dier were not part of their culture. Similarly the ancient Romans did not have words for fac-tory, radio, automobile, or train because these items did not make part of their cultural con-

text. Interestingly, cultures sometimes restrict

what people can efficiently think about in their own languages. Some languages, for in-stance, have only three words equivalent to black, red and white but a native speaker of this language would find it difficult to express the concept of the English word “purple” effi-ciently. Some languages are more expressive about certain topics as Yiddish, for example, “which is a linguistic champion, as it has a reasonable number of words referring to the simple minded” (PINKER, 1994, p.260.) And Yiddish, the language spoken by the Israeli people in Israel, is written from right to left, backwards! Did you know that, dear students? What could be a more cultural difference than that?

23


In fact the spectrum of colors we see as “yellow”, “blue” etc. is seen as an arbitrary division because cultures would divide the spectrum differently. Therefore, the divisions between colors would be a consequence of the language we learn and not correspondent to divisions in the natural world. Another ex-ample of this arbitrariness of the divisions of colors would be the Eskimo words for snow, as mentioned previously, which according to researchers might vary from fifty to two hun-dred or over.

Considering that words determine thought, some researchers adopted this ex-treme cultural relativism and believed that the linguistic structures were entirely dependent on the cultural context in which they existed and that the human mind was an indefinitely malleable structure capable of absorbing any sort of culture without constraints. Such ideas

have now been refuted as more careful and thorough systematic research demonstrated that the division of color spectrum has re-markable similarities between the various and different cultures. Therefore, studies reason that Eskimos use over twelve different words for snow, which is not many more than Anglo speakers do, only because the Eskimos live in a cold climate; in fact they live under snow! It follows that if the inhabitants of the Sahara desert used ten different words to refer to sand I would neither be surprised nor puzzled; nor if the Brazilians used more than one word to refer to soccer (futebol, esporte das mas-sas, peleja), carnival (festejos de Momo, festa da carne, bagunça transcendental) and poor people (pobres, miseráveis, mendigos, cama-das desprivilegiadas, descamisados etc.), but would not care least for sand or snow. Did you get the idea, dear readers?

1.7.3 Language is part of Culture

It was mentioned that some people say that language is culture and for many people, language is not just the medium of culture but also a part of it. An example of that are the immigrants to a new country who try to retain their old customs and speak their first language among fellow immigrants, even if all of them are comfortable with their new language. The reason for this behavior is that immigrants are eager to preserve their own heritage, which includes not only customs and traditions but also language. Again we remind you of the many Jewish in their communities, in which especially the older members com-monly speak Yiddish as it is seen as a part of the Jewish culture.

A good example of how linguistic differ-ences are often seen as the mark of another culture is in Canada, where French-speaking natives of Quebec clash with the English-

speaking majority and those differences com-monly create divisions among the neighbor-ing peoples or among different groups of the same nation.

This sort of conflict is becoming an issue in America as speakers of standard American English, that is, whites and educated minori-ties observe the growing number of speakers of the Black English dialect. Debates emerge over whether it is proper to use “Ebonics” in schools, while its speakers continue to assert that the dialect is a fundamental part of the “black culture”. But it is always well to remem-ber that we are talking about the properties of language in general. And then I ask you, dear students: Should the word “Ivorics”, as a coun-terpart for “Ebonics”, be invented and used gallantly to refer to the whites in schools as well? Let us take a look at Paul McCartney’s lyr-ics/poem in a song.

Ebony and IvoryEbony and ivory live together in perfect harmonySide by side on my piano keyboard, oh lord, why don’t we? We all know that people are the same where ever we goThere is good and bad in everyone,We learn to live; we learn to give each otherWhat we need to survive together alive.Ebony and ivory live together in perfect harmonySide by side on my piano keyboard, oh lord why don’t we? Ebony, ivory living in perfect harmonyEbony, ivory, oohWe all know that people are the same where ever we goThere is good and bad in everyone,We learn to live; we learn to give each other

GLOSSARYEbonics refers to ebony, a type of Eng-lish spoken by some African-American in the USA. The word is also the name of a tree with a black color. “Ivorics” in contrast refers to ivory, a yellowish-white color.

24


What we need to survive together alive.Ebony and ivory live together in perfect harmonySide by side on my piano keyboard, oh lord why don’t we? Ebony, ivory living in perfect harmony

Can you see how Paul deals with the rhyming of the relevant words in the poem, I mean, ebony-harmony-t we? Can you feel the power of language and real images in the second line as he says “Side by side on my piano keyboard”?

Now, tell me, dear students, what is behind Paul McCartney’s lyrics in terms of cultural mani-festations? I remind you that Paul is a British citizen but has lived in America for many years now. Therefore, he is supposed to be acquainted with many aspects of the USA culture.

1.7.4 Language and Culture intertwined

It was said elsewhere that language is a verbal expression of culture. Some experts would even say that language is culture. That would explain why it is generally agreed that the relationship language to culture is closely and deeply rooted. Language is used to main-tain and convey culture and ties and also to provide us with the categories we use for ex-pressing our thoughts. Moreover, the values and customs in the country we grow up in shape the way in which we think to a certain extent.

So to speak, cultures hide in languages.

An insight into any FL would reveal traits of the country’s culture as languages are highly influenced and shaped by culture. Let’s see, in the following figures, how much you know of the American culture and how you perceive language and culture intertwinement.

Consider the characters in the next figure. Look at the first man in line. What does the cartoonist want to mean with the drawings around his head? Now look at the woman and the second man in line. What do their eyes re-veal? Surprise, ignorance of the facts and em-barrassment are involved. Why?

TASKPaul refers to the union

of the black and white notes, an integral

part of the piano he is playing. They stand together in harmony

to make music perfect. Why shouldn’t humans

do the same as these notes? Discuss the sub-

ject with your tutor.

◄

Figure 14: Sir James Paul McCartney plays at the BBC Electric Proms performance, London, England.Source:pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_McCartney.

TASKDiscuss this issue with

your tutor and class-mates. Compare the

situation of Ebony and Ivory in Anglo-America

to Brazil. You will find out that cultures may

share similarities. Ebony and ivory if translated

into Portuguese would carry the same burden

as in American English?

CLUERead more about

this issue at www.lexiophiles.com/.../the-relationship-between-language-and-culture.

Think about this: Would it be plausible to as-sume that our think-ing is influenced by

the language we use? Could it be the other way around instead: Would our language be influenced by our

thoughts?

25


▲Figure 15: People standing in a line of the Court Room.Source: damscartoons.com.www.bhma.co.uk/wait-to-be--seated-greeter-sign-p-1328.ht

This sign, with the same linguistic struc-tures, is also found at the entrance hall of The Four Seasons, a famous restaurant in New York City. Why would it be there?

Research about languages spoken all over the world focuses on the status of languages and show how they have varied and changed over time, and that is due to social-historical- cultural factors. A look at intercultural com-munication examines how these factors can affect interactions between people from countries and backgrounds.

Leveridge (2008) states that different uses of languages convey distinct ideas within dif-ferent cultures and the whole intertwining of such relationships start very early, at one’s birth, but it is only after he is exposed to his surroundings that he becomes an individual in and of their social-cultural group. Children’s lives, opinions and language are shaped by what they come in contact with.

Physically and mentally everyone would be the same, whereas the interactions be-tween persons or groups vary widely from place to place. Behavior patterns resulting from interaction among the individuals in the groups will be approved or disapproved of de-pending on their being acceptable or not, and this will vary from location to location thus forming the basis of different cultures. One’s

view of the world would be formed from such differences.

Linda Hantrais (1989) advocates the idea that culture is the beliefs and practices gov-erning the life of a society for which a par-ticular language is the vehicle of expression. Therefore, culture not only influences every-one’s views of the world but also shapes the language one speaks. Following this line of thought, the knowledge of an FL can enhance the understanding of its culture and people. And yet, Emmitt and Pollock (1997) argue that even if people were brought up under similar behavioral backgrounds or cultural situations but spoke different languages, their world view might be very different.

Conforming to Vygotsky ideas, Sa-pir-Whorf, elsewhere, argue that different thoughts are brought about by the use of different forms of language. In this sense, the individuals would be limited by the language used to express their ideas. And, as different languages will create different limitations, a people who share a culture but speak dif-ferent languages, will naturally have differ-ent world views. And yet, Emmitt and Pollock (1997) claim that language is closely linked to culture and language reflects it and passes it on from one generation to the next. Therefore, learning a new language involves learning a

TASKWhat do you think, dear students, about the question in the Clue on this page? Re-search on the Internet about Language and Thought, by Vygotsky in an eBook at www.eb-ooksbrasil.org/eLibris/vigo.html, for instance, and discuss it with your tutor and classmates.

TO LEARN MOREI remind you that Ben-jamin Lee Whorf (1897-1941), the American lin-guist, in his hypothesis claimed that there is a relation of language to thinking and cognition. He advocates that lan-guage shapes the way we think, and deter-mines all what we can think about. Would be true? Couldn’t it be the other way around and our thought shape the language we speak? What do you think, my friends?

TASKWhy should those peo-ple wait to be seated? What do the linguistic structures mean? Is there any relation of culture to the linguistic structures? Is it com-mon to find such signs in Brazil? Where and what for? Write some considerations about your answers and discuss them with your tutor and classmates.

26


new culture (ALLWRIGHT; BAILEY, 1991). Conse-quently, teachers of a language are also teach-ers of culture (BYRAM, 1989).

As we all know by now, dear students, undoubtedly language is deeply rooted in culture. However in what concerns language teaching and language policy things seem to be quite different. To promote understand-ing instead of misconceptions or prejudices, aspects to be considered when instructing students, language teachers must show that cultural background of language usage, the selection of culturally appropriate teaching styles, and the exploration of culturally based

linguistic differences are needed. Also, lan-guage policy must be put in action to create awareness and understandings of cultural dif-ferences, and to incorporate the cultural val-ues taught. But most importantly it is strongly advisable that Brazilian English teachers help their students realize that there are no better or worse cultures or languages. They are only different. Students’ cultural identity must be kept at all costs.

At this point, dear students, I think you can easily understand what Mr. Gandhi’s quote is all about at the opening of this first unit.

ReferencesALLWRIGHT, D; BAILEY, K. M. Focus on the Language Classroom.New York: Cambridge Univer-sity Press. Anton, M. 1999.

BYRAM.M. S. Cultural Studies in Foreign Language Education.Language Arts & Disciplines. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 1989.

CHOMSKY, Noam. Transformational Analysis. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1955.

HANTRAIS, Linda. The undergraduate’s guide to studying languages. London: Centre for In-formation on Language Teaching and Research. 1989

LEVERIDGE, Aubrey Neil. The Relationship Between Language & Culture and the Implica-tions for language teaching. Written for TEFL,. September, 2008.

PINKER, Steven.1994 - The Language Instinct: How the Mind CreatesLanguage. New York: Har-perCollins. Bookmark. 1994.

POLLOCK, John; EMMIT, Marie. Language and learning: an introduction for teaching. Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1997.

WHORF Benjamin Lee; SAPIR, Edward.Sapir and WhorfHypothesis.In Infopedia. Porto: Porto Editora, 2003-2011.

www.anthro.palomar.edu/language/language_5.htm.

www.bartleby.com/138, wikipedia.

www.bbc.co.uk/schools/primaryhistory/anglo_saxons/ - Em cache

www.developing teachers.com/quotes/q1.htm.

www.facebook.com/pages/...America.

27


UNIT 2Where do these things come from?

2.1 IntroductionFor an effective learning about the ways

culture builds language and language builds culture, in this unit I will present and discuss with you the term America, the geography of the US, some features of the Anglo-Americans and some ethnic groups which came to influ-ence, form and mark the American language and culture. After all, they all contributed for the birth and death of the “American dream”.

Have you ever heard this expression before? And how about the sentence “the dream is over”? Yes, the dream is over. It has been dying since 2003 with the collapse of the Twin Tow-ers (WTC) in New York, NY, and the economic problems since 2008. Mistakes in administrat-ing the country and its economy have been killing it. What will future bring?

2.2 AmericaAs I mentioned in the By Way of presenta-

tion, because it would be unviable in one text-book such as this to deal with all the Anglo-American cultures, I will deal specifically with the USA culture, and some of its implications for the teaching and learning of English.

“America” is usually used to refer to the United States, but only until the political for-mation of the United States after the Revo-lutionary War. The contemporary use of the term America to refer to the US is due to the country’s political and economic dominance in the western hemisphere. In the past “America” referred to South America only. Canadians and

Latin Americans consider such use of this des-ignation impolitic.

One of the defining characteristics of the country as a nation is its legacy of slavery and the persistence of economic and social in-equalities based on race. The Anglo majority is politically and economically dominant. Anoth-er characteristic is that Americans are a mobile people who often leave their regions of origin and U.S. culture has significant regional inflec-tions. Most Americans are aware of these dif-ferences despite the fact that these regions have experienced economic transformations.

2.3 The USA In this section I will briefly approach some

of the geographical, historical, demographic and social aspects of the USA. The discussion is not intended to be exhaustive, most obvi-ously.

The United States is incrusted in North America and includes fifty states and one fed-eral district, where the capital, Washington, D.C (District of Columbia) is located. Its forty-

eight contiguous states are situated in the middle of North America. The country States borders Canada to the north and Mexico, the Gulf of Mexico and the Straits of Florida to the south. The Western states border the Pacific Ocean, and the East the Atlantic Ocean. The USA is the world’s fourth largest country, with an area of 3,679,192 square miles (9,529,107 square kilometers).

28


A leader in technology and industry, the Northeast of the country has been overtaken in those areas by California’s Silicon Valley. The region is densely populated and its extensive corridors of urbanization have been called the national “megalopolis.” On its turn, the Mid-west is both rural and industrial. It is where we find the “corn belt” and “breadbasket” of the nation. It is also known as the home of the family farm.

In the Great Lakes area in the upper Mid-west, the automobile and steel industries were

central to community and economy. As those industries declined, the upper Midwest has ironically been referred to as the rust belt.

Always associated with slavery and shaped by its secession from the Union before the Civil War and with subsequent battles over civil rights for African-Americans, the South carries different features if compared to other regions. Today the region includes the sun-shine states, retirement havens, and new eco-nomic frontiers.

Known as the last national frontier and associated with national dreams and myths of unlimited opportunity and individualism the West has the nation’s most open land-scapes. History tells that California, along with the southwestern states, was bought by the United States from Mexico in 1848 after the Mexican-American War. The Southwest is dis-

tinctive for its Native American populations, historical ties to colonial Spain, and its regional cuisine highly influenced by Spanish cultures. (www.kidport.com/.../usageography/usageo-graph... -)

The islands of Hawaii and Alaska are also American states. The island chain of Hawaii is situated in the east-central Pacific Ocean, about two thousand miles southwest of San Francisco, California. Situated between the Pa-cific and Arctic oceans, and bordered by Cana-da to the east is Alaska in North of America.

The country possesses several common-wealths and territories, most of which were acquired through military conquest. These territories include Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands in the Caribbean basin, and Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, American Samoa, and Wake Island in the Pacific Ocean. However, Americans generally do not consider them-selves an imperial or colonial power.

The country’s physical environment is ex-tremely diverse. Alaska, for example is often spectacular with its glaciers that coexist with flowering tundra that bloom in the arctic sum-mer. Niagara Falls, Yellowstone National Park, and the Grand Canyon are a few of the most famous landscapes. The forests of the Pacific Northwest and northern California are known for their huge ancient thick trees such as Sitka spruce and sequoia (redwoods). The old Appa-lachian Mountains, on their turn, are an erod-ed mountain range that is now heavily forest-ed. The Appalachians range span two cultural regions: Located to the west of the Atlantic coastal plain, they extend from the Middle At-lantic state of New York to the southeastern state of Georgia.

The interior lowlands area also crosses regions and national borders. It includes the Midwestern Corn Belt and the Great Plains wheat-growing region which stretches into Canada.

The Mississippi River, which cuts north to south through the east-central part of the country, constitutes a major navigable inland waterway. It is the largest river system in North America. Flowing entirely in the United States, the river rises in western Minnesota and me-anders slowly southwards for 3,730 km to the Mississippi River Delta at the Gulf of Mexico. Other important navigable inland waterways are: the Great Lakes in the upper Midwest, the largest freshwater lake group in the world; and the Saint Lawrence River.

▲Figure 16: Appalachian

National Scenic Trail (U.S. National Park

Service)Source: www.nps.gov/appa/ - En cache7 Feb

2011.

29


Based upon the stories about the people who lived by the Mississippi River, the musi-cian Jerome Kern composed Show Boat a mu-sical in two acts with lyrics by Oscar Hammer-stein II. The show, whose plot chronicles the lives of those living and working on the Cotton Blossom, a Mississippi River show boat, from 1880 to 1902, was originally produced in New York in 1927 and in London in 1928. The show was based on the 1926 novel of the same name by the American writer Edna Ferber. The show’s dominant themes include racial preju-dice and tragic enduring love. By the way, mu-sicals are a remarkable trait of the American culture though it was not originated in Amer-ica but in England. They will be discussed in Unit 3.

Dams and pipelines were built and changed the landscape in the West as they transformed Los Angeles and its desert sur-roundings into a giant oasis. The rich topsoil of the Midwest is an important agricultural area with its rivers and lakes that made it central to industrial development. However, settlers significantly transformed their environments,

recreating the landscapes they had left behind in Europe. Irrigation and modern agricultural methods into continuous fields of soybeans and wheat have transformed the vast prairies of the Great Plains, which were characterized by numerous species of tall grasses. The physi-cal environment has had significant effects on regional cultures.

Nevertheless, the first real transformers of these landscapes were not the American set-tlers but the Native American groups that also altered the lands on which they depended. Fire was used in hunting, and this expanded the prairie; irrigation was used in settled com-munities that lived on agriculture.

The idea that the environment shapes culture or character does have cultural cur-rency. Historians over a century ago theorized that the American frontier experience had been instrumental and fundamental in form-ing the independent and democratic national character. Wilderness, independence, and de-mocracy are common aspects of American symbolism.

2.3.1 Demographics

The United States has a population of over 280 million (2000 census), but it is rela-tively sparsely populated. The most popu-lous state, California, with 33,871,648 inhabit-ants, contrasts with Wyoming, which has only 493,782 residents. These figures demonstrate that the United States is an urban nation. Over 75% of the inhabitants live in cities, among whom more than 50% are estimated to be

suburban. Population growth is at below-re-placement levels unless immigration is taken into account.

One of the most significant facts about the population is that its average age is on the rise. The baby boomers born from the end of World War II until the early 1960s are begin-ning to get old but life expectancy is seventy-three years for white men and seventy-nine

TO LEARN MOREread Culture of United States of America - his-tory, people, clothing, traditions, women, beliefs, food, cus-toms, family http://www.everyculture.com/To-Z/United-States-of-America.html#ixzz1UHeEvU6s.

◄ Figure 17,18: The Mississippi River just north of St. Louis (2005) and Community of boathouses on the Mississippi River in Winona, MN (2006). Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mis-sissippi - i_River

30


years for white women. African-American men have a life expectancy of sixty-seven years; in inner-city areas, the average life expectancy of African-American males is much lower. As to mortality, infant rates are higher among African-Americans than among whites (2000 census).

Whites constitute a large majority at about 70% of the population. According to current census figures, in the year 2000 the largest minority was blacks, who number about 35 million, or 13 percent of the popula-tion.

The Hispanics (Latinos) include primar-ily people from Mexico, Puerto Rico, and Cuba (no matter their color) and make 12 percent of

the population, about 31 million. Latinos have become the largest minority group early in the 21st century.

Including Pacific Islanders, the Asian population includes people from China, Philip-pines, Japan, India, Korea, and Vietnam. Mak-ing up about 4% of the population, it is esti-mated that there are 11 million Asians in the USA.

The Native American population that in-cludes natives of Alaska such as the Inuit and Aleuts is estimated in two million people, slightly over 1% of the population. One third of Native Americans lives on reservations, trust lands, territories, and mother lands under Na-tive American jurisdiction.

2.3.2 US Languages

The word English refers to the language as spoken in England. In the USA, the term British English is much more frequently used for this variety of English; however, Peter Trud-gill in Language in the British Isles(1984) intro-duced the term English (EngEng), “which is now generally recognized in academic writing in competition with Anglo-English and Eng-lish in England”. In this usage the term British English has a wider meaning, and is reserved to describe the features common to English-English, Welsh-English, Hiberno-English, and Scottish-English.

The Oxford Guide to World English (p. 45), claims that the phrase British English shares “all the ambiguities and tensions in the word British, and as a result can be used and inter-preted in two ways, more broadly or more narrowly, within a range of blurring and am-biguity”. (English Language and Culture Insti-tute. UAB. Available at: www.uab.edu/elci-Em cache. in 17 July, 2011.

Strange as it may seem, there is no offi-cial national language in the USA in the federal level but 30 states made English legally their official language. English is considered to be de facto the national language. If English is the US unofficial first language, Spanish is its unof-ficial second language for The United States ranks fifth in the world in the number of Span-ish speakers.

Native Americans, immigrants and slaves languages have influenced the several dialects of America. These languages include Spanish, Dutch, German, Scandinavian, Asian, and Af-rican languages, and less widely spoken lan-guages such as Basque, Yiddish, and Greek. Therefore, spoken English reflects the nation’s immigration and history.

Within the social hierarchy of American English dialects, Standard English is the ac-ceptable correct usage based on the model of cultural, economic, and political leaders and the language Americans are expected to speak. There is no clear definition of what Standard English really is, and it is often de-fined by what it is not. For example, it is often contrasted with the type of English spoken by black Americans usually seen as non-standard.

Standard English grammar and pronunci-ation are generally taught by English teachers in public schools. Like “whiteness,” this implies a neutral, normative and non-ethnic position. However, most Americans do not speak Stan-dard English; instead, they speak a range of class, ethnic, and regional variants.

Linguistic diversity has increased a lot. And particularly because Spanish has become more widely spoken, language has become an important aspect of the debate over the meaning or nature of American culture. It is true that linguistic and cultural diversity is ac-cepted in states such as New York and Illinois, where Spanish bilingual education is man-dated in public schools. In California, however, State laws prohibit even bilingual personnel from using Spanish with Spanish-speaking pa-tients in hospitals or with students in schools as tensions between Anglos and Mexican im-migrants run high. Bilingual education has been abolished in the public school systems of California.

Nevertheless, bilingual education is not a new fact. In the 19th century, Germans out-numbered all other immigrant groups ex-cept for all the people from the British Isles combined. Except for Spanish speakers in the Southwest, at no other time has an FL been

TASKResearch on the Inter-net what is the mean-ing of the expression “baby boomers”? Did the Brazilian popula-

tion suffered from such a phenomenon? Dis-cuss with your tutor.

31


so widely spoken. German bilingual public schools and newspapers were found through-out the Midwest, Oregon, Colorado and else-where from the mid-nineteenth century until World War I, when anti-German sentiment resulted in the elimination of German instruc-tion in public schools. Did you know that, dear students, that German was once largely

spoken in the USA, and that there are many famous German-Americans in the USA? Take a look at the pictures below and see actress Marlene Dietrich, x-President Dwight Eisen-hower, actress Meryl Streep, the scientist Al-bert Einstein, the writer John Steinbeck, and actress Sandra Bullock.

Yiddish, Swedish, and Norwegian are oth-er languages used in the press and in public schools. Therefore, proponents of the teach-ing of English only, who claim that bilingual education should not be provided to Span-ish-speaking immigrants because earlier im-migrants did not have this advantage, as they often were schooled in their native languages.

Education was fundamental in stimulat-ing the teaching of English as a standard lan-guage and public schools played a major role in that. By 1870, every state in the country had committed itself to compulsory education. The percentage of foreign-born persons who

were unable to speak English peaked 31% in 1910, but by 1920 had decreased to 15 percent, and by 1930 had fallen less than 9%.

There is indeed a national dialect known as American English. There are four major regional dialects in the United States: north-eastern, south, inland north, and Midwestern. The Midwestern accent (considered the “stan-dard accent” in the United States, and some-how but not extensively analogous in some respects to the Received Pronunciation else-where in the English-speaking world) extends from what were once the “Middle Colonies” across the Midwest to the Pacific states.

2.3.3 The USA Symbols: The Flag, the Bald Eagle, the Great Seal and The Star-Spangled Banner.

The symbols of the US government include: government buildings (as the Arlington Nation-al Cemetery in Washington, DC), statues and memorials, songs, oaths, and symbols.

The national symbols are the American Flag, the Bald Eagle, the Great Sea, Figures of Justice, the Liberty Bell, the National Flower – Rose, Uncle Sam and the National Anthem.

▲Figure 20, 21,and 22: The American flag, the Bald eagle and the Great Seal US government symbols.Source: U.S. Symbols - Ben’s Guide to U.S. Government for Kids–Available at U.S. .bensguide.gpo.gov/3-5/symbols/ - .

▲Figure: 19: Pictures of some famous German Americans. Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_American ·Access in August 2011.

TASK research and find two examples of the fol-lowing government symbols: statuses, me-morials, songs, oaths. Discuss them with your tutor.

TASKresearch and find infor-mation about Figures of Justice, Liberty Bell, National Flower and Uncle Sam.

32


Made up of stripes symbolizing the first thirteen colonies and of fifty stars represent-ing the fifty states, the American flag is per-haps the most potent and contested national symbol. On national holidays, such as Veterans Day, Memorial Day, Labor Day, and Indepen-dence Day, it is displayed in public places and businesses buildings. Individuals who display the flag in their homes or yards, and they are many, make an explicit statement about their patriotic connection to the nation. The flags also employed frequently as a symbol of protest. In the nineteenth century, northern abolitionists hoisted the flag upside down to protest the return of an escaped slave to his southern owner; and upside-down flags con-tinue to be used as a sign of protest.

The use of the stars and stripes design in clothing, whether for fashion, humor, or protest, is controversial as it is considered by some people as treason or disrespect to the national symbol and by others as an individual right in a State that upholds individual rights.

Differently from what you may think the

term bald in the expression Bald Eagle comes from the word piebald, an old word, mean-ing “marked with white” and not from the fact that this bird lacks feathers. The eagle was made national bird in 1782 because the Founding Fathers wanted to choose an ani-mal that was unique to the United States. The members of Congress engaged themselves in a dispute for finding the national emblem that lasted six years. The bald eagle was cho-sen because of its strength, courage, freedom, and immortality. US animal symbol is a power-ful, brown bird of prey with a white head and tail. Like the flag that can be seen everywhere in US, as a symbol, the image of the bald eagle can be seen in many places in U.S, such as on the Great Seal, Federal agency seals, the Presi-dent’s flag, and on the one-dollar bill.

The following lyrics are part of US na-tional anthem, The Star-Spangled Banner. You must have heard them, dear students, thou-sands of time during the Olympiads as the Americans always win several Gold medals in various sport modalities.

Oh, say can you see, by the dawn’s early lightWhat so proudly we hailed by the twilight’s last gleamingWhose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight,O’er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streamingAnd the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in airGave proof through the night that our flag was still thereOh, say does that Star - Spangled Banner yet waveO’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave.

Americans always listen to or sing their national anthem with their right hand over their hearts to show affection and respect for their native country and to demonstrate pa-triotism. So, what has happened to President Obama in the following picture?

Another way of demonstrating patrio-tism, nationalism and community solidarity is through sports. In the Olympic Games/Olym-piads, patriotic symbols abound, and victors are heralded for their American qualities of determination, individualism and competi-tiveness. In the same way, American football games connect fans to one another or to their

communities through a home team. The game expresses the important value of competition but unlike soccer, American football games can never end in a tie. It is interesting to notice that, again, unlike soccer, football also reflects cultural ideals about sex and gender as the at-tire of players and cheerleaders overexposes male and female sex characteristics.

GLOSSARY anthem is a country’s

national song. To hum - is to emit sounds correspon-

ding to the music notes. (In Portuguese would be

cantarolar sem abrir a boca)

TASKResearch about the

interesting history of the American national

anthem. Find out why is it called The Star-Span-

gled Banner? Discuss it with your tutor. To

make the lyrics work, how about finding the

anthem melody, put them together and sing

or hum a little bit?

◄

Figure: 23: President Obama, Hillary Clinton and two American citizens listening to the American Anthem.Source: Obama: “We Place Our Hands Over Our He-arts”? | Floyd Reports. Available at floydreports.com/obama-we-place-our-hands-over-our-heart...-Em cache 13 Jan 2011 –Access in 25/08/11.TO LEARN MORE

about history, geogra-phy and other impor-

tant social studies infor-mation about US, check

out the Social Studies Video Index at Ameri-

can Iconswww.kidport.com/.../americanicons/

AmericanIconIndex.ht... - Em cache -

33


2.3.4 Anglo-Americans

An English-speaking European, an English Canadian and an American are usually referred to as Anglo-American, sometimes shortened to Anglo. Its origin dates back to the discus-sion of the history of English-speaking people of the US and the Spanish-speaking people living in the western U.S. during the Mexican-American War. The usage of the word Anglo generally ignores the distinctions between German Americans (the largest ancestry group in the United States, as you know), Irish Ameri-cans, English Americans, Italian Americans, Swedish Americans, and other European de-scent English-speaking peoples who are the majority in the United States and Canada.

As to European English-speaking, the term Anglo American is sometimes but rarely viewed as an insult as the term Hispanic is to

the natives of the Americas.To a certain extent, Anglo has come to

denote all English-speaking people and their descendants, no matter their prior ethnic, ex-cept for the children descendant from Chinese Spanish speakers that would always be re-ferred to as Hispanic.

Finally, Anglo-American also refers to those coming from countries that traditionally spoke English as the main language, as well as all those whose families have become English-speaking people in Canada and the US. An-glo-American is often used in legal, economic and political documents and other writings in reference to those countries that have similar legal regimes generally based on the English common law.

2.3.5The (North) Americans: Ethnicity, religion, rituals and sacred places

▲Figure 24:American Broadway star Brian Stokes Mitchell shakes hands with President Barack Obama in a photo taken by The White House official photographer shortly after Mr. Mitchell’s’ show was over.Source: Available at Brian Stokes Mitchell Official site and atn.wikipedia.org/wiki. Access in 5th June, 2011Figure25: Illustration of a blonde American young man.Figure26: The movie star Demi More illustrating an American brunette. Source:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Americans_(photography)

Considered a diverse country racially and ethnically, in The United States co-exists ix rac-es: White, American Indian and Alaska Native, Asian, Black or African American, Native Ha-waiian and Other Pacific Islander, and people who they call “Some other race” used in the census and other surveys, though not an offi-

cial term. The expressions “Hispanic or Latino” identify Hispanic and Latino Americans as a ra-cially diverse ethnicity that composes the larg-est minority group in the nation.

White Americans include non-Hispanic/Latino and Hispanic/Latino and are the racial majority (80% share of the U.S. population),

CLUEI remember you that the word football refers only to the American game. In Brazil people play soccer which origi-nated in England and this sport is played with 11 players and can end in a tie. Brazil has been a soccer champion for 5 times (1958-Sweden; 1962-Chile; 1970-Mex-ico; 1994–US; 2002-Ja-pan).

TO LEARN MORECulture of United States of America - history, people, clothing, tradi-tions, women, beliefs, food, customs, family http://www.everycul-ture.com/To-Z/United-States-of-America.html#ixzz1UI25w0EC

34


according to estimates from the official gov-ernment Programs and Surveys. Hispanic and Latino Americans compose 15% of the popu-lation; Black Americans are the largest racial minority, nearly 13% of the population; the White, not-Hispanic or Latino population com-prises 66% of the nation’s total.

The majority of the White Americans reach their highest share of the population in the Midwestern United States 85% according to official Programs or 83% conforming 2002 Surveys and lives in every region. On their turn, Non-Hispanic Whites make up 79% of the Midwest’s population, the highest ratio of any

region. Nevertheless, 35% of White Americans (including all White Americans or non-Hispan-ic/Latino only) live in the South. On their turn, Blacks and African Americans are most preva-lent in the South as the region is home to 55% of the community.

As to the remaining plural groups the majority of them reside in the West: “42% of Hispanic and Latino Americans, 46% of Asian Americans, 48% of American Indians and Alas-ka Natives, 68% of Native Hawaiians and Oth-er Pacific Islanders, 37% of the “Two or more races” population (Multiracial Americans), and 46% of people of “Some other race”.

According to the 2000 Census and subsequent US Census Bureau surveys, Americans self-described as belonging to the following racial groups:

• White: those having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa.

• Black or African American: those having origins in any of the Black racial groups of Africa.• American Indian or Alaska Native, also called Native Americans: those having origins in any

of the original peoples of North, Central and South America, and who maintain tribal affilia-tion or community attachment.

• Asian, also called Asian American: those having origins in any of the original peoples of the Far East, Southeast Asia, and the Indian subcontinent; frequently specified as Chinese Amer-ican, Korean American, Indian American, Filipino American, Vietnamese American, Japanese American etc.

• Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander: Those having origins in any of the original peoples of Hawaii, Guam, Samoa, or other Pacific Islands called Pacific Islander Americans.

▲Figure 27: Hawaiians. Source: www.gohawaii.about.com/.../hawaiianpeople/People_of_Hawaii. Access in 13thJuly, 2011

TASKrefer to www.

en.wikipdia.org/Race and ethnicity in the United States, main

article: Demographics in the United States

for further getting information about The

USA demographics and historical trends and

influences. Take notes of these aspects for

discussions with your tutor and classmates.

35


• Some other race: that they consider themselves to be, the category captures responses such as Mestizo, Creole, and Mulatto, but among the entries reported in the 2000 Census were nationalities instead of races, such as South African, Moroccan, Belizean, Mexican, Puerto Ri-can, Cuban, as well as mixed-race terms like We-sorts, mixed, interracial, and others.

• Multiracial - two or more races, widely known as those who check off and/or write in more than one race. There is no actual option labeled “Two or more races” or “Multiracial” on Cen-sus and other forms; only the foregoing six races appear, and people who report more than one of them are categorized as people of “Two or more races” in subsequent processing. Any number, up to all six, of the racial categories can be reported by any respondent

As to religion, many creeds have been brought to the United States, due to later im-ports of the country’s multicultural immigrant heritage, and coexist with those founded within the country; such beliefs have led the United States to become one of the most reli-giously diverse countries in the world.

The majority of the American people are Christian. Catholicism is the largest single de-nomination, but Protestants of all denomina-tions (Baptist, Methodist, Lutheran, Presbyteri-an, and others) outnumber Catholics. Judaism is the largest non-Christian faith, followed by Islam, which has a significant African-Ameri-can following.

Unlike some countries, the United States never includes a question about religion in its national Census, and has not done so for over fifty years. The State and the Religion are not supposed to interfere in one another’s affairs. The First Amendment to the American Con-stitution prevents the Federal government from making any “law respecting an estab-lishment of religion”, and guarantees the free exercise of religion. Because of that religious statistics in U.S. are obtained from organiza-tional reporting and surveys. Is this a similarity between the Brazilian and American cultures, dear students? The State in Brazil does not in-terfere in religious affairs and the religion does not mix with the State’s affairs?

Like other English speakers, Anglo-Amer-icans are mostly, and by tradition, Protestant whereas Roman Catholics are minority. Other religions are also professed but by a few peo-ple. The United States has both a very wide diversity of religions, beliefs and practices. The 2002 surveys revealed that 83 percent of Americans claim to belong to a religious de-nomination, 40 percent claim they attend ser-vices nearly every week or more, and 58 per-cent claim to pray at least weekly. A majority of Americans report that religion plays a “very important” role in their lives, in a proportion unusual among developed nations.

Baptism, the largest Protestant sect, is originated in Europe but grew exponentially in US, especially in the South among both whites and blacks. A few religious sects arose

independently in the United States, including Mormons and Shakers aside from the many Christian movements from England and Eu-rope reestablished early in the nation’s history. Although religion and the state are formally separated, religious expression is an impor-tant aspect of public and political life. Nearly every President has professed some variety of Christian faith. One of the most significant religious trends in recent years has been the rise of evangelical and fundamentalist sects of Christianity, organized political-religious force, whose followers significantly influence politi-cal life and agendas.

New religions have grown such as Bud-dhism, with meditation, yoga, astrology, and Native American spirituality which blend ele-ments of Eastern religions and practices.

In sum, the majority of Americans (76%) identify themselves as Christians, mostly within Protestant (51%) and Catholic (25%) denominations. Non-Christian religions as Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism, col-lectively make up about 3.9% to 5.5% of the adult population. Another 15% says that they have neither religious belief nor religious affili-ation. Some 5.2%, when asked, declared that they did not know, or refused to reply. A reli-

GLOSSARYWe-sorts - name, regarded as derogatory by some, for a group of Native Americans in Maryland who are from the Piscataway tribe who have always claimed to be Native American people. They were powerful at the time of European en-counter. Interestingly, individuals with the surnames Proctor, New-man, Savoy, Queen, Butler, Thompson, Swann, Gray and Har-ley, claim that Native heritage.

TO LEARN MORERead the Statistical Abstract of the United States, on the Internet at www.census.gov/compendia/statab/cats/population.thml.

▲Figure 28: Protestant cult Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EpiscopalChurch_(United_States) - Em cache

36


gious Identification Survey revealed that be-liefs vary considerably across the country: 59% of Americans living in Western states (the “Un-churched Belt”) report a belief in God; howev-er in the South (the “Bible Belt”) the faith is as high as 86%.

The USA has also a tradition of non-or-dained and nontraditional religious practitio-ners who include evangelical lay preachers, religious leaders associated with New Age religions, and leaders of religious movements designated as cults who profess their faith as the practitioners of world religions such as priests, ministers, and rabbis do. Women are increasingly entering traditionally male reli-gious positions. There are now women min-isters in many Protestant denominations and women rabbis. The country does not have re-ligious rituals or designated holy places that have meaning to the population as a whole. However, Salt Lake City is a holy city for Mor-mons, and the Black Hills of South Dakota and other places are sacred Native American sites. And yet, there are many shared secular rituals and places that have an almost religious im-portance such as baseball and football games. Championship games in these sports, the World Series and the Super Bowl, respectively, constitute major annual events and celebra-tions. Disneyland, Hollywood, and Grace-land (Elvis Presley’s estate) are considered impor-tant places.

In what concerns death and after death matters, Americans have an uncomfortable re-

lationship with their own mortality. Although Christian, most residents value youth, vigor, and worldly goods so greatly that death is one of the most difficult subjects to talk about and a sad and solemn occasion. At funerals, it is customary to wear black and to speak in hushed tones. Graveyards are solemn and qui-et places. Some people believe in an afterlife or in reincarnation or other form of continuity of energy or spirit. Unlike Brazilians’, in Ameri-cans funerals people use to receive people at home after the burial to have some talk over some food and drinks. Brazilians neither wear black (any longer) nor hush their tone of voice (any more) during funerals, nor receive people home after the funeral. These are different ways of mourning relatives and friends.

As you well know, dear students, people from all over the world have immigrated to Anglo-America with the aim of having bet-ter conditions of life, find better jobs, and es-cape from famine, poverty, wars and conflicts to name only a few factors that embody the search for higher standards of life and well-being. East Europeans, East Asians, Indians, Africans (Anglo-African Americans), Latin Americans in general, and Middle Easterners all immigrate and live in Anglo-America today completing the kaleidoscope of different eth-nic groups despite the strictness of the immi-gration laws in the USA.

Let’s now approach in some details the two groups that together with the whites, his-torians say, formed the American people.

2.3.5.1 The Afro-Americans: demography, religious beliefs, economic status, politics, social issues and education.

Black Americans have exerted a huge influence over the American culture such as life, reli-gion, society, politics, education, customs, art (music, dance, theatre, and cinema) and literature etc.

Also referred to as Black Americans or Afro-Americans, and formerly as American Negroes, African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have origins in any of the black populations of Africa. These expressions in the USA generally refer to the population of Americans of African ancestry, or Americans with at least partial Sub-Saharan African ancestry. Most of them are direct descendants of captive Africans who survived the slavery era within the boundaries of the present United States, although some are—or are descended from—immi-grants from African, Caribbean, Central American or South American nations.

African-American history dates back to the 17th century and ranges from servitude in Brit-ish America and progresses into the election of Barack Obama as the 44th and current President of the United States. Between those facts African Americans had to face ordeals and difficulties such as slavery, reconstruction, development of the African-American community, participation in the great military conflicts of the United States, racial segregation, and the Civil Rights Move-ment.

African Americans make up the single largest racial minority in the United States and form the second largest racial group after whites in the United States.

Africans, including slaves and free people, numbered about 760,000, some 19.3% of the

TASKFind explanations

for the expressions Unchurched Belt and

Bible belt. Answer the question: Are there any

other sorts of Belts in the USA? If so, discuss

these aspects with your tutor and classmates.

In what religion is concerned, is Brazil also

divided in Belts? Why? Comment your answers

with your colleagues and tutor.

37


overall population in 1790, accord-ing to the first U.S Census. At the start of the Civil War, in the 1860s, the African American population had increased to 4.4 million, but the per-centage rate dropped to 14% of the total population of the country. The vast majority of these Africans were slaves, and only 488,000 counted as “freemen”. In 1900, the black popu-lation doubled and reached 8.8 mil-lion. Ten years later about 90% of African Americans lived in the South, but many of them began migrating north looking for better jobs and liv-ing conditions, good opportunities and to escape from racial violence and Jim Crow laws. This movement was called The Great Migration which spanned from the 1890s to the 1970s.

More than 6 million black peo-ple moved north between 1916 and the 1960s. In the 1970s and 1980s, however, that tendency reversed and more African Americans moved south to the Sun Belt.

The African American popula-tion reached about 30 million in 1990, which represented 12% of the overall U.S. population. About 39.9 million African Americans live in the United States, according to 2005 U.S. Census which represents 13.8% of the total population.

Nevertheless, The World Factbook gives a 2006 figure of 12.9% Controversy, which has sur-rounded the “accurate” population count of African Americans for decades. Some demography authorities believed it was undercounted intentionally to minimize the figures of the black popu-lation to reduce their political power base.

TO LEARN MOREWho was Jim Crow? Research about this man, write down some considerations about him and discuss with your tutor.

◄

Figure 29: Pictures of Afro-Americans. Frederick Douglas; Barack Obama; Rosa Parks;Condoleezza Rice; M. Luther King Jr. ; Beyoncé;Malcolm X; Oprah Winfrey; Booker T. Washington;Michael Jordan; Harriet Tubman; Muhammad AliSource: From wikipedia the free encyclopedia. Access in August 2011.

CLUEThe Sun Belt, or Spanish Belt, is the region com-prising the southern tier of the United States and includes the states of Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Loui-siana, Mississippi, New Mexico, South Caro-lina, Tennessee, Texas, roughly half of Cali-fornia (up to Greater Sacramento), and parts of Arkansas, North Carolina, and south-ern Nevada. Its main feature is its warm-temperate climate with extended summers and brief, relatively mild winters. The extreme southern part of the Sun Belt (South Florida) has a true tropical climate.

▲Figure 30: In red the region comprising The Sun Belt. Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Belt, Access: 12th July, 2011.

38


The 2000 Census indicated that 54.8% of African Americans lived in the South. In that same year, 17.6% of African Americans lived in the Northeast and 18.7% in the Midwest, while only 8.9% lived in the western states. In fact, the west does have a sizable black population in certain areas, though. California, for exam-ple, the nation’s most populous state, has the fifth largest African American population, only behind Florida, Texas, New York, and Georgia. The same Census stated that approximately 2.05% of African Americans are identified as Hispanic or Latino in origin, many of whom may be of Brazilian, Puerto Rican, Domini-can, Cuban, Haitian, or other Latin American descent. The Irish and Germans are the only self-reported ancestral groups larger than the African Americans. Among the many African Americans that trace their ancestry to colonial American origins, some simply self-identify as “American”.

In 2000 almost 58% of African Ameri-cans lived in metropolitan areas. Over 2 mil-lion black residents lived in New York City which had the largest black urban popula-tion in the United States. Overall the city has a 28% black population. Chicago holds the second largest black population, almost 1.6 million African Americans, some 18 percent of the total metropolitan population. Cities with a population of 100,000 or more, like De-troit (Michigan) had the highest percentage of black residents of the U.S. in 2010, with 82%. Other large cities with African American ma-jorities are New Orleans (Louisiana, 60%), Bal-timore (Maryland, 63%), Atlanta(Georgia, 54%), Memphis(Tennessee, 61%), and Washington, D.C (50.7%).

As to their economic status, African Americans have benefited economically from the advances made during the Civil Rights era, particularly the educated, but not without the lingering effects of historical marginalization. The racial disparity in poverty rates has nar-rowed and the black middle class has grown substantially in such a way that in 2000, 47% of African Americans owned their homes. In 1998 the poverty rate among African-Americans was 26.5%; in 2004 it decreased to 24.7%.

The buying power of African-Americans is over $892 billion currently and will be likely over $1.1 trillion by 2012. This makes African Americans the second largest consumer group in America. In 2002 African American owned businesses accounted for 1.2 million of the US’s 23 million businesses.

African American workers had the sec-ond-highest median earnings of American mi-nority groups in 2004, after Asian Americans.

African Americans had the highest level of male-female income parity of all ethnic groups in the United States.

In 2001, over half of African American married couples earned $50,000 or more. American families headed by single women are collectively poorer.

Gender continued to dictate income lev-el, with the median earnings of African Ameri-can men more than those black and non-black American women overall and in all educa-tional levels by 2006. Concomitantly, among American men, income disparities were sig-nificant; the median income of African Ameri-can men was nearly 76 cents for every dollar of their European American counterparts and $1.17 for every dollar earned by Hispanic men. With a rise in educational level, however, the gap narrowed somewhat.

In 2006, among American women, Afri-can-American women with post-secondary education have made significant advances and the median income of African American women was more than those of their Asian, European and Hispanic American counterparts with at least some college education.

In 1999, the median income of African American families was $33,255 compared to $53,356 of European Americans. In times of economic hardship for the nation, African-Americans suffer disproportionately from job loss and underemployment. The phrase “last hired and first fired” is reflected in the Bureau of Labor Statistics unemployment figures. Na-tionwide, the October 2008 unemployment rate for African-Americans was 11.1%, while the nationwide rate was 6.5%.

Between black and white families the income gap is so significant that in 2005 em-ployed blacks earned only 65% of the wages of whites, down from 82% in 1975. In 2006, the New York Times reported that in Queens, New York, the median income among African-American families exceeded that of white fam-ilies, fact which the newspaper attributed to the growth in the number of two-parent black families.

The rate of births to unwed African-Amer-ican mothers in 1999 was estimated in 70%. In 2005, the poverty rate among single-parent black families was 39.5%, while it was 9.9% among married-couple black families. Among white families, the comparable rates were 26.4% and 6% respectively.

According to Forbes magazine, the “wealthiest American”, with $800 million dollars Oprah Winfrey is the richest African American of the 20th century. In contrast the 20th century’s richest American, Bill Gates,

39


who is of European descent, briefly hit $100 billion in 1999. In Forbes’ 2007 list, Gates for-tune decreased to $59 billion while Winfrey’s increased to $2.5 billion, which made her the world richest black person. Winfrey is also the first African-American to make Business Week’s annual list of America’s 50 greatest phi-lanthropists. Winfrey remains the only African-American wealthy enough to rank among the country’s 400 richest people.

Some black entrepreneurs use their wealth to create new avenues for both African-Americans and new opportunities for Ameri-can business in general. Example of that is Tyler Perry who created new filming studios in Atlanta, Georgia, which makes it possible to film movies and television shows outside of California.

In regard to politics, as a group, African-Americans are more involved in the American political process than other minority groups in the USA. They indicated the highest level of voter registration and participation in elec-tions among these groups in 2004. Collec-tively, African-Americans attain higher levels of education than immigrants to the United States and also have the highest level of Con-gressional representation of any minority group in the U.S.

The large majority of African-Americans support the Democratic Party but historically, they were supporters of the Republican Party because it was Republican President Abraham Lincoln who helped in granting freedom to American slaves. The Republicans and Demo-crats at the time, represented the sectional interests of the North and South, respectively, rather than any specific ideology.

The African-American support for Demo-crats trace back to the 1930s during the Great Depression, when Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal program provided economic relief to African-Americans as Roosevelt’s New Deal coalition turned the Democratic Party into an organization of the working class and their liberal allies, regardless of region. The African-American vote became even more solidly Democratic when Democratic presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson pushed for civil rights legislation during the 1960s.

Marriage rates for all Americans began to decline while divorce rates and births have climbed after over 50 years and these changes have been greatest among African-Americans. After over 70 years of racial parity black mar-riage rates began to fall if compared to the whites. Single-parent households have be-come common, and according to US census figures released in January 2010, only 38%

of black children live with both their parents. Despite all that African-Americans favor “tradi-tional American values” about family and mar-riage.

Out of fifty-two percent only 30% of the Black Democrats support same-sex marriage. Though Democrats overwhelmingly voted (64%) against the California ballot proposi-tion banning gay marriage in 2008, blacks ap-proved (70% in favor) it, more than any other racial group.

As to social issues, Afro-Americans tend to hold a more conservative position about abortion, extramarital sex, and raising children out of wedlock. Nevertheless, on financial is-sues, African- Americans are very much in line with Democrats, as generally supportive of a more progressive tax structure which would reduce injustice and as well as more govern-ment spending on social services and public services in general.

Concerning education, the USA takes race and other classification into account. By 2000, African-Americans had advanced greatly in this issue. They still lagged overall in education attainment compared to white or Asian Ameri-cans, with 14%in the four first years of school-ing and 5%in advanced degrees, though it was higher than other minorities. Blacks attended college at about half the rate of whites, but at a greater rate than that of the Americans of Hispanic origin.

In the population of blacks attending col-lege, we find more women than men. Schools for black students from kindergarten through twelfth grade were common throughout the U.S., which characterized segregation but a movement towards de-segregation is current-ly occurring across the country.

Black colleges and universities remain to-day what they were originally when segregat-ed colleges did not admit African- Americans. In 1947, about one third of African Americans were denied literacy to read and write their own names. By 1969, as it had been tradition-ally defined illiteracy was largely eradicated among younger African-Americans.

By 1998, US Census surveys showed that 89% of the African-Americans aged 25 to 29 had completed high school, which is less than whites or Asians, but more than Hispanics. His-torically, on many college entrance standard-ized tests and grades, African-Americans have lagged behind whites, but some studies sug-gest that the achievement gap has been clos-ing. Many policy propositions suggest that this gap can and will be eliminated through poli-cies such as desegregation, affirmative action, and multiculturalism.

TO LEARN MOREAgain it is important to refer to The Statistical Abstract of the United States, on the Internet at www.census.gov/compendia/statab/cats/population.thml.

40


Afro-Americans were and are highly in-fluential in the United States as they have con-tributed language, literature, art, foods, agri-cultural skills, clothing styles, and music, social and technological innovation to American culture from their earliest presence in North America.

The cultivation and use of many agricul-tural products in the U.S., such as yams, pea-nuts, rice, okra, sorghum, grits, watermelon, indigo dyes, and cotton can be traced to Af-rican and African-American influences. A no-table example includes George Crum, who invented the potato chip, a cultural symbol of the US, in 1853.

Soul, blues, Hip hop, R&B, funk, rock and roll, and other contemporary American mu-sical forms originated in black communities and evolved from other black forms of music, including blues, doo-wop, barbershop, rag-time, bluegrass, jazz, and gospel music makes of Black music one of the most dominant in mainstream popular music. Representatives of famous icon singers include Nat King Cole, Natalie Cole, Ray Charles, Michael Jackson, El-vis Presley, Lionel Ritchie, Steve Wonder, Sam-my Davies Junior (also an actor and dancer), among others. Today, they are countless.

African American musical genres are the most important ethnic tradition in America, as they have developed independently of African traditions more than any other immi-grant groups, including Europeans and have, historically, been more influential, intercultur-ally, geographically, and economically, than any other American traditions. Like Brazilian Africa-descendants, African- American musical forms have also influenced and been incorpo-rated into virtually every other popular musi-cal genre in the world, including country and

techno. Representatives of great and world famous icon musicians include Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong.

As to literature, a brief account would show that many African-American authors have become famous for their production of poetry, stories, and essays influenced by their life experiences. African-American literature is a major genre in American literature. Langs-ton Hughes, James Baldwin, Richard Wright, Zora Neale Hurston, Ralph Ellison, Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison, and Maya Angelou are some examples of those writers. Recently, Au-gust Wilson, one of the most important play-wrights (plays: Fences and King Hedley the Third) and Ishmael Reed is a respectful poet and influential essay writer.

Presently, the election of Barak Obama is considered the most striking fact: an Afro-American descendant became president elect of the US, that is, ebony is living in the White House and ruling the whites, Hispanic, Euro-peans and, Easterners. All these events mark the American society, culture and highly in-fluence the American English language with new words, habits, ways of thinking, dressing, of viewing the world and receiving new tech-nologies and facing progress in Science, En-gineering, Architecture, Decorating, Fashion, Arts, and Literature. A new and different soci-ety emerges from every event, a new world is born and the ever evolving language and cul-ture follow this pace.

Therefore, to corroborate the idea that culture and language intertwine some words are created, used and become no longer in common use according to the evolution of cul-ture and history. On this line of thought, the terms mulatto and colored were widely used until the second quarter of the 20th century, when they were considered outmoded and gave way to the word negro commonly capi-talized in the 1940s, but by the midst 1960s, it had acquired negative connotations. However the term mulatto is still in use in many coun-tries of Latin America and is not viewed as of-fensive. Today, the Americans consider the term inappropriate and pejorative.

Similarly, the term Negro is no longer in use among the younger black generation, but is still used by a substantial group of older black Americans, particularly in the southern states. Negro, which translates as black, in Lat-in America is the term generally used to refer and describe black people and, like the word mulatto, it is not considered offensive in these countries. In Brazil, unlike other Latin Ameri-can countries, we use the words preto, more-no and escuro to refer to Black people; the last

Figure31: The King & Carter

Jazzing Orchestra photographed in

Houston, Texas, January 1921

Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Jazzing_orches-

tra_1921.png - En cache▼

41


two terms are undoubtedly discriminating eu-phemisms for black people, an attempt to dis-guise prejudice.

What I included here about African-Amer-

ican influence in America is far from being exhaustive. Much more can be added or said about this issue, obviously.

2.3.5.2 Hispanic and Latino Americans

The second largest group to form the Americans, Hispanic and Latino Americans are Americans with origins in the Hispanic countries of Latin America or in Spain, and in general all persons in the United States who self-identify as Hispanic or Latino.

But make no mistake, Hispanic Ameri-cans are not to be confused with the in-habitants of Hispanic America or those of Latin Americas. The Hispanic Latinos con-stitute a total population of 50,477,594 million people, about 16.3% of the U.S. population according to the Census of 2010, living in all areas of the United States with significant populations. They form the second largest ethnic group, but the largest of all the minority groups, after non-Hispanic White Americans (a group composed of dozens of sub-groups, as is Hispanic and Latino Americans).

Originated from all continents the Latin American population in the USA has many ancestries and are racially diverse, thus forming an ethnic category, rather than a race. The choice of name (Latino and Hispanic) depends on the side of the US territory they live: Latino-Americans and Hispanic residing in the eastern Unit-ed States tend to prefer the term Hispanic, whereas those in the west usually prefer Latino. They speak predominantly Ameri-can English and Spanish. For the U.S. gov-ernment and others, Hispanic or Latino identity is voluntary, as it is shown in the United States Census, and in some market research.

They are Roman Catholics and a large minority is Protestant. Related eth-nic groups include Latin Americans, Span-iards, Belizean Americans, Brazilian Ameri-cans, Latin Europeans and others. Mexican Americans, Cuban Americans, Colombian Americans, Dominican Americans, Puerto Ricans, Spanish Americans, and Salvadoran Americans are some of the Hispanic and Latino American national origin groups.

History tells that the Hispanic pres-ence in the USA dates back to half a cen-tury earlier than the creation of St. Augustine, Florida. If San Juan, Puerto Rico, is considered to be the oldest Spanish settlement, and the oldest city in the U.S., Hispanic or Latino have been in the territory of the present-day United States continuously since the 1565 founding of St. Augustine

▲Figure 32: The Latino Americans: César Chávez, Raquel Welch, David Farragut, Sonia Sotomayo,•FranklinChang-Diaz,RomanaAcostaBañuelosnAlexRodriguez,HildaSolis, Isabel Allende, John Leguizamo, Juan Bandini and Gloria Estefan.Source: wikipedia/org/wiki/Hispanic-and- Latino-Americans.

42


by the Spanish, who are the longest among European American ethnic groups and second-lon-gest of all U.S. ethnic groups, after Native Americans.

Hispanics have also lived continuously in the Southwest since near the end of the 16th cen-tury with settlements in New Mexico that began in 1598, and were transferred to the area of El Paso, Texas, in 1680. Spanish settlement of New Mexico resumed in 1692, and other new ones were established in Arizona and California in the 18th century (Available at www.linguee.com.br/ingles-portugues/.../we+sort.html -. Access 5th July, 2011).

The question on Latino/Hispanic origin concerns ethnicity not race as mentioned previously for no separate racial category exists for Hispanic and Latino Americans, and they do not make up a race of their own. When responding to the race question on the Census form they choose from among the same racial categories as all Americans, and are included in the items and num-bers reported for those races.

Thus each racial category includes Non-Hispanic or Latino and Hispanic or Latino Ameri-cans. The White race category, for instance, includes Non-Hispanic Whites and Hispanic Whites; The Black or African American category contains Non-Hispanic Blacks and Hispanic Blacks, and the same is said of all the other categories. Self-identifying as Hispanic or Latino and not Hispanic or not Latino is neither explicitly allowed nor explicitly prohibited. (www.linguee.com.br/ingles-portugues/.../we+sort.html -. Access 5th July, 2011).

2.3.5.3 Immigration and the Whites

Historical facts mark the formation of the white population in America. It would be unviable to narrate all these facts so I will make a brief report about some of them.

The colonial period, the mid-nineteenth century, the turn of the twentieth, and post-1965 are the four epochs of the American immigration. Each epoch brought distinct races, ethnicities and national groups to the United States and among them the white people.

The story of the American white population dates back to 1492 when Christopher Colum-bus, under contract to the Spanish crown, reached several Caribbean islands, making first con-tact with the indigenous people.

On April 2, 1513, Spanish conquistador Juan Ponce de León landed on what he called “La Florida”—the first documented European arrival on what would become the U.S. mainland. From that time on, other Spanish settlements in the region would be followed by others as the French fur traders who established outposts of New France around the Great Lakes.

In the early years of the United States, immigration was fewer than 8,000 people a year, in-cluding French refugees from the slave revolt in Haiti and perhaps, less than one million immi-grants, as few as 400,000, crossed the Atlantic during the 17th and 18th centuries. During the 17th century, nearly 175,000 Englishmen came to Colonial America and still in the 17th and 18th

centuries, over half of all European immigrants arrived in Colonial America as indentured servants.

The first successful English set-tlements were those of the puritans in the Virginia Colony in Jamestown in 1607 and the Pilgrims’ Plymouth Colony in 1620. By 1634, New Eng-land had been settled by some 10,000 Puritans. Between the late 1610s and the American Revolu-tion, about 50,000 convicts were shipped to Britain’s American colo-nies. According to the American History they escaped from religious prosecutions on part of Henry VIII, King of England, who wanted to exterminate the protestant religion and keep Catholicism as the official religion in his country.

TO LEARN MOREread the siteen.wiki-

pedia.org/.../Category: Ethnic_groups_in_

the_United States, for getting more knowl-

edge about Race and Ethnicity in The USA.

TASK See the musical movie

West Side Story to understand the story of the struggle of Hispanic immigrants in their trial

to live together with the Anglo-Americans in

the 1950s. Discuss the discrimination in the

film and its implica-tions for the teaching of English as a second

language with your classmates and tutor.

Figure 33: Irish immigrants arriving

in the United States in 1902.

Source: www.workpermit.com › Immigration

▼

43


The Dutch arrived in the beginning of 1614 and settled along the lower Hudson River, in-cluding New Amsterdam on Manhattan Island. They ceded their American territory to England in 1674 and the province of New Netherland received a new name: New York.

Many new immigrants, especially in the South, were indentured servants population that achieved some two-thirds of all Virginia immigrants between 1630 and 1680 and who would be replaced by African slaves that, in their turn, would become primary source of bonded labor by the turn of the 18th century.

After 1846, Irish immigration to America was predominantly Catholic. The vast majority of those that had arrived previously had been Protestants or Presbyterians and had quickly assimi-lated, not least because English was their first language, and most (but certainly not all) had skills and perhaps some small savings on which to start to build a new life. Very soon they had become independent and prosperous.

Though materialistically poor, the Irish were rich in cultural resources; developing institu-tions that helped them face hardship without despair. Cultural events such as St. Patrick’s Day were regarded by most Americans as evidence of the separateness of these immigrants, but helped hold the Irish culture together. The Irish were highly influential in the American culture.

Historians tell that The 1790 Act limited naturalization to “free white persons”; but it was ex-panded to include blacks in the 1860s and Asians in the 1950s.

The 19th century was marked mainly by immigration from northern Europe. In the early 20th century, America received Immigrants mainly from Southern and Eastern Europe. From 1965 on, they mostly came from Latin America and Asia.

After 1820 immigration gradually increased. Over 30 million Europeans migrated to the US from 1836 to 1914. They crossed the Atlantic on ships but the death rate on these transatlantic voyages was high and out of seven one traveler died. In 1875, the USA passed its first immigra-tion law.

European immigration was as 1,285,349 persons who entered the country in 1907. By 1910, 13.5 million of them were living in the USA. Because of this huge number of immigrants in 1921, the Congress passed the Emergency Quota Act, followed by the Immigration Act of 1924 which restricted the entrance of the Southern and Eastern Europeans, especially Jews, Italians, and Slavs who entered the country in large scales in the early 1890s. The consequence was that most of the European refugees fleeing the Nazis and World War II were prohibited of coming to the United States.

The 1930’ immigration was caused by the Great Depression which hit the U.S. and lasted over ten years. There were 279,678 immigrants recorded in the final prosperous year of 1929, however four years later, only 23,068 came to the U.SA. More people emigrated from the country than immigrated to it in the early 1930s. Moreover, the U.S. government spon-sored a Mexican Repatriation program to en-courage people to voluntarily move to Mexico, but thousands were deported against their will. About 400,000 Mexicans were repatri-ated. In the post-war era, precisely in 1954, the Justice Department launched Operation Wet-back, under which 1,075,168 Mexicans were

deported (Available at www.historyworld.net/.../PlainTextHistories.asp. Access in Janu-ary, 2010).

The gender imbalance among legal im-migrants was sharp as most of the legal ones was male until the 1930s. However, in the 1990s, women accounted for just over half of all legal immigrants, thus shifting away from the male-dominated immigration of the past. Contemporary immigration shows that immi-grants are younger than the native population of the United States- between the ages 15 and 34 – and they are also more likely to be mar-ried and less to be divorced than native-born Americans of the same age.

GLOSSARYindentured slaves-people who agree to work with someone else to learn the job. Task: Find out on the Internet further information about the historical facts that in-fluenced the formation of the white population in America, from 1729 to 1991.

TO LEARN MORESee the film Gangs of New York (2002)and know more about the Irish presence in New York, NY, in the early 1920s.

◄ Figure 34: Polish immigrants on a farm (1909). Figure 35: Italian immigrants. Little Italy in NewYork. (1900)Source: www.en.wikipedia.org/.../Category: Ethnic_groups_in_the_United States, for getting more knowledge about Race and Ethnicity in The USA.

44


White immigrants also tend to move to and live in areas populated by people with similar backgrounds. This fact has proved to be true throughout the history of immigration to the United States. Three-quarters of immi-grants surveyed by Public Census (2002) said they intended to make the USA their perma-nent home and emphasized that if they had to immigrate again, 80% of them would still come to that country. In the same study, 80% of immigrants said the government has be-come tougher on enforcing immigration laws since 9/11, and 30% report that they personally have experienced some sort of discrimination.

According to many recent surveys, the at-tacks of September 11, 2001 have influenced the birth of Public attitudes about immigra-tion in the U.S.A. Fifty per cent of the Ameri-cans believe that immigration is a good thing overall for their country, but the other half say tighter control on immigration would do a great deal to enhance national security.

From 1991 to 2000, the USA admitted more legal immigrants (10 to 11 million) than in any previous decades. In the most recent decade, the ten million legal immigrants that settled in the USA represent an annual growth of only about 0.3% as the country population grew from 249 million to 281 million. Specifi-cally, aproximately 15% of the Americans were foreign-born in 1910, against about only 10% of foreign-born in 1999.

By 1970, immigrants accounted for 4.7% of the USA population and rising to 6.2% in 1980, with an estimated 12.5% to this present year. In 2010, a quarter of the residents of the United States under 18 were immigrants or im-migrants’ children.

In 2006, the United States accepted more legal immigrants as permanent residents than all other countries in the world combined. Since the removal of ethnic quotas in immigra-tion in 1965, the number of first-generation immigrants living in USA has quadrupled from 9.6 million in 1970 to about 38 million in 2007. (Available at Category: Ethnic_groups_in_the_United States. Access, July, 2010)

In 2008, 8% of all babies born in the U.S. belonged to illegal immigrant parents, ac-cording to a recent analysis of the USA Cen-sus Bureau data (Pew Hispanic Center). About 1,046,539 persons were naturalized as USA citizens in 2008. Mexico, India, the Philippines, and China were the leading emigrating coun-tries to the United States, but the last ones are of oriental origin, the so called yellow race, not

white.The cheap airline travel post-1960 facili-

tated travel to the United States, but migration remains difficult, expensive, and dangerous for those who cross the United States–Mexico border illegally. Family reunification is the di-rect cause for two-thirds of legal immigration to the US every year. The number of foreign nationals who became legal permanent resi-dents of the USA in 2009 as a result of family reunification (66%) outpaced those who be-came residents on the basis of employment skills (13%) and humanitarian reasons (17%).

Recent debates on immigration de-manded increasing enforcement of existing laws with regard to illegal immigration to the United States, the building of a barrier along some or the entire 2,000-mile (3,200 km) USA- Mexico border, or creating a new guest worker program. Along 2006, the country and Con-gress were immersed in a debate about these proposals. In April 2010, few of these propos-als had become law, though a partial border fence was approved and subsequently can-celled.

One major issue for the USA immigration these days is undoubtedly the question of ter-rorism which has become an obsession for the population in general and for the American governmental authorities in particular since the successful terrorist attacks and collaps-ing of the Twin Towers that composed the World Trade Center in downtown Manhattan, NY., (under the command of terrorist Osama Bin Laden), which opened the eyes of the Americans for the fact that they were vulner-able, somewhat unprotected or unprepared to face and fight terrorism. (/.../Category: Ethnic_groups_in_the_United States). But reconstruc-tion is the word these days. A complex with four buildings is being built inGround Zero: two tall major ones and two smaller ones. The tallest ones are almost finished.

Despite all constraints imposed by the immigration laws, one of the major sources of population growth and cultural change throughout much of the history of the United States has been immigration. The economic, social, and political aspects of immigration have caused controversy regarding ethnicity, economic benefits, jobs for non-immigrants, settlement patterns, impact on upward social mobility, crime, and voting behavior. However, Americans cannot deny the invaluable con-tribution of immigrants for the development and progress of their country.

45


ReferencesALLWRIGHT, D.; BAILEY KM (1991).Focus on the language classroom: an introduction to class-room research for language teachers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

BROOKS, N (1986) Culture in the classroom. In JM Valdes (ed) Culture bound: bridging the cultu-ral gap in language teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 123–128.

BYRAM M (1989) Cultural studies in foreign language education. Clevedon: Multilingual Mat-ters.

EMMITT M; POLLOCK J. Language and learning: an introduction for teaching (2nded). Melbour-ne: Oxford University Press. (1997)

HANTRAIS, Linda. The undergraduate’s guide to studying languages. London: Centre for In-formation on Language Teaching and Research, 1989.

LEVERIDGE, A.N. Language and Culture, Paper for TEFL.net | September 2008.

edition.tefl.net/articles/teacher.../language-culture/ -

enwww.historyworld.net/.../PlainTextHistories.asp

enwww.kidport.com/.../americanicons/AmericanIconIndex.ht... - Em cache –

en.wikipedia.org/.../Race_and_ethnicity_in_the_United_States,

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-America-.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_of_the_United_States -www.wikepedia.).

wikipedia.org/.../Category: Ethnic_groups_in_the_United States,

wikipedia.uab.edu/elci-Em cache. And also at: ww.lonweb.org/link-english.htm - En cache.

wikipedia/org/wiki/Hispanic-and- Latino-Americans.

www.everyculture.com/To-Z/United-States-of-America.html#ixzz1UHeEvU6s.

www.kidport.com/.../usageography/usageograph...

www.linguee.com.br/ingles-portugues/.../we+sort.html -.

www.nps.gov/appa/ - Em cache

www.workpermit.com › Immigration

47


UNIT 3Where does this all lead us to?

3.1 IntroductionHaving discussed various fundamental issues and aspects, words and expressions such as

culture and language, and mainly the relation of culture to language, I will now approach them as indispensable elements in the process of teaching and learning a second language, English. To achieve such a purpose I will work with the analysis of texts while going back, from time to time, to the issues dealt with previously in Units 1 and 2.

Let us concentrate our attention on the following quotation:

Americans who travel abroad for the first time are often shocked to discover that, despite all the progress that has been made in the last 30 years, many for-eign people still speak in foreign languages (BARRY, 1974).

Dave Barry, a Pulitzer Prize-winning American author famous for his weekly newspaper hu-morist column for The Miami Herald from 1983 to 2005 means something with this hilarious and ironic quote. He criticizes the decanted ignorance of the Americans about other people’s lan-guages, or say, the arrogance some Americans sometimes exhibit in relation to what happens in the rest of the world. The quote is about events in old times (1947). And because the world and things changed, today, after so many ordeals, tragic wars and events the Americans had to re-think and face a world which has been changing considerably. The quote, however, shows some traits of the American culture worth some discussion.

It is true that the ironic quote reveals the opinion that Americans hold certain ignorance about some facts shared by most people. But would it be really ignorance or should we remem-ber that at that time (1947) the dream was not over, that America’s supremacy over other coun-tries was so absolute that they would not consider the possibility of the world speak languages other than English? This, then, rise to a cultural trait conveyed by language –America’s hege-mony/arrogance before other nations.

It follows that culture and language intermingled to reveal the author’s intended meaning and produce the desired effect on readers: laughter, especially from the foreign people but not from the Americans.

3.2 Some small talk: american culture

“No culture can live, if it attempts to be exclusive.”(Gandhi)

What did Mr. Gandhi want to mean by this quote?

48


3.2.1 The Spanish Holy Office

My choice for approaching some aspects of the Spanish Inquisition was not at random and twofold: I was moved by the great influence this long historical event exerted on the European and eventually in the American cultures, history, society and languages. Secondly, the Holy Office would give birth to Witch Hunts in the USA and influence its culture and language. Obviously, as I mentioned elsewhere in this textbook, facts other than this religious one that are equally influen-tial in the USA’s culture and language.

In brief words, The Holy Inquisition, or The Holy Office, that is, the “fight against heretics” so to speak, by several institutions within the justice-system of the Roman Catholic Church, started in the 12th century with the introduction of torture in the persecution of heretics. Thus the Holly Office performed an outstanding role to guarantee, through torture and strong repression, Cath-olic beliefs and creeds all over the world for centuries. Inquisition practices were used also on offences against canon law other than heresy. The fight to combat heresy against the Catholic Church spread (almost) all over the New World (Americas) colonized by the Spanish.

With the exception of Brazil and the northeast coast of South America, all of that continent as well as Central America, Mexico (North America), and some of the Caribbean Islands were part of the Spanish colonial empire from 1492 to the 1820s. The establishment of the Inquisition in Spain dates back to 1478. But it was only in 1569 that it was set up with two tribunals by King Philip. The Inquisition also reached North America and carried on with its function until the Mexi-can War of Independence (1810–1821).

In the following pictures take a good look at some of the cruel forms of punishment the Eu-ropean Inquisition submitted the heretics to and how the inquisitors used to dress themselves.

GLOSSARYheretics: Anti-Chris-

tians.

CLUEIn South America

Simón Bolívar and José de San Martin abol-

ished the Inquisition; in Spain itself the institu-

tion survived until 1834 (The Inquisition in the

New World, by Clara Steinberg-Spitz. (ww.sefarad.org/publica-tion/lm/037/6.html.

Access in May 2011).

Figure 36 The burnings of alleged heretics in

Spain. Source: Available at www.

newadvent.org› Catholic Encyclopedia. .Access in:

May 2nd, 2011 ►

49


▲ Figure: 37: Inquisitors in their costumes on trial.Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inquisition

▲Figure 38: Joan of Arc’s Death at the Stake, by Hermann Stilke (1803–1860).Source: www.pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_of_Arc - En cacheFigure 39: Sir Thomas More (1478-1535)Source: Available at www.newadvent.org› Catholic Encyclopedia. Access in: May 2nd, 2011

50


Figures 38 and 39 portray the execution of Saint Joan of Arc, and a painting of the Sir Thom-as More The great English philosopher and predecessor of Humanism in the XVI century. But dif-ferently from Saint Joan’s burning to death, the execution of Thomas More in medieval times has become theme of films that gave origin to some hilarious (black humor) stories worthy of discus-sion due to the cultural aspects involved. One of them is:

As Sir Thomas More climbed a rickety scaffold where he would be executed, he said to his executioner:

“I pray you, Mr. Lieutenant, see me safe up; and for my coming down, let me shift for myself”. (Available at www.facebook.comGallowshumor-e Notes.com.www.wnotes.com. Access in June, 2011).

If translated into Portuguese the joke would keep the author’s intended meaning. But would such meaning match with the listener’s? Did you notice that this text is gallows humor and per-meated by Sir More’s ironic enunciates? Yes, it is indeed. But what would be required to under-stand this joke?

Firstly, your knowledge of the world (always, and in all circumstances), then your linguistic knowledge of English and of the British historical-social and cultural aspects such as who is Sir Thomas More, what were the circumstances of his being sentenced to death penalty by The Holy Inquisition, Sir More’s (British) control and elegancy but disdainful posture before death itself, his intense faith for the Catholic Church and extreme respect for Henry VIII, who had condemned him despite being his close friend. But most of all you need to capture the nuances and subtle-ties of the British humor which is, obviously, different from the European’s, Americans’, Brazilians’ and from any other country.

Although there is equivalence in meaning between English and the Portuguese language in the previous humor text, it is not consensual that in different cultures and languages such equivalence always prevails. The same may be said of texts other than the humoristic ones. Some have equivalence, others don’t and in general due to social, cultural, pragmatic, historical and, obviously, linguistic reasons. The point is that we cannot generalize things. And for you, dear stu-dents, the important is to open your minds to accept that you will not attain the level of linguis-tic proficiency needed for success in learning a foreign language without experiencing the cul-tural aspects involving it.

Still, watching a video on YouTube I found out that the story of the execution of Sir Thomas More differs a little from the joke I told here. History tells that when he slid down in front of the stairs of the scaffold where he would be decapitated, his exact enunciates were.

“Thank you, my Lord Hereford, when I come down again let me shift for myself once again”.

Time, History, culture and society have changed More’s speech thus turning it into gallows humor, a sort of joke similar to the Brazilian black humor. Just out of curiosity, my friends, Thomas More was named a Catholic saint in 1935. The heretic of the Medieval Times becomes a saint in the 20th century. Is it possible to understand religions or men?

3.2.2 Witch-hunts in America

It was said that the Inquisition cruel prosecution would not reach US with the same intensity as it did in Europe. However, another form of repression and torture would appear in America, in the USA, witch-hunt, a search for witches or evidence of witchcraft. Moments also legally sanc-tioned and involving official trials in Europe appear about 1480 to 1750, resulting in an estimated 40,000 to 100,000 the number of trials and executions respectively. Witch hunts touched the soil of America as a representative of The Holy Inquisition. The term witch comes from the Old Eng-lish word wicca derived from the Germanic root wic, meaning to bend or to turn.

The famous case of the Salem witch trials (theme of several Hollywoodian films) among the Massachusetts Puritans in the USA is a traditional example. It began in 1692 and has entered American consciousness as being quite a bit more than just the killing of witches. The American trials of witches have become a symbol of what can go wrong when crowds of ignorant people go insane, especially when stimulated by ambitious powerful (false) leaders.

GLOSSARYEnunciate: term usu-ally used to refer, but

not exclusively, to a sentence in discourse.

Gallows humor: black humor.

TASKDid you laugh on hear-

ing the joke? Yes, no, why? Write down about

the reasons of your laughter no matter you answer to discuss them

with your tutor and classmates.

TO LEARN MORE watch the video: Sir

Thomas More’s execu-tion on the YouTube

and write down his last words from the mo-

ment he walks amongst people to reach the

scaffold. Compare them to the ones in the

joke. Make a written comment and discuss

the part “let me shift for myself once again” with

your tutor.

CLUEThomas More was

decapitated in England, country where the

hardships the Anglican Church imposed to the Catholics in late medi-

eval times were retalia-tions to the persecution

of Protestants by The Holy Catholic Church in earlier medieval times, when Catholic authori-

ties and adepts in the name of The Holy Office

executed or submitted many people to death

or abominable tortures. The Anglican Church

would promote a per-secution to Catholics,

event that would result in many English fami-

lies’ – The Puritans - im-migrating to the New

World - North America, specifically The USA.

51


Political and religious authorities used the witch trials to impose their own ideas of order and righteousness upon the local population. In America, as in Europe, violence was used to en-force uniformity and conformity in face of dissent and social disorder. Penalties were immediate-ly applied especially if you were an older, deviant, troublesome or somehow a disorderly woman.

Take a look at the following picture and see how the (alleged) heretics were taken to the scaffold to be burned to death.

At the time of the known Salem witch hunt, nineteen people were executed. Howev-er, such sort of events have not been relegated to past. They continued into the XX century when in 1928, 1976, 1977 and 1981 suspects were executed for sorcery, insanity, witchery, witchcraft or for being a witch. Does the rea-son for the executions make any sense or dif-ference? Of course not! And, obviously, all of this would highly influence and add to the American culture and language.

Now, let us see the ordeals American liter-ary writers were submitted to in face of these events.

In the 1630s the large immigration to Bos-ton was the cause for the high articulation of Puritan cultural ideals, and due to this fact the early establishment of a college and a printing press in Cambridge, the New England colo-nies have often been regarded as the center of early American literature. Obviously, literature of and about this period is fart. The Crucible, a

▲Figure 40: Witches of Salem, Official arrest, trial and an executionSource: Available at: countrystudies.us/united--states/history Access in 11th March, 2011.

◄

Figure 41 American Puritans’ fanaticism. Witch hunts and prosecutionSource: Available at: www.rjgeib.com/thoughts/puri-tan/puritan.html –Access in13th May, 2010.

TASKDo you anything about the presence of the Holy Inquisition in Bra-zil? Yes, no? Research about the Inquisition in Brazil and answer: Where there witch hunts, or executions of any sort? Write your comments down for further discussion with your tutor.

52


1953 play by the American playwright Arthur Miller, is a good example of that.

The play takes place in Salem in 1692. It is an allegory, a revival, to McCarthyism, when the US government accused people of communist practices and Miller himself was questioned by the House of Representatives’ Committee on un-American activities in 1956 and convicted of “contempt of Congress” be-cause he refused to identify persons present at meetings he had attended. The text is a trage-dy-dramatization of the Salem witch trials that took place in the Province of Massachusetts Bay in 1692 and 1693.

The drama-tragedy play was first per-formed on Broadway, New York City, at the Martin Beck Theater on January 22, 1953. Mill-

er himself realized that this production was too stylized and cold and because of that the dramatist believed the reviews for it would be largely hostile and they were, nevertheless The New York Times wrote: “a powerful play driving performance”. Despite the bad reviews the production was awarded the Tony in 1953 as “Best Play”.

A year later a new production was a huge success. Today it is studied in high schools and universities because of its status as a revo-lutionary work of theatre, for its allegorical re-lationship to testimony given before the Com-mittee On Un-American Activities during the 1950s, and because it retreated the oppression and torture of the colonial time. It is a central work in the canon of American drama.

3.3 Some cultural traits and the literary text

Following the same line of themes, undoubtedly the most representative work of the pres-ence of the Holy Inquisition heritage in the American culture and language, in my opinion, is the novel The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne written in 1850 and considered his masterpiece. It is a romantic work of fiction in a historical setting in 17th-century in Puritan Boston during the years 1642 to 1649. It tells the story of Hester Prynne, who conceives a daughter through an adulterous affair and struggles to create a new life through repentance and dignity. In his book Hawthorne explores themes of legalism, sin, guilt but conveys also social, religious and historical aspects influential in the American culture.

In the next figures, take a look at Nathaniel Hawthorne’s face and at the cover of the book of his masterpiece- novel.

The Scarlet Letter has also been trans-formed into an opera by Walter Damrosch, li-bretto by George Parsons Lathrop. According to critics the opera is Wagnerian in style. Ex-cerpts from the opera were first premiered at Carnegie Hall, New York, NY, on January 4 and 5, 1895 but I have read no news about their success on those presentations.

It is well known that cultures embody val-ues. One example of such values in the Ameri-can culture would be: Anglo Americans gener-ally tend to consider their personal/individual goals over group goals because they are gen-erally goal- future-oriented, especially when it comes to monetary security. To save and be prepared for the future is a common American trait, as well as is their tendency to strive for

material comfort. But would those traits be common to other cultures as well? Yes, but maybe not so inconspicuously.

Another American tendency towards being goal-oriented is detected in communication. Unlike Brazilians, conversation between Americans is usually oriented toward exchanging infor-mation in a very fast, economic and efficient way. An example is that a direct question frequently leads to a direct response, often without too many words or a great deal of polite small talk. They simply do not want to “waste” time on tomfooleries. This may explain why American citizens are

TO LEARN MORE Read the whole article

in English Language and Culture Insti-

tute. UAB.(Available at: www.uab.edu/elci- ENGLISH/ESL

MORE LINKS. Access in August, 2011.) Take

notes and discuss them with your tutor and

classmates.

TASKFind out the meaning

of the word Crucible and discuss it with your tutor in terms of its use

as an allegory in the title of Miller’s play.

GLOSSARY allegory - is a figurative mode of representation

conveying meaning other than the verbal.

As a literary device, an allegory in its most

general sense is an extended metaphor

and as artistic device a visual symbolic repre-

sentation.

CLUE The House of Represen-

tatives’ Committee on Un-American Activities

(HRCAA) is part of the American history as an organization cre-

ated for repressing and judging people.

TO LEARN MOREWatch excerpts in vid-

eos about The Crucible at www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pfuldf_Pck.

TASKFind out why and what

for the HRCAA was created. Discuss it with your tutor. Did we have

organizations such as this one in Brazil? Yes,

no, which ones? Discuss it with your tutor. ▲

Figure 42: Nathaniel Hawthorne’s pictureSource: www.worldcat.org/.../scarlet-letter...drawings.../

53


often viewed as pushy and rude by other cultures. Anglo Americans are very direct in addressing their interlocutors, using these persons’ name many times but tending to interrupt each other more often, what would be seen as impoliteness in many other cultures.

The raising of children constitutes an Anglo American trait which differs from many other cultures. Americans are strict as to discipline which may include physical punishment that is con-sidered acceptable maybe because their concept of family is that of a perfect one. However, they are constantly saying to their children, closer relatives and friends “I love you”, behavior some-times thought of as excessive and pointless in the Brazilians’ opinion.

Other typically Anglo American beliefs that you, dear students, will probably recognize are: Man has power over nature, and nature itself has its laws and everything that happens can be scientifically explained and Americans have to be the first to climb the ladder of success and are success-oriented. A convincing literary example of this trait is found in Death of a Salesman, a 1949 famous play by the American playwright Arthur Miller awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and Tony Award for Best Play on stage in 1949. The original production ran for 742 performances and was premiered at the Morosco Theatre in February 1949 (Available at www. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_a_Salesman).

In the play, Miller focuses on failure in a success-oriented society, and Willy Loman, the cen-tral character, is the failed aged salesman who lives with Linda, his adoring but over protective wife, who acts as a buffer between her husband and their two adult sons, Biff and Happy, whose relationship with their father is permanently under tension. Loman’s ‘crime’ is to believe in the propaganda of a society which has room only for winners.

The play theme demon-strates how a victim of ‘The Amer-ican Dream’ can be destroyed by false promises which not only impact on one’s business life but also set up conflicts within per-sonal relationships. The signifi-cance of this theme, a trait of the American culture and still very relevant to many societies today, is heightened by Miller’s skillful use of key techniques, including setting, characterization and sym-bolism.

The play plots the tragic col-lapse of a man who cannot face up to his moral responsibilities in a society whose false values at-tach a dangerous importance to success as measured in such tran-sient terms as income and mate-rial possessions. Living according to these values means that failure is likewise defined in economic terms. At the outset of the play Loman is on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

Let’s now examine some samples/excerpts to confirm what I said about Miller’s approach of American cultural traits conveyed by language. But first, let me provide details about Loman’s sons to contextualize the analysis.

Willy’s sons – Biff and Happy - illustrate other significant areas of this central theme of suc-cess/failure: Biff opts out of the competitive world which his father wants for him. It is Biff who finally analyses the root cause of their domestic friction when he says:

‘We never told the truth for ten minutes.’ And it is Biff who finally blames his father for his own failure because:

‘We’ve been walking in a dream for fifteen years’ and ‘‘I never got anywhere because you blew me so full of hot air’.

Biff comes to understand that he has been blinded by false values, unable to honestly ad-dress who he is or where he belongs in life. The result of this understanding is that he finally faces his father with brutal self-knowledge:

TASK Read the E-book at www.online-literature.com › Nathaniel Haw-thorne - and see the film with Demi More and find the meaning of the expression scar-let letter A on Hester’s chest. Discuss the theme with your tutor.

TASKLook up in the diction-ary and check the way Americans use the word inconspicuously. Discuss it with your classmates.

▲Figure43: 1st edition cover of Death of a Salesman, 1949 (Viking Press).Film version of the play.Source: www. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De-ath_of_a_SalesmanFigure 44: Made for TV production of Death of a Salesman,1985Source: www.imdb.com/title/tt0089006

54


‘Pop! I’m a dime a dozen and so are you. ‘His final verdict on his father and his failure is that: ‘He had the wrong dreams. He never knew who he was.’

It is part of Willy’s tragedy, however, that at this moment when he is asked to confront the truth, and he cannot. This failure to face up to reality is seen in Willy’s response to Biff’s honest statement about what his professional position really was:

‘Who ever said I was a salesman with Oliver? I was a shipping clerk.’To which Willy replies: ‘But you were practically.’Willy’s younger son, Happy, acts as a foil to Biff and gives evidence of his own failure to grow

into a man of integrity. He is more successful, in Willy’s viewpoint, than his brother but has been corrupted by competitive business life. He tells Biff:

‘I’m constantly lowering my ideals. ‘His words speak for the playwright.It is well to remember that American women were a force in early 20th century mainly in

1913 when the woman suffrage gave them the right to vote and to run for office much earlier than any other female population of any other country. The expression force also applies for the economic and political reform movements which aimed at extending those rights to women re-gardless of qualifications such as property ownership, payment of tax, or marital status.

Now, dear students, what would be the women writers’ position as to literary texts revealing American cultural aspects? It was only in the 1960s that, women writers began to challenge the notion that women’s place was in the home. That decade would give rise to feminist writers who criticized the paternalism of marriage, submission and lack of dignity and identity. Among them I mention the novelist Marge Piercy, the famous nonfiction writer Betty Friedan, the poets Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath, poet, novelist and short- story writer. Let us read one of Anne Sexton’s poems in which she deals with women’s issues and lyrically imbricates them in a flow of beauty and consistency as she plays with the word ghosts unveiling and revealing women’scondition at that time.

GHOSTS

Some ghosts are women, neither abstract nor pale,their breasts as limp as killed fish.Not witches, but ghostswho come, moving their useless armslike forsaken servants.

Not all ghosts are women,I have seen others;fat, white-bellied men,wearing their genitals like old rags.Not devils, but ghosts.This one thumps barefoot, lurchingabove my bed.

But that isn’t all.Some ghosts are children.Not angels, but ghosts;curling like pink tea cupson any pillow, or kicking,showing their innocent bottoms, wailingfor Lucifer.

(Available at: www.americanpoems.com/poets/annesexton/4721) ·

What really amazes us in Sexton’s poem is the rich comparison-game in the use of contrast-ing words which allows the poet-meaning to reach readers accordingly. Sexton intelligently talks of the women’s bondage and degrading condition as she refers to breasts as killed fish, symbol for physical decadence; men wearing their genitals like old rags –and I ask you to pay attention

TASKDid you notice that Wil-ly’s surname is LOMAN,

and that one of his sons was named HAPPY? Would you say that

Arthur Miller selected these names on pur-

pose? Would there be any relation between

Loman and low man?If so, why would have he

done that? Discuss it with your tutor.

TO LEARN MORERead the E-book Death

of a Salesman on the In-ternet or see the movie

and dive into these traits of the American

culture. A good sug-gestion is the play Final Scene on the YouTube.

TASKCheck the use of words and expressions in con-

trast in the poem and discuss them with your tutor comparing them to the issues women’s

writers dealt with at that time.

55


to the poet’s brilliant use of the verb wear in this enunciate -, and finally deals with the children, men and women to be, with the mission of perpetuating that submissive and abominable condi-tion. Poem is a jewel in all aspects but specifically important for being an actual portrayal of how women (and things) should no longer be.

3.4 Miscellaneous other American cultural traits.

Another important American belief/trait is that one must strive to be the best; hard work is rewarded, as well as adhering to a time schedule and being always punctual. Ameri-cans are more likely to be competitive instead of cooperative, and consider aggressiveness and ability as responsible, not fate or destiny, for leading a person to great achievements.

As to economy, the major challenges fac-ing it are to maintain profits by keeping pro-duction costs low and to increase consumer markets.

Private property is culturally valued in America and this is best expressed in the high rate of home ownership. Historically, the USA was an agricultural nation, and it culturally has a romantic image of the small, independent farm family battling the elements on the prai-rie.

One particular trait in the USA culture re-fers to Americans exacerbated deep patriotism and love for their country and respect for their national symbols such as the flag and the na-tional anthem. They usually listen to, or sing, the national anthem with their hands on their hearts for showing love and respect.

It also amazes me the way Americans respect each other in what concerns collec-tiveness, that is, the idea of being together, private property and civil rights. In general, Americans do not build fences around their houses to separate properties and all neigh-bors are respected and generally, but not al-ways, treated as equals. If they know you they will treat you well.

Americans talk loud and are very effusive in expressing themselves. They frequently use the expression “Oh, my God, oh, my God!”, for happy, surprising or sad, lamentable and as-tonishing situations. Good examples of this trait are the TV sitcoms/series such as My Wife and Kids, Mike and Molly, The Good Wife and Friends to name only a few. In such series you will also easily detect other traits inherent in the American culture and manifested through language.

Anglo-Americans would neither com-plain for waiting a long time in lines nor try

to take someone else’s best positioned place with an untruthful excuse. They are polite but in restaurants and bars attendants are always in a hurry and dying to see you leave after you have finished your meal so that the table would be empty and someone else could en-ter the room and become a new customer. That is America rush for making money and improving economy. After all, what is new about that? The USA is a capitalist country.

Lotteries are popular in the country and Americans like to gamble. Mobility in most cases seems limited: working-class people tend to stay in their classes. Furthermore, the top 1% of the population has made significant gains in wealth in the last few years. Similar gains have not been made by the poorest sec-tors. In general, it appears that the gap be-tween rich and poor is growing.

For the Americans, and for Brazilians as well, social occasions usually include drinking alcoholic beverages. Hot dogs and beer are a must at sporting events, and popcorn and candy highly consumed at movie theaters. As mentioned elsewhere in this textbook, very few occasions are considered ceremonial for the Americans. At weddings, funerals and other rites to serve food and drinks applies by all means. It follows that whether religious or secular, weddings include a large tiered cake and shortly after the wedding, the newlyweds feed each other a piece of the cake. At Jewish-American funerals, the families and friends eat fish, usually smoked or pickled, and eggs may be served as symbols of life’s continuation. Some Americans, particularly in the South, eat hopping john, a dish made with black-eyed peas, to bring good luck in the New Year. At funerals Americans always wear black clothes but do not wear white ones at New Year’s Eve.

Many Americans overeat and have a ten-dency to grow fat because of that. Obesity is a national problem. Waking up is accompanied by coffee and in the morning breakfast, which usually includes lots o coffee or tea, scram-bled eggs, ham or bacon or sausage, cheese, orange juice and toasts or rolls, it is the most important meal of the day whereas lunch is

TO LEARN MOREresearch on the In-ternet for the musical State Fair and get to know more about the romanticism of the Americans in relation.

56


usually a light meal. Dinner is served after 5pm and a lot of food is eaten. Americans, as you know, love pasta, tuna or turkey sandwich and a hot dog dressed or topped with ketchup and mustard and a hamburger, sandwich named

after the city of Hamburger, Germany from where it is allegedly originated, which is pre-pared with a bread called bun, and with differ-ent sorts of meats such as steak, chicken, beef, fish and turkey.

Regarded less as celebrations of patriotism than as family holidays, national holidays are cel-ebrated everywhere in the country. In this section I will approach only two of them.

Undoubtedly, the Fourth of July – Indepen-dence Day (1776) – is the most important holiday for the Americans during which fireworks displays mark the Declaration of Independence from Brit-ain. July is summer in the USA, so this is also a time for an all day long camping and picnics, or trips with friends and family.

The second most significant family holiday is Thanksgiving Day. Families prepare few large and elaborate meals. But the annual feast is also part of the national history as it celebrates the hardships of the early colonists who were starving in their

new environment and received help from the American Indians that came and shared indige-nous foods such as maize and turkey.

As to the arts, the level of public support is much lower than in other wealthy nations as unknown individual artists, writers, and performers are scarcely granted patronage. The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), a famous organization which supports arts and humanities, has a very small budget to provide funds from public broadcasting to individual artists. The NEA some-times is under attack from Congress as conservative members question the value and the moral-ity of the art produced with NEA grants.

Private donations are a common form of supporting the arts in the USA. They are tax-de-ductible and a popular hedge among the wealthy against estate and income taxes. Another es-sential means of subsidizing the arts is to give generous gifts to prestigious museums, galleries, symphonic orchestras, and operas that often name halls and galleries after their donors.

In relation to their social division, most Americans believe that they do not have a “class” so-ciety. This happens because there is a strong cultural belief in the equality of opportunities for all and economic mobility. But social stratification is visible in the multifaceted daily life. The seg-regation of blacks and whites in cities mirrors their separation in the labor force. Whereas giant homes in gated suburbs all across the country generally belong to rich whites, they contrast with the crumbling housing stock of blacks in the inner cities. However, blacks’ condition in America is far better than that of Brazilians. Many of them are successful wealthy and influential people over society and government.

Speech, manners, and dress also signal class position. Strong regional or Spanish accents, for example, are associated with working-class status.

▲Figure 45: Common

hamburger, meal hamburger and a steak

hamburger.Source: en.wikipedia.org/

wiki/Hamburger

TO LEARN MOREWatch Super Size Me, a documentary by Mor-

gan Spurlock available on YouTube: http://

www.youtube.com/watch?v=

qyV3EC4LHn0;

Figure 46: Obesity, national problem in

the USA.Source: www.americano-

besity.org ►

TASKResearch about other

holidays in America. For example: find about

Labor’s Day, Dad’s Day, Mother’s Day and also

about the Brazilian date “Dia dos namora-dos”. Discuss the topic

with your tutor.

57


The labor force has historically always been divided on the basis of gender, race and eth-nicity. Because of that, skilled jobs in manufacturing and management jobs typically have been more accessible to white than to black men or women of any race. Within the industries, there is a technological divide. Blacks and other minorities fill low-skill jobs such as food service and are found less often in managerial positions or the growing hi-tech industries.

The Americans live in a federal republic composed of a national government and fifty state governments. The political system is controlled by two parties: the Republicans and the Dem-ocrats. One of the features of American democracy is that on the average, strangely as it may seem, less than half the eligible voters participate in federal elections.

Republicans and Democrats, referred to as conservatives and liberals respectively, differ on certain social issues. Republicans are generally conservative on moral issues and social spend-ing. They support cuts in federally-sponsored social programs such as welfare and believe in strengthening institutions such as marriage and the traditional family but are usually opposed to abortion and gay rights. Democrats tend to support federal funding for social programs that favor minorities, the environment, and women’s rights. However, critics argue that these two par-ties set a very narrow range for political debate. Third parties do exist and have emerged on di-verse bases importance.

◄ Figures 47, 48: The “Kicking Donkey” party logo is still a well-known symbol for the Democratic Party, despite no longer being the official logo of the party. Source:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Par-ty_(United States).

◄ Figures 49, 50: Republican Party Symbol. Both Parties’ symbols on fight.Source: www.gop.com/ - En cache

58


At the federal level, government power and responsibilities are set out in the Constitution adopted in 1789. The national government is divided into three branches intended to provide “checks and balances” against abuses of power. The branches are the executive, the legislative, and the judicial. The executive branch includes the President and federal agencies that regu-late everything from agriculture to the military. On its turn, legislative branch includes members elected to the upper and lower houses of Congress: the Senate and the House of Representa-tives. The judicial branch includes the Supreme Court and the USA Court of Appeals.

At the state level, government follows along the same lines, with elected governors, sena-tors, and assemblymen and state courts. The nation also has the county, the smallest unit of gov-ernment that has an elected board, but not all states have a system of county governments.

As to elections, officials are elected directly, on the basis of popular vote. Nevertheless, and surprisingly for many peoples, the President is elected by the Electoral College. Each state has as many electors as it has senators and representatives. The latter are awarded according to popula-tion. Within each state, electors vote as a bloc, which means that all electoral votes in a state go to the candidate with the plurality of the popular vote within that state. A candidate needs 270 electoral votes to win the election. This system is controversial and intriguing because it is pos-sible for a President to win a national election without winning a national majority of the popu-lar vote, as it happened in 2000 when George Bush Junior was elected President. Cultures are what they are. But is it not strange that in the most democratic nation in the world (at least in the Americans’ opinion) the president is not elected by the people, that the people’s will does not prevail?

Politics is highly professionalized in America. With the exception of local-level offices, most people who run for political offices are lifelong politicians but running for a high-level political office is extremely expensive. Many politicians in the House and the Senate are wealthy. However the expense of winning elections requires not only personal wealth, but corporate donations.

The United States remains the most violent industrialized nation in the world despite the decrease in crime rates. The capital city, Washington, D.C. has the highest per capita crime rate in the country. In the nation as a whole the poor and teenagers are the most common victims of violent and nonviolent crime.

Although cities are considered very dangerous places, crime rate is not consistently higher in urban areas than in rural areas. The elderly are the most fearful of crime but not its most com-mon victims. For violent crime tough penalties are often perceived as a solution, and it is on this basis that the death penalty is defended. But if this proves to be a solution why would Florida and Arizona, which adopt the death penalty, have the highest rates of violent crime in the coun-try?

In all categories the vast majority of crimes are committed by white males. Popular imagina-tion, prejudice and popular culture say that violent criminal tendencies are often associated with African-American and Hispanic males. This perception legitimates a controversial practice called racial profiling. Because of that African-American and Hispanic men are randomly stopped, ques-tioned, or searched and arrested by police.

Historically, immigrant urban groups have been subject of intense policing pursuing and believed to be tendentious for vice and crime. Nevertheless, the vast majority of crimes are com-mitted by white males.

Strange as it may seem, there are more people in prison and more people per capita in pris-on than in any other industrialized nation. The prison population is well over one million, num-bers that have increased since 1980 as a result of mandatory sentences for drug-related crimes. Surprisingly as it seems, African-Americans make up only about 12% of the population, however, they outnumber white inmates in prison. Both Hispanic and African-American men are far more likely to be imprisoned than white men. Rates of imprisonment for women are on the rise, but they are far less likely to be imprisoned than men of any race or ethnicity. The USA is the only Western industrialized nation that allows capital punishment and rates of execution for African-American men are higher than those of any other ethnic group.

As to the Status of Women and Men, in legal terms, women have the same rights as men. They can own property, choose to marry or divorce, vote and demand equal wages for equal work. They also have access to birth control and abortion. Differently from the situation in other countries, the status of women in relation to men is very high. However, women do not receive the same social and economic benefits as men do. They are greatly underrepresented in elect-ed political offices and are more likely to live in poverty. Female occupations, both in the home and in the workplace, are valued less than men’s. Women are more likely to have a distorted or

59


low self-image and suffer from a sense of disempowerment. Any similarity to Brazilian (and other country’s) women? What do you think, dear student?

As I have already explained, in America, the notion of family is the typical/ideal nuclear one consisting of two parents and their children; this is the cultural ideal but not always the reality. As in many other cultures, upon marriage, adult couples form their own household separate from their biological families. Immigrant groups have been reported to rely on extended family net-works for support. Similarly, among African-American families, where adult males are often ab-sent, extended kin ties are crucial for women raising children. A significant number of Americans of all ethnic backgrounds live in nontraditional families such as the unmarried couples or single parents, gay couples and their children, or gay families without children.

Civil unions are legal only be-tween heterosexual adults, excep-tion for the state of Vermont. Gay marriages, however, are increas-ingly common whether or not they are recognized by the state. Certain religions and churches recognize and perform gay mar-riages. Marriage, as a civil institu-tion, is commonly performed in a church. As in many other coun-tries, statistically, marriage appears to be on the decline. Half of all adults are unmarried, includ-ing those who have never married and those who are divorced. Among whites rates of marriage are higher than among blacks. Remarriage and divorce have high rates and have also increased the importance of stepfamilies.

In relation to higher education, the majority of the Americans complete high school, and almost half receive at least some college education. Almost one-quarter of the population has completed four or more years of college. Rates of graduation from high school and college atten-dance are significantly higher for the whites than for African-Americans and Hispanics.

The quality of colleges and universities is excellent, and availability due, but the university education is not funded by the state as it is in many Western industrialized nations, like Brazil for instance in the federal universities. Higher education is expensive and ranges from a few thou-sand dollars annually at public institutions to more than ten thousand dollars a year at private in-stitutions. The cost of tuition in elite private colleges exceeds US$20.000 a year, about R$34.000. Some of the most famous universities in the world as Yale, Stanford and Cambridge are in the USA.

TASKSee the film American Wedding, and also known as American Pie. You will find manyt raits of the American culture.

◄ Figure 51: An ad of the film American Wedding.Source:www.rottentoma-toes.com/m/american_we-dding

▲Figure 52 and 53: University of Stanford and Harvard University/Cambridge, MassachusettsSource:en.wikipedia.org/wikiSource:pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universidade_Harvard/Stanford University -California

60


Paying for college among middle class parents is a source of anxiety and worry from the moment their children are born. It is customary to make savings to guarantee university stud-ies. Middle and low-income families often pay for college with student loans and the size of such debts is on the increase.

Americans’ personal behavior often appears crass, loud, and effusive to people from other cultures, but they value emotional and bodily restraint. The stereotypical American often main-tains a permanent smile and unrelenting enthusiasm which may mask strong emotions they consider unacceptable to express. The bodily refrain is expressed through the relatively large physical distance people, especially men, maintain with each other. Yawning, breast-feeding, and passing gas in public are considered rude. Americans also consider it impolite to talk about mon-ey and age.

3.5 The performing artsLet us now approach the performing arts

which include many original genres of modern dancing that have been influenced by classi-cal forms as well as American traditions, such as jazz, funk, punk. Important American inno-vators dancers include Isadora Duncan, Mar-tha Graham, and Alvin Ailey. Theaters in every town that hosted plays, vaudeville, and mu-sicals in the past are now showing movies or have simply closed. In general terms, perfor-mance arts are available (mostly only) in met-ropolitan areas.

America has produced several popular musical genres which blended regional, Euro-pean, and African influences of which the best known are the African-American blues and jazz. Important jazz composers and musicians include Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Louis Arm-strong, John Coltrane, and Thelonius Monk. Although considered classic today, blues and jazz standards were the popular music of the time they were invented.

Interestingly, while (social) segrega-tion was common among whites and blacks, Americans seemed to ignore the allegedly differences between these ethnicities as mu-sic fitted into “black” and “white” categories. Examples of that were the popular swing jazz tunes standardized by band leaders such as Glenn Miller, whose white band made swing music hugely popular with young white peo-ple.

Rock ‘n’ roll, a major cultural export in the 1950s and 1960s, had its roots in these earlier popular forms. Famous and major influenc-es in rock and roll include Elvis Presley, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Bruce Springsteen. Primarily white, rock ‘n’ roll received the influ-ence of soul and Motown, with singers such as Aretha Franklin, the groups the Supremes and the Temptations who produced popular black music.

Country music, another popular genre, has its roots in the early American folk music of the Southeast and is now termed country or bluegrass. The genre, emerging from tra-ditional gospel songs and hymns reworked these genres to produce songs about the rou-tine of poor whites in the Southeast rural area.

In the USA, popular music has always em-bodied a conflict between its commercial and entertainment value and its intellectual or po-litical value. Folk, country and blues, rap, rock ‘n’ roll, and hip-hop have all carried powerful social and political messages. It is common that old forms become standard and com-mercialized, but their political edge tends to give way to more generic content, such as love songs.

I could not close this section without mentioning the classics, classic music in Amer-ica. I am specifically referring to Mr. George Gershwin, a Jewish descendant composer fa-mous for compositions in both classical and pop music. Known all over the world, Gersh-win composed the Rhapsody in Blue for piano and orchestra, the piece An American in Paris and the Cuban Overture. George composed in-numerous pop song sand scores for musicals performed on Broadway theaters always in partnership with his elder brother Ira (lyricist). Together they composed the musicals Crazy for You (1930), Porgy and Bess (1935), the latter considered by most critics as an opera. A reviv-al of Porgy… is scheduled and previews open in November, 2011 in New York; Lady be Good (1924), Tell me More (1925), Oh Kay!(1926). All musical scores deal with racial-social-roman-tic (Porgy and Bess), urban (Lady Be God) and country (Crazy for You) issues pertinent to the American culture all of them with a touch of linguistic ambiguities and humor. Take a look at Gershwin in the next photo.

61


Along with George Gershwin’s death only at the age of 38, dies the classical American music, so to speak.

3.5.1 Last but not least: Musical Theatre, Musicals

Musicals, or Musical theatre, are a form of theatre combining songs, spo-ken dialogue and dance, in which the emotional content of the piece – hu-mor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and tech-nical aspects of the entertainment as an integrated whole. Although musical theatre overlaps with other theatrical forms such as opera, it may be distin-

guished by the equal importance given to the music as compared to the dialogue, movement and other elements.

In a brief account, the origin of musicals dates back to the 19th century culminating with the works of Gil-bert and Sullivan in Britain and those of Harrigan and Hart in America. In the midst 1920s musical works be-came simply, “musicals”.

Early in the 20th century, musicals and other smart shows like Of Thee I Sing (Gershwin) were artistic steps forward other revues and entertainment and led to re-markable remarkable shows as Show Boat (1927) and Oklahoma!(1943). Some of the most famous and iconic musicals through the decades that fol-lowed include West Side Story (1957), Hair (1967 off Broadway), A Chorus Line (1975), Rent (1994 in a workshop and 1996 on Broadway), Crazy for you (1992), Beauty and the Beast (1994), Tarzan (2006), Ragtime (1996 in Toronto, Canada and in 1998 on Broadway), The Producers (2001),The Little Mermaid (2007), Spider Man: Turn of the dark (2010) and Priscilla Queen of Desert (Sydney in 2006, New Zealand in 2008, Broadway in 2011, to name only a few successful shows and some of them bringing American themes. Such shows involve financial investments which are beyond imagination and where artistic and technical competence abounds.

The musical Spider Man: Turn of the dark is directly taken from the comics with the same name and tells the saga of one of the American superheroes in his struggle for defending the needy and fighting bandits without revealing his identity.

Ragtime is based upon a novel with the same name by El Doctorow (1975).The novel be-came a film and also a musical, the latter with a book by Terrence McNally, lyrics by Lynn Ahrens, and music by Stephen Flaherty. The musical score includes marches, cakewalks, gospel and rag-time and is mostly sung-through. Ragtime’s musical score is the most beautiful ever composed for a Broadway show, in my opinion.

Ragtime tells the story of three ethnical groups in America, represented by the Afro-Ameri-can Coalhouse Walker Jr., a Harlem musician; Mother, the matriarch of a WASP (abbreviated form

◄ Figure 54: George Gershwin (1898-1937) born Jacob Gershowitz, from Jewish origin, famousAmerican composer of the 1920sa and 1930s..Source:wwwGeorgeegershwin.com

Figure 55: The first musical on stageSource: The Black Crook (1866), considered by some

historians to be the first musical.Available at: Musical theatre - Wikipedia, the free… en.wikipedia.

org/wiki/Musical_theatre. ►

62


for (White, Anglo-Saxon and Protestant.) family in New Rochelle, NY, often used with a pejorative senseand Tateh, a Jewish immigrant. Famous American historical figures such as Harry Houdini, Evelyn Nesbit, Booker T. Washington, J. P. Morgan, Henry Ford, Stanford White, Harry Kendall Thaw, and Emma Goldman are also depicted in the show.

The next three musicals are famous all over the world as they were also seen in films and cartoons. The last picture depicts the musical How to succeed in business without really trying now on stage that tells the story of a young man in search for success in business. The title speaks for itself.

▲Figure 56, 57, 58, 59: Spider Man: Turn of the dark (2010 and still on) first photo is taken from the content writer Playbill booklet distributed inside the theatres before the musical show starts. Spider Man’s second photo was taken from ‘Spider-Man’ spins strong box office web, available at: www.today.msnbc.msn.com/id/43559858/ns/today-entertainment, Anything goes (revival of 2011) and Ragtime (1998) photos were taken from the content writer in the CD covers.

▲Figures: 60, 61, 62 and 63: Photos of the shows: The Addams family (opened in 2009), The Lion King (opened in 1999). Mamma Mia (London production in 1999; Broadway in 2001), How to succeed …(revival opened in 2010).Source: Pictures are photos taken from the content writer Playbill books freely distributed inside the theatre as you are oriented to find your seat before the beginning of every performance.

63


If you thought, dear students, that you recognized the actor who plays Harry Potter in the movies, in one of these pictures, yes, you are right. He is presently in a show on Broadway whose theme is typical of the American culture. And he sings and dances too...

American musicals about foreign cultural themes are also produced as Billy Elliot (Broad-way 2009) which is taken from the English film (2000) with the same name. The musical score is by Elton John and lyrics by Lee Hall; Man of la Mancha (1965, from the novel by Miguel de Cer-vantes Don Quixote de La Mancha), Nine (1992, from Federico Fellini’s semi-autobiographical film 8½.),The Phantom of the Opera from a book by Gaston Leroux, a French author and musical score by Andrew Lloyd Webber, lyrics by Charles Hart. Les Misérables (1980 in Paris; 1985 in London and Broadway in 1987)is depicted from a novel written by the French writer Victor Hugo; Women on the verge of a nervous breakdown (2010), a three months running show (from October 4th to Janu-ary 4th) is based upon Almodovar’s film with the same name. All of them became huge success all over the world as beautifully staged and performed. See their photos taken from the Playbill covers below.

Famous throughout the world, American musicals are performed all over the USA and in many other countries including Brazil where the productions are duly translated into Portuguese and performed in theatres in São Paulo with competence that equals the ones on Broadway or London. Examples of musicals staged in Brazil include: O Beijo da Mulher Aranha, Vitor e Vitória, Os Miseráveis, O Fantasma da Ópera, A Noviça Rebelde, Minha Querida Dama and recently Mamma Mia among others. Musicals are undeniable relevant mechanisms for portraying cultural traits. Their scores include the most beautiful and famous songs ever composed.

3.6 Culture in second language teaching

Take a close look into the following text, dear, students. I want you to answer some ques-tions about it. To do so, watch how language leads you to capture the nuances of the American culture.

Because language is so closely entwined in culture, language teachers entering a different culture must respect their cultural, moral and ethical values. To teach an FL is also to teach a for-eign culture, and teachers should be sensitive to the fact that our students, our colleges, our ad-ministrators, and, if we live abroad, our neighbors, do not share all of our cultural paradigms.

On account of that, it is advisable that teachers instruct their students on the cultural back-ground of language usage as meaning is bound in cultural context. Instructors must not only

▲Figures 65, 66, 67, 68: Billy Elliot (2009), Man of la Mancha (2001), The Phantom of the Opera (1986), Priscilla Queen of desert (2010)Source: Photos taken from the Playbill booklet distributed freely inside the theatre before the show.

TO LEARN MOREGoto YouTube and find American musicals. Listen to some of their excerpts and get to know why they are such a significant trait in American culture. A good suggestion would be Bonnie and Clyde a brand new show whose previews open in No-vember 4th).

TASKResearch on the Inter-net about the word re-vival used some times in this section. Discuss it with classmates and tutor.

64


explain the meaning to the students because with such a strategy stu-dents would be learning empty or meaningless symbols or incorrect meanings. It is known that very fre-quently, meanings are lost because of cultural boundaries which do not allow such ideas to persist. Misun-derstandings often emerge because of such distinct cultural ideolo-gies, roots, and cultural boundaries which limit expression. The result is that students may run the risk of us-ing the FL language inappropriately or within the wrong cultural con-text, thus not achieving the purpose of learning a language properly.

It was said in this textbook that the American culture is that of individualism, personal accom-plishment, patriotic feelings and

pride, and focused on the family and its ties, and that success and failure in the American cultural framework influences not just a specific individual but the whole family or group. Therefore, be-sides respecting the culture in which Americans are inserted when teaching instructors should use culturally acceptable methods that must be examined before proceeding, as they may be inappropriate teaching, intentional or not. Following this line of thought what could be taught in terms of grammar and culture in the following cartoon and how (method) would you teach these aspects?

What does the cartoonist convey, in a humorous way, with the images and linguistic structures?The idea that even in face of death teachers must do their job: teach and be respected for their knowledge. Take a look at the characters’ clothing. When do you think this scene took place? Did you know about this specific use of the verb hang?

Now, take a look at the next car-toon, dear students, and see how that the cartoonist approaches the theme.

What the linguistic structures con-vey in terms of American culture in this

picture is that no matter ungrammati-cal the language people have to fol-low the principle of private property. Therefore, no van-dalism is allowed, not even to correct the mistakes in pub-lic signs. The woman in the picture is taken to prison because she vandalized the sign with her correction. Americans are educated to live by the book. Of course, there is irony permeating the cartoon as peoples from other cultures could think there is some sort of exaggeration about the old lady’s arrest. Would this situation happen in Brazil? Would someone try to correct the mis-

Figure 69: Americans’ choices.

Source:www.cartoons-tock.com/newscartoons/directory/a/american.asp ►

TASKThe cartoonist makes use of irony in that he

criticizes the American status quo. Find cultural traits in the intertwine-

ment of language to culture. Name also words you did not

know and that you learned through study-

ing the text.

▲Figure 70: A cartoon on the trait about the use of the pattern language.Source: www.inglesonline.com.br › Sites de Inglês Básico.

TASKWhat cultural American

trait s detectable from this text? Discuss it with

your tutor.

Figure 71: Carton on the use of the pattern

languageSource: www.inglesonline.

com.br › Sites de Inglês Básico.

▼

65


take and be arrested because he vandalized a public or private property? How would Brazilians react to this cartoon?

In using language, differences should not only be compared, but also contrasted because this will enable the student to judge appropriately the uses and the causes of language idiosyn-crasies. Instructors should contrast the different language usages, especially grammatical and id-iom use in their cultural contexts for the students to fully understand why certain things in Eng-lish are said. Brazilian students learning English are generally first taught to greet someone with simple dialogs as follows:

“Hello. How are you?” /“How do you do?”“I am fine. Thank you, and you?”

This is believed to be what one must say on the first and every occasion you meet an English speaking person but if the interlocutor greets you with the following greetings you should an-swer accordingly:

“How is everything?” You could say: Good! OK!“How are you doing? You could say: Great!“Hello?” Hi?

However, for over eight decades in the 20th century, Brazilian students were likely to answer “I am fine, thank you and you?” This sort of format in teaching is everything but a communicative approach. Brazilians greet themselves in different ways too, so the question is: In how many ways North-Americans greet themselves? What is culturally appropriate?

Notice in the cartoon, dear students, how culture and language intermingle as the cartoonist underlies the word IN to show the importance of the literary use of language in the website that should be strictly followed. The humorist uses ambiguity in bed IN breakfast (a cama no/dentro do café da manhã) to counterpoint the usual meaning of the expression breakfast in bed that means (the comfort of ) having breakfast in bed. It is language that makes this meaning-game pos-sible. But what did make it possible? Intonation and stress and chunk division.

Western ideologies and methodologies focus their teach-ing on free speech as a tool for utilizing and memorizing vo-cabulary and grammar sequences. But people from different cultures learn things in different ways. In the 1960s in Brazil for instance, memorization (behaviorism approach, audio-lingual method, drills technique)was the most common way to study a language vocabulary and grammar. In Brazil it is well known a sentence –focus of many humoristic texts - that made it clear the bad use of such method in our schools: ‘The book is on the table’, the only enunciate students were able to utter after years of English language schooling.

Nevertheless, the usage of cultural explanations for teaching languages has proved invalu-able for many students to understand the target language. It has even enabled them to differen-tiate between appropriate and inappropriate English phrases and idioms to be used in a given context. Similarities and contrasts between the native and target languages have proved effi-cient as teaching tools when the teacher understands such cultural similarities and differences, and compares and applies that knowledge in his teaching practices.

The Anglo-American values, beliefs and traits discussed in this Unit are not concentrated in specific regions of the country but disseminated all over the nation. Moreover, they are far from being exhaustive but enough to serve my purpose: to show you some Anglo-American, namely of the USA, cultural traits usually manifested through their language, English.

TASKWould you agree that the previous cartoon is a good tool for teach-ing language (gram-mar, semantics, and phonology) and cul-ture? How would you do that? Discuss with your classmates and tu-tor. Furthermore, what is wrong in the sign? Can you explain it?

CLUEInformation about the Communicative Approach for teaching English as a foreign language can be found in the textbook of the discipline Applied Lin-guistics (2011), by Rosa Maria Neves da Silva for your course, dear students.

◄ Figure 72: Cartoon on the use of ambiguous language.Source: www.inglesonline.com.br › Sites de Inglês Básico - Em cache. Access in 9 abr. 2007

GLOSSARYChunk- Several words that are customarily used together in a fixed expression, such as “in my opinion,” “to make a long story short,” “How are you?” or “Know what I mean?”. They are pieces of language meaningful enough to make themselves understood. All you have to do is to read it properly.

TASKAnswer: Would the author’s intended meaning in this cartoon reach Brazilians as they did to Americans? Yes, NO, why? I discussed language role in the text for you. Now discuss the role culture plays in such a context with your tutor.

66


3.7 Culture and language teaching policy

This is a cat, my teacher announced. Of course it is, I thought. What else could it be but a cat? At least in the American culture. This is a cat, and not an elephant. Why did she say the obvi-ous? What did she expect me to see in the pic-ture?

Now, take a look at the next picture.

Well, well, isn’t it interesting? Teacher presented something different: these are cats too but not exactly cats; they are people too. I was amazed. What had happened? Teacher contextualized the scene in the picture and taught me that Cats is a musical by the English composer Andrew Lloyd Webber in which actors dress and make up as cats. It is a representation on stage. Prin-cess Diana saw this show twice in London. She loved it, said the teacher. My teacher then went on with her teaching, communicatively, convincingly, amazingly and explaining and making me

contextualize words as: disguise, make up, theatrical performance, look like, take a look, musical score, cast, lyrics, book by, dress up, staging, backstage, audience, aisle, row usherette, Playbill and so on. Everything contextualized, at and inside the theatre. Did you understand what I mean, dear students?

Because of what has been discussed in this textbook so far, second language teaching poli-cies must be sensitive to the local language not to make it inferior to the target language. Al-though the teaching-learning of the English language has become a phenomenon in the world, care must be taken to avoid forwarding the ideology that you should learn English because it is a superior language, of a superior culture, regardless of the undeniable truth that to succeed in a globalized economy one must be able to communicate in English. (HERRON, C., Cole, S. P., COR-RIE, C., & DUBREIL, S.a)1999).This fact demonstrates that our world has entered the age of global-ization in which most observers see a tendency toward homogeneity of values and norms but others see an opportunity to rescue local identities.

TO LEARN MORERefer to the textbook

Phonology by Luci Kikuchi et all written for UAB/Unimontes/

Capes, 2011, and find information about

intonation and stress in chunks and perceive

how their misreading can change meaning..

TO LEARN MORE1. Refer to the textbook

on Applied Linguistics (2011), produced by Rosa Maria Neves da Silva for your course. 2. Watch the video A

Lesson on Behaviorism, and others, available

at www.youtube.com/watch?v=

fVSwTaB7pHQ.◄

Figure 73: A catSource:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat. Access in July, 2011.

Figures 74, 75: Photos of the talented characters

in the musical Cats.Source:pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catsthemusical-Mu-sical (1981), by Sir Andrew

Lloyd Webber. ►

67


The implications for language policy makers are that policies must be engendered which not only include but celebrate the local language. Policies must not degrade other languages by placing them on a level of lower importance and language teaching must encompass and in-clude cultural values from the societies from which the languages are derived. In other words, policies regarding language teaching have to incorporate the cultural values, usage, and com-plexities as a means to create better linguistic comprehension as well as cultural understanding.

Teaching must also consider the cultural ideologies of every student and teacher, as well as the culture in which the target language is being taught, because this will increase cultural awareness and appropriateness of behavior. So it is fundamental that languages teachers be aware of all that in order to enhance understanding and acceptance of differences between peo-ple, cultures and ideologies, but above all to preserve the student cultural identity. To achieve such a goal, language teachers need to be informed about various teaching interaction-based methodologies, manipulate them and develop their own teaching methods compatible with the educational context to foster interaction. In fact, students cannot actually master the language until they have also mastered the cultural contexts in which the language occurs. From this as-sertion derives the importance of incorporating culture into second language teaching and of using strategies for infusing cultural issues in classroom instruction.

It is obvious that culture is in many cases taught implicitly in the linguistic structures. Aware-ness of the cultural traits embedded in the language must be arisen. Teachers can make those features an explicit topic of discussion together with the structures studied. When teaching pro-nouns, for example, the teacher can help students understand when in Portuguese it is appropri-ate to use an informal form of address (Você, C (You)) rather than a formal form of address (Sen-hor, Senhora)—a distinction that English does not have as they use you for all instances.

An English second language teacher can help students understand socially appropriate communication, such as making requests that show respectto a certain person. What would you say of a person’s addressing Queen Elizabeth II, like this: “Hey, Queen Elizabeth, how is your hus-band Philippe?” If you said unacceptable, you are right! This is excessive informality intolerable in terms of royal cultural protocol, and I believe, unlikely to happen, although linguistically correct. The conclusion is that students will master a language only when they learn both its linguistic and cultural norms. To achieve such a goal, you can use specific materials to help you teach lan-guage along with culture. Here are a few suggestions:

Miscellaneous: Materials such as news broadcasts, Web sites; and photographs, magazines, newspapers, restaurant menus, videos, travel brochures, and other printed materials that can help engage students in authentic cultural experiences, the ones selected from authentic sourc-es of the native speech community.

Film and television: Imagery and audio are segments which connect students with lan-guage and cultural issues simultaneously. These means of communication offer students an op-portunity to witness traits and behavior not always obvious in texts. Film is often one of the more current and comprehensive ways to grasp the cultural look, feel, pace, timing or turn-taking in conversation. Students achieve significant gains in overall cultural knowledge after watching vid-eos from the target culture in the classroom (HERRON, COLE, CORRIE, & DUBREIL, a. 1999).

Proverbs–Teaching is to focus on the differences or similarities of the target and the stu-dents’ native languages. Show them how differences may reflect historical and cultural back-ground. Such procedure also provides a way to deal with stereotypes, discuss misperceptions of the foreign culture, as well as to unveil values often represented in the proverbs of students’ na-tive culture.

Role Play and strategic scenarios– Techniques with which students can act out a miscom-munication based on cultural differences. For example, after learning about ways of address-ing different groups of people in the target culture, such as people of the same age and older people, students could perform a situation in which an inappropriate greeting is used. Other stu-dents observe the performance and try to identify the reason for the miscommunication. They then role play the same situation using a culturally appropriate form of addressing.

Charges, strips and jokes– Text genres with which I have presented and discussed the top-ics of this discipline. Humorous texts have proved effective as teaching materials. You can always compare and contrast humor texts in both the target and native language thus unveiling traits of both languages.

Literary texts–They are loaded with cultural information – historical, social, political, eco-nomic etc. - and generally evoke memorable reactions in readers. The careful, objective and planned selection of texts to be studied by a group of students can be very helpful in that it al-

TO LEARN MOREI suggest the reading of the chapter Eles não aprendem português quanto mais inglês, in the Oficina de lin-guística aplicada (1996), by Luiz Paulo da Moita Lopes.

68


lows insights into the American culture. Students are likely to learn literature better when they read a poem rather than if they read a literary text sheet; for example, if they read a poem by Em-ily Dickinson they may retain cultural information more if they read something about the Ameri-can culture at the time Dickinson lived. The students who read the original literary work usually show capacity to discuss the historical and social events of the era.In this textbook I discussed some aspects of Death of a salesman and showed how culture and language are intertwined.

Expert sources - Exchange students, immigrant students, or students who speak the target language at home are resources for helping learning. Invited to the classroom these students can share authentic insights into the home and cultural life of native speakers of the language. Dear students, make no mistake: the issue of teaching culture is nothing new to second language teachers. However, in most cases, teaching culture has been limited to teaching specific holidays, special dates, clothing, folk songs, and food. These topics are indeed useful, but only within a broader context which would stimulate linguistic or social insight and enrich students’ knowledge, especially if the objective of language instruction is enabling them to communicate effectively in another language (HERRON, C., CORRIE, C., Cole, S. P., & DUBREIL, S. b.1999).

It follows that cultural day-to-day traits should include conversational conventions such as the communicative functions of greeting, saying good-bye, addressing, thanking, making re-quests and asking questions, that is, to use language effectively and not just being able to (re)produce grammatical sentences and memorized vocabulary. As I have shown in this textbook, language and culture intermingle to such an extent that one becomes the other. It is unviable, I insist, to teach language apart from its culture. The implications for language teaching are therefore vast and sometimes far reaching. As language teachers to be, you must be culturally aware, considerate of the students` culture, and instruct them about cultural differences thus promoting understanding. Your teaching must reflect both the target language culture as well as the students` thus avoiding any sort of cultural misconceptions or discrimination.

And yet, to make all these things clearer, I go back to the first text/joke inserted in the By Way of Presentation for this textbook in which I posed a specific question. I remind you that hu-mor in the mentioned text/joke is triggered by linguistic games involving onomatopoeias and phonological ambiguity specifically provoked by the interesting use of semantic phenomena along with some colors. The question was: Could you guess the nationality of the joke’s au-thor? My answer is as simple as that: Yes, I can. The author is Brazilian. Why?

First of all and most importantly because the joke brings the stereotype that the Portuguese people are stupid. It is a Brazilian cultural trait. Americans do not hold this view of the Portu-guese. For some Americans the Polish would be the stupid ones, stereotype that can be detect-ed, for example, in Tennessee Williams’s play (1947) A Streetcar Named Desire.

In the play there are three main characters: Stella and Blanche (sisters), and Stella’s Polish husband Stanley. Blanche has just come to stay in Stella and Stanley’s small flat in New Orleans. Blanche asks Stella if it will be decent for all three of them to share such a small flat. Stella replies, “Stanley is Polish, you know”. Why is it significant that Stanley is Polish? Because there is a ste-reotype that Polish people are stupid in America. There are many, many jokes in America about “Dumb Polacks”. Americans also have a stereotype that the Irish are stupid, but the Polish, stereo-typically, are even more stupid than the Irish, which is why Blanche says Poles are not as “high-brow” as the Irish. As a Brazilian I do not hold these views.

Secondly, I ask: Who would hear GREEN, GREEN (trim, trim?) when the telephone rang but a Brazilian? The word GREEN is simply a color and has nothing to do with the telephone onomato-poeic ringing. As to the sound of colors and other words used in the text, Americans (or English speaking people) would not mishear PICK for PINK or HELLO for YELLOW. No way! Americans can tell these sounds from the others perfectly and would not mix them up as intended by the joke’s author. Some foreigners might hear these misguiding onomatopoeic sounds as used in the text but surely not the Americans.

In this same line of thought, Americans, differently from Brazilians, hear cats “meow”, pigs “oink”, dogs “bark”, bells and telephones “ring”, mosquitoes “buzz”, people “hum” (when they do not know the words to the song) and chalk “screech” across a blackboard. Thus the words used in the joke may have just been a frustrated attempt to echo the sounds as they would be heard in English. However, in fact the author (unless making a joke inside another joke, meta-humor) made semantic and phonological mistakes.

69


Finally, I return to the quote inserted in the beginning of the By Way of Introduction in this textbook: “Those who know nothing of foreign languages know nothing of their own”. You are now able to understand that Goethe, its author, is right: if you do not know any foreign language you will not be able to understand your own language and culture. You will be destined to live in a smaller world. You will be unable to comprehend other peoples’ behavior and actions, nei-ther any historical, social nor cultural aspects a language conveys nor the traits inherent in the speakers of that language. In this sense, one of the main objectives of knowing an FL would be to expand your knowledge about your own language and culture, by means of contrasting and comparing it to the FL, English.

By knowing English you will know the Anglo-American people better, their habits, needs, actions and reactions, in sum, their way of life, their world, culture. This is what Goethe wanted to mean with his quotation. In brief, you will realize that there is no teaching of an FL other than the one which integrates language and culture, and that studying English by means of integra-tion will result both in a fruitful learning of that FL and its culture, and an effective learning about your own native language.

It is now clear, I believe, that the knowledge of other languages brings you awareness of your own language and of English as well, and naturally, consciousness of the differences be-tween them in all language levels: phonological, grammatical/syntactical and semantic. Hope you are chasing after that sort of learning.

ReferencesHERRON, C., Cole, S. P., CORRIE, C.; DUBREIL, S. Using Instructional Video to Teach Culture to Beginning Foreign: The effectiveness of a video-based curriculum in teaching culture. Modern Language Journal, p. 518, a.1999.

HERRON, C., Cole, S. P., CORRIE, C.;DUBREIL, S. CAL: Digests: Culture in Second LanguageAvail-ableathttps://calico.org/html/article_502.pdf•File:PDFThe effectiveness of video-based cur-riculum in teaching culture. The Modern Language Journal, 83(4), 518- 533, b. 1999.

KIKUCHI, Luci et al. Phonology Textbook.UAB/Unimontes/Capes, 2011.

SILVA, Rosa Maria Neves da. Applied Linguistics. Textbook FOR UAB/Unimontes/Capes.2011.

www.americanobesity.org.

www.americanpoems.com/poets/annesexton/4721 ·

www.cal.org/resources/Digest/0309peterson.html

www.cartoonstock.com/newscartoons/directory/a/american.asp

www.countrystudies.us/united-states/history

www.facebook.comGallowshumor-e Notes.com.www.wnotes.com

www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_a_Salesman)

www.Georgeegershwin.com

www.gop.com/ - En cache

www.imdb.com/title/tt0089006

www.inglesonline.com.br › Sites de Inglês Básico. - En cache.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inquisition

www.MCHUMOR.com

www.newadvent.org› Catholic Encyclopedia

TASKSee Bowling for Col-umbine (2002) and Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004), documentaries by the American film director Michael Moore and have a new perspective of certain facts. Discuss the themes with your tutor.

70


www.pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_of_Arc - En cache

www.pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universidade_Harvard/Stanford University -California

www.rjgeib.com/thoughts/puritan/puritan.html –

www.rjgeib.com/thoughts/puritan/puritan.html –

www.rottentomatoes.com/m/american_wedding/

www.sefarad.org/publication/lm/037/6.html.

www.today.msnbc.msn.com/id/43559858/ns/today-entertainment

www.uab.edu/elci- ENGLISH/ESL MORE LINKS.

www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat

www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catsthemusical- Musical.

www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_a_Salesman

www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Party_(United States)

www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamburger

www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical_theatre.

www.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scarlet_Letter_(opera)

www.wikipedia.org/wiki/WASP

www.worldcat.org/.../scarlet-letter...drawings.../

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pfuldf_Pck.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVSwTaB7pHQ.

71


Summary

Unit 1

Unit 1 intended to demonstrate that the understanding of an FL demands a good knowledge of the culture and communicative competence.

The meaning and origin of useful words and expressions along this textbook were ex-plained: Anglo/Angles (from Angeln, in modern Germany); Anglo-Saxon used to designate the Germanic tribes who invaded the south and east of Great Britain (in the early 5th century AD), and the period from their creation of the English nation to the Norman Conquest. The Anglo-Saxon period of English history was be-tween about 550 and 1066 AD; Anglo-America named after the Italian explorer Americo Ves-pucci who discovered America, alludes to a re-gion in the Americas where English is a main language and refers to Canada and the USA; North America is divided into Anglo-America and Latin America - Mexico, in which Spanish is spoken; Anglo-American denotes the cultural atmosphere shared by the United States and English Canada and is used for discussing the relationship of the United States to the United Kingdom. The expression refers also to English American, North American persons of English origin, or background.

Language as a general concept includes verbal and non-verbal expressions and a spe-cific linguistic system, or code. Language is a formal closed structural system of symbols ruled by grammatical rules that relate particu-lar signs to particular meanings. Language is an abstract system and speech the concreti-zation of this system which is in the mind of the speaker who makes it concrete by means of speech. Language is a mental faculty that allows humans to express linguistic behavior, to learn languages, produce and understand utterances, concept that evidences the uni-versality of language to all humans and the

biological basis of the human capacity for language as a unique development of the hu-man brain. Language is more than speech and writing, it is the making and sharing of mean-ing with ourselves and others. Language pre-determines what we see in the world around us, that is, language filters reality. Language uniqueness means that humans are able to produce an infinite set of utterances. Lan-guage arbitrariness means that there is no di-rect connection between the sound or form of any word and the object which it represents.

Culture is the sum of all forms of art, love and of thought, which have enabled man to be less enslaved. It is what everybody knows, and what everybody else knows, within a giv-en group. It is what lies at the core of an indi-vidual’s behavior and his degree of assimila-tion within a particular environment or social group. It is the result of the mixture between the system of social institutions, traditions, and beliefs and that complex whole includ-ing knowledge, belief, art, law, social moral customs, religion, and ethics and values. Some beliefs on culture include: the linguistic struc-tures are entirely dependent on the cultural context in which they existed and that the hu-man mind was an indefinitely malleable struc-ture capable of absorbing any sort of culture without constraints.

Language is culture and not just the me-dium of culture but also a part of it. Language is a verbal expression of culture. We under-stood that the relationship of language to cul-ture is closely and deeply rooted and that lan-guage is used to maintain and convey culture and ties and also provides us with the catego-ries we use for expressing our thoughts. The values and customs in the country we grow up in shape the way in which we think to a certain extent.

72


Unit 2

Today the term America is used to refer to the US due to the country’s political and eco-nomic dominance in the western hemisphere. “America” was used to refer to South America only. Canadians and Latin Americans con-sider this use of the term impolitic. The USA includes fifty states and one federal district, where Washington, D.C is located. The country is the fourth largest with 9,529,107 square kilo-meters and forty-eight contiguous states. The islands of Hawaii, in the Pacific Ocean, about two thousand miles southwest of San Francis-co, California, and Alaska between the Pacific and Arctic oceans are also American states. The country owns several commonwealths and territories such as Puerto Rico and the Vir-gin Islands in the Caribbean basin, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, American Samoa, and Wake Island in the Pacific Ocean - con-quered through military actions.

As to economy the Northeast is leader in technology and industry, especially in the areas of California’s Silicon Valley. The region is known as the national “megalopolis.” The Midwest is both rural and industrial where are the “corn belt” and “breadbasket” of the nation. The region is called the home of the family farm. The South carries different fea-tures if compared to other regions. It is associ-ated with slavery and shaped by its secession from the Union before the Civil War and with subsequent battles over civil rights for African-Americans. The region includes the sunshine states, retirement havens, and new economic frontiers. The West known as the last national frontier has the nation’s most open land-scapes. It is associated with national dreams and myths of unlimited opportunity and in-dividualism. California, along with the south-western states, was bought by the United States from Mexico in 1848. The Southwest is distinctive for its Native American populations, historical ties to colonial Spain, and its regional cuisine is highly influenced by Spanish cul-tures.

US physical environment is extremely di-verse. Alaska is spectacular with its glaciers that coexist with flowering tundra that bloom in the arctic summer. Niagara Falls, Yellow-stone National Park, and the Grand Canyon are the most famous landscapes. The Missis-sippi River constitutes a major navigable in-land waterway and is the largest river system in North America. It rises in western Minnesota and meanders southwards for 3,730 km to the Mississippi River Delta at the Gulf of Mexico.

Many books and theatre musicals were writ-ten and composed based upon the stories t about the people who lived by the Mississippi River. The United States has a population over 280 million but it is relatively sparsely popu-lated. The most populous state is California with 33,871,648 inhabitants and Wyoming the less populated with only 493,782 residents and such figures evidence that the US is an urban nation. Over 75% of the inhabitants live in cit-ies. Population growth is at below-replace-ment levels unless immigration is taken into account.

There is no official national language in the USA in the federal level but 30 states made English legally their official language. English is the de facto the unofficial national language and Spanish the second because US ranks fifth in the world in the number of Spanish speak-ers. Native Americans, immigrants, and slaves languages have influenced the several dialects of America. Standard English is the language Americans are expected to speak but there is no clear definition of what Standard English might really be. English spoken by black Amer-icans is usually seen as non-standard, however, most Americans do not speak Standard Eng-lish but a range of class, ethnic, and regional variants. Linguistic diversity has increased a lot. But there is a national dialect known as American English. There are four major region-al dialects in the USA: northeastern, south, in-land north, and Midwestern, the latter accent being considered the “standard accent” in the USA and a bit but not extensively analogous to the Received Pronunciation elsewhere in the English-speaking world.

US government symbols include: govern-ment buildings (Arlington National Cemetery in Washington, DC), statues and memorials, songs, oaths, and symbols. The national sym-bols are the American Flag, the Bald Eagle, the Great Sea, Figures of Justice, the Liberty Bell, the National Flower – Rose, Uncle Sam and the National Anthem.

Anglo-American refers to those coming from countries where English is spoken as the main language, and all those whose families have become English-speaking people in Can-ada and the US. Anglo-American is often used in legal, economic and political documents and other writings in reference to those coun-tries that have similar legal regimes generally based on the English common law.

USA is a diverse country as to religion, race and ethnicity. Most Americans are Chris-

73


tian and by tradition Protestant. Catholics are minority. Judaism is the largest non-Christian faith, followed by Islam. The State and the Re-ligion are not supposed to interfere in one an-other’s affairs.

The wish for better conditions of life, find better jobs, and escape from famine, poverty, wars and conflicts are factors that move Lati-nos, Europeans, Asiatic and Africans to search for higher standards of life and well-being in America. Six races co-exist in the coun-try: White, American Indian and Alaska Na-tive, Asian, Black or African American, Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander, and of “Some other race”.

America is formed by Indians, Black Americans, Hispanic and White people. Black people, and African Americans are citizens and residents of the US originated from any of the black populations of Africa, of Afro-Americans ancestry, or Americans with at least partial Sub-Saharan African ancestry. The His-panic and Latino Americans originate from the Hispanic countries of Latin America or in Spain. They constitute the second largest eth-nic group of America’s population living in all areas of the US. They are racially diverse, and form an ethnic category, not a race. For the

U.S. government and others, Hispanic or La-tino identity is voluntary. The whites’ story dates back to 1492 when Christopher Colum-bus reached several Caribbean islands. White Americans include Europeans (French, English, Dutch, Irish, Italian, German, Polish, Spanish and Latinos. Other ethnicities immigrating to America include Asian and African peoples.

The American government has become tougher on enforcing immigration laws since 9/11 when the attacks forced the birth of Pub-lic attitudes about immigration in the U.S. Half of Americans believe that immigration is a good thing for the U.S., but the other half say tighter control on immigration would do a great deal to enhance U.S. national security.

Though US history gives evidence of the importance of immigration forth population growth and cultural change, the economic, so-cial, and political aspects of immigration have caused controversy regarding ethnicity, eco-nomic benefits, and jobs for non-immigrants, settlement patterns, impact on upward social mobility, crime, and voting behavior. However, Americans cannot deny the invaluable contri-bution of immigrants for the process of devel-opment and progress of the country.

Unit 3

Some traits in the American culture in-clude: Americans are individualist, goal and future-oriented; They value material comfort, objectiveness in communication and com-petitiveness. Americans interrupt people too often during communication; they use a per-son’s name frequently to engender a sense of congeniality and connection. They think they have power over nature. The production of Musicals is a relevant trait and they succeed in producing high quality shows. They value per-sonal accomplishment, success, patriotic feel-ings and pride, and focus on the family and its ties.

Those cultural traits are to be considered

by instructors who should use acceptable methods but exam them before their use, as they may be inappropriate. To teach an FL is to teach its culture. Therefore teachers must be aware to the fact that students, adminis-trators and neighbors do not share all of our cultural paradigms. Some suggestions for this teaching include: Expert sources; Literary texts Charges, strips and jokes’; Role Play/ strategic scenarios; Proverbs; Film and television; and miscellaneous materials which may be re-sources teachers may use to evidence the re-lation of language to culture. Such intertwine-ment serves to help students communicate properly in a foreign language.

75


References

Basic

ALLWRIGHT, D; BAILEY, K. M. Focus on the Language Classroom. New York: Cambridge Univer-sity Press. Anton, M. 1999.

BYRAM. M. S. Cultural Studies in Foreign Language Education. Language Arts & Disciplines. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 1989.

CHOMSKY, Noam. Transformational Analysis. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1955.

EMMITT M; POLLOCK J. Language and learning: an introduction for teaching (2nded). Melbour-ne: Oxford University Press. 1997.

HANTRAIS, Linda. The undergraduate’s guide to studying languages. London: Centre for In-formation on Language Teaching and Research. 1989

HERRON, C., Cole, S. P., CORRIE, C., & DUBREIL, S. CAL: Digests: Culture in Second Language (b. 1999).533.Availableathttps://calico.org/html/article_502.pdf •File:PDFTheeffectivenessofvi-deo-based curriculum in teaching culture. The Modern Language Journal, 83(4), 518...

______ . C.; DUBREIL, S. (1999). The effectiveness of video-based curriculum in teaching cul-ture. The Modern Language Journal, 83(4), 518-533.1999.

______ . C.; DUBREIL, S. Using Instructional Video to Teach Culture to Beginning Foreign: The effectiveness of a video-based curriculum in teaching culture. Modern Language Journal, p. 518, a.1999.

______ . S. CAL: Digests: Culture in Second Language Available at https://calico.org/html/arti-cle_502.pdf•File:PDFTheeffectivenessofvideo-basedcurriculuminteachingculture.TheMo-dern Language Journal, 83(4), 518- 533, b. 1999.

KIKUSHI, Luci et al. Phonology Textbook. UAB/Unimontes/Capes, 2011.

LEVERIDGE, Aubrey Neil. The Relationship between Language & Culture and the Implica-tions for language teaching. Written for TEFL,.September, 2008.

LONGMAN, (2000) Dictionary of English language and culture: gets to the heart of the lan-guage. 2. ed. England: Longman, MCARTHUR, Tom. The Oxford Guide to World English.

MURRAY, DM. The great Walls of China. Today’s Education, vol. 71, p. 55–58, 1982.

PINKER, Steven.1994 - The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language. New York: Har-perCollins. Bookmark. 1994.

PINO, C. R. Teaching Spanish to native speakers: A new perspective in the 1990s. ERIC/CLL News Bulletin, 21(1), 4-5, 1997..

POLLOCK, John; EMMIT, Marie. Language and learning: an introduction for teaching. Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1997.

SCOTT, V. M.; HUNTINGTON, J.A. Reading culture: Using literature to develop C2 competence. Foreign Language Annals, 35(6), 622-631. 2000.

SILVA, Rosa Maria neves da. Applied Linguistics for Language teaching .Caderno Didático es-crito para a disciplina com o mesmo nome para o curso de inglês/UAB/Unimontes, 2011.

76


STEPHENS, J. L. Teaching culture and improving language skills through a cinematic lens: A course on Spanish film in the undergraduate Spanish curriculum. ADFL Bulletin, 33(1), 22-25, 2001.

WHORF Benjamin Lee; SAPIR, Edward. Sapir and Whorf Hypothesis. In Infopedia. Porto: Porto Editora, 2003-2011.

www.anthro.palomar.edu/language/language_5.htm. Buffy Sainte-Marie.

www.anthro.palomar.edu/language/language_5.htm-Language and Culture.




www.edition.tefl.net/articles/teacher-technique/language-culture/


www.ff.immigration.gov.tw/front/residence.php

www.inglesonline.com.br › Sites de Inglês Básico - Em cache.

www.isrl.illinois.edu/~amag/.../pinker94theLanguage.html - Em cache

www.jcu.edu.au/tldinfo/writingskills/essay/language_literacy.rtf

www.lexiophiles.com/.../the-relationship-between-language-and-culture.

www.rjgeib.com/thoughts/puritan/puritan.html.

www.thepaperexperts.com)

www.thinkexist.com›Topics C.


www.wikipedia.worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/na..

www:<URL: http://www.infopedia.pt/$hipotese-de-sapir-e-whorf>

Complementary

BARRY, Dave. .Available at www.quotesbyBarryinweekly newspaper column.1947

BROOKS, N. Culture in the classroom. In JM Valdes (ed) Culture bound: bridging, 1986.

BYRAM. M S. Cultural Studies in Foreign Language Education. Language Arts & Disciplines. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.1989.

CHOMSKY, Noam. Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1965.

______ . Syntactic Structures. The Hague: Mouton, 1957.

CICCARELLI, A.Teaching culture through language: Suggestions for the Italian language class. Italica, 73(4), 563-576, 1996.

FAUCCONNIER, Gilles; TURNER, Mark Conceptual Blending and the Mind’s Hidden Complexi-ties. Basic books, Perseus Books Group. New York, NY, USA. 2002.

KRAMSCH, C. Context and culture in language teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993.

MARTINS, Antônio Carlos Soares; SOUZA, Mariléia de; SOUZA, Danielle Ferreira (2010) Caderno de. Morfologia da Língua Inglesa, Caderno Didático, UAB/Unimontes.

77


MCARTHUR, Tom. The Oxford Guide to World English.

MORAN, Patrick R. Teaching Culture. Heinle, Heinle, 2001.

NATIONAL STANDARDS IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE EDUCATION PROJECT Standards for foreign language learning in the 21st century. Yonkers, NY, 1996.

PRODROMOU, L. English as cultural action. EFT Journal, vol. 42, no 2, pp 73–83, 1988.

SPENCE, JT. Achievement American style: the rewards and cost of individualism. American Psychologist, vol 40, no 12, pp 1285–1295, 1985.

STROMQUIST, Np; MONKMAN, K. Defining globalization and assessing its implications on knowledge and education. In NP Stromquist & K Monkman (eds) Globalization and education: integration and contestation across cultures. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, pp. 3–2, 2000.

TRUDGILL, Peter. Language in the British Isles. Cambridge University Press, 1984.

VYGOTSKY, Lev Semenovitch Vygotsky. Pensamento e linguagem. SP, Martins Fontes, 1987, www.LEXIOPHILES.COM/.../the-relationship-between-language-and-culture, !987.

WHORF Benjamin Lee; SAPIR, Edward. Sapir and Whorf Hypothesis. In Infopedia.Porto: Porto Editora, 2003and, 2011.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morpheme.

wikipedia.org/.../Category: Ethnic_groups_in_the_United States

wikipedia.org/wiki/Morpheme

www.americanobesity.org.

www.americanpoems.com/poets/annesexton/4721•




www.developingteachers.com/quotes/q1.htm.

www.ebooksbrasil.org/eLibris/vigo.html, Language and Thought, by Vygotsky.



www.facebook.comGallowshumor-e Notes.com.www.wnotes.com


www.Georgeegershwin.com

www.gop.com/ - En cache

www.imdb.com/title/tt0089006

www.inglesonline.com.br › Sites de Inglês Básico. - En cache.

www.isrl.illinois.edu/~amag/.../pinker94theLanguage.html - En cache

www.MCHUMOR.com

www.newadvent.org› Catholic Encyclopedia

www.pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_of_Arc - En cache

78


www.pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universidade_Harvard/Stanford University -California

www.rjgeib.com/thoughts/puritan/puritan.html .

www.rottentomatoes.com/m/american_wedding/

www.sefarad.org/publication/lm/037/6.html.

www.thepaperexperts.com)

www.thinkexist.com/.../language...culture...language/

www.today.msnbc.msn.com/id/43559858/ns/today-entertainment

www.uab.edu/elci- ENGLISH/ESL MORE LINKS.

www.wikipedia.org/.../Category: Ethnic_groups_in_the_United States,

www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat

www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catsthemusical- Musical.

www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_a_Salesman

www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Party_(United States)

www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamburger

www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inquisition


www.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scarlet_Letter_(opera)

www.wikipedia.org/wiki/WASP

www.worldcat.org/.../scarlet-letter...drawings.../

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pfuldf_Pck.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVSwTaB7pHQ.

Supplementary

ECKERSLEY C.E. Essential English for Foreign Students, London: Longmans, Green & Co, Revi-sed Edition,1032. First published 1938

PORTER, E. Foreign involvement in China’s colleges and universities: a historical perspective. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, vol. 11, no 4, pp.. 369–385, 1987.

PRODROMOU, L. English as cultural action. EFT Journal, vol. 42, no 2, pp. 73–83, 1988.

SPENCE, JT. Achievement American style: the rewards and cost of individualism. American Psychologist, vol. 40, no 12, pp. 1285–1295, 1985.

VALDES, JM. Culture bound: bridging the cultural gap in language teaching. Cambridge: Cam-bridge University Press. 1986.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Episcopa_l Church_(United_States) - Em cache

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Jazzing_orchestra_1921.png - Em cache

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Americans

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_United_States – Article Religion in the United States.

79


en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Belt

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Americans_(photography)

floydreports.com/obama-we-place-our-hands-over-our-heart...-Em cache

http://www.everyculture.com/To-Z/United-States-of-America.html#ixzz1UI25w0EC

U.S. bensguide.gpo.gov/3-5/symbols/ - .

wikipedia, the free encyclopedia en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi - i_River

wikipedia.org/wiki. Brian Stokes Mitchell Official site

wikipedia.uab.edu/elci-Em cache. And also at: ww.lonweb.org/link-english.htm - En cache.

wikipedia/org/wiki/Hispanic-and- Latino-Americans.

www.anthro.palomar.edu/language/language_5.htm. Buffy Sainte-Marie.

www.anthro.palomar.edu/language/language_5.htm-Language and Culture.

www.bhma.co.uk/wait-to-be-seated-greeter-sign-p-1328.ht..

www.broadwaymusicalhome.com/shows/myfairlady.htm The Broadway Musical Home - My Fair Lady.




www.damscartoons.com. www.bhma.co.uk/wait-to-be-seated-greeter-sign-p-1328.ht

www.developingteachers.com/quotes/q1.htm.


www.everyculture.com/To-Z/United-States-of-America.html#ixzz1UHeEvU6s.



www.gazetadopovo.com.br/charges/

www.gazetadopovo.com.br/charges/

www.gohawaii.about.com/.../hawaiianpeople/People_of_Hawaii.

www.ialf.edu/differentponddifferentfish.html - En cache

www.inglesonline.com.br › Sites de Inglês Básico - Em cache.

www .isrl .illinois .edu/~amag/ . . ./pinker94theLanguage .html - Em cache

www .jcu .edu .au/tldinfo/writingskills/essay/language_literacy .rtf

www .jcu .edu .au/tldinfo/writingskills/essay/language_literacy .rtf

www .kidport .com/ . . ./usageography/usageograph . . .

www .lexiophiles .com/ . . ./the-relationship-between-language-and-culture .

www .linguee .com .br/ingles-portugues/ . . ./we+sort .html - .

www .nps .gov/appa/ - Em cache

80


www .office .microsoft .com/en-us/images/?CTT=6&ver=14&app=winword .exe

www .pt .wikipedia .org/wiki/Paul_McCartney

www .pt .wikipedia .org/wiki/Pygmalion

www .rjgeib .com/thoughts/puritan/puritan .html .

www .thepaperexperts .com)

www .thepaperexperts .com .

www .thinkexist .com/ . . ./language . . .culture . . .language/ Johann Wolfgang von . Quotes,

www .thinkexist .com›Topics C .

www .uab .edu/elci- ENGLISH/ESL MORE LINKS . English Language and Culture Institute . UAB .

www .wikipedia .org/wiki/Flower .

www .wikipedia .org/wiki/Musical_theatre .

www .wikipedia .worldatlas .com/webimage/countrys/na . .

www .wikipedia .worldatlas .com/webimage/countrys/na .Access in 11th March, 2011 .

www:<URL: http://www .infopedia .pt/$hipotese-de-sapir-e-whorf>

www .workpermit .com › Immigration

81


Learning activities

Source: Clipart figures online, Sept, 02, 2011,

Instructions – Read the statement below then answer the question.

1. Good health has given rise to an American proverb involving apples. Tick (√) the alterna-tive that describes this proverb.

a) ( ) An apple a day keeps the doctor away.b) ( ) Red apples are always ripe and juicy.c) ( ) A ripe apple keeps the doctor healthy.d) ( ) An apple juice keeps you awake.

Instructions - Read the following text, and then answer the questions.

In the Warner Channel sitcom Married with Children (1980-1990) the Bundies – Maggie, Al, Kelly and her brother Bud -form a non-standard American family as they are all corrupt, the adults do not like to work, cook, clean the house, wash dishes and do laundry and the children hate to study. Moreover the bunch has the habit of committing different sort of felonies. After one of these crimes the Bundies are arrested and immediately taken before the judge. In court Kelly disturbs and disrespects the court whenshe speaks in a very loud voice, walking aimlessly around the room in clear contempt to court. Chaos descends and the judge gets annoyed and the following short dialog takes place:

Judge: Order, order in court! Kelly: I want a cheeseburger and a soda, your Honor.

Questions about the previous text.

2. Tick (√) the alternative that better contains the reason for the humor present in the text?

a) ( ) Kelly’s misunderstanding the meaning of ‘order.b) ( ) Habits and costumes as succinctly described.c) ( ) Felonies and crimes committed by the Bundies.d) ( ) The judge’s demanding chaotic words.

3. Tick (√) the alternative that brings American cultural traits DEVIATED in the previous text.

a) ( ) Honesty and respect for the law.b) ( ) Calmness, relaxation and patriotism.c) ( ) Common sense and notoriety.d)( ) Fanaticism, goal-orientation disrespect.

82


Questions independent from the previous text.

4. Tick (√) the alternative that IS NOT an Anglo-American (USA) cultural trait. Americans are

a) ( ) Patient in listening and tendentious to live for today.b) ( ) Individualist and addicted to material comfort. c) ( ) Success and future-oriented, and competitive.d) ( ) Objective in conversation and able to control nature.

5. Tick the alternative that includes the nations that form Anglo-America.

a) ( ) The United States and Canada.b) ( ) Mexico, Canada and the Unites States.c) ( ) England, the US and Canada.d) ( ) Canada, Mexico and French Guyana.

6. All the statements below are concepts of language, EXCEPT:

a) ( ) Language is a concrete system and speech the concretization of this system.b) ( ) Language is a verbal expression of culture.c) ( ) Language is a formal closed structural system of symbols ruled by grammatical rules.d) ( ) Language is culture itself.

7. All the statements below about culture are true, EXCEPT:

a) ( ) Culture is built through history and independent from language.b) ( ) Culture is the sum of all forms of art, love and of thought, which have enabled man to be less enslaved. d) ( ) Culture is what everybody knows, and what everybody else knows within a given group.e) ( ) Culture is the result of the mixture between the system of social institutions, traditions, beliefs and knowledge,

8. In Figure 7, the charge already discussed in this textbook, is explained in Figure 7 as ‘Dif-ferent Pond, different fish’. Tick (√) the alternative that better carries the meaning of this say-ing.

a) ( ) Different cultures, different meanings.b) ( ) Different languages, similar cultures.c) ( ) Different meanings, different speeches.d) ( ) Different cultures, similar meanings.

▲Figure 7: Different Pond, different fishSource: www.ialf.edu/differentponddifferentfish.html - En cache

83


Read the following text then answer the questions.

Set in 1920s New York City, the novel depicts the struggles of “The Wallflower Order,” an in-ternational conspiracy dedicated to monotheism and control, against the “Jes Grew” virus, a per-sonification of ragtime, jazz, polytheism, and freedom. The Wallflower Order is said to work in concert with the Knights Templar Order to prevent people from dancing, to end the dance crazes spreading among black people (who are referred to in the novel as “Jes Grew Carriers” or “J.G.C.s”).

Historical, social, and political events mingle freely with fictional inventions. The United States’ occupation of Haiti, attempts by whites to suppress jazz music, and the widespread belief that president Warren Harding had black ancestry are mingled with a plot in which the novel’s hero, an elderly Harlem houngan named PaPa LaBas, searches for a mysterious book that has dis-appeared with black militant Abdul Sufi Hamid, whose name reflects that of the Harlem street corner radical preacher Sufi Abdul Hamid.(Excerpt from Mumbo Jumbo, a novel by Ismael Reed, 1972. Text transcribed from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishmael_Reed.)

9. Tick (√) the correct alternative that contains American cultural traits detectable in Ismael Reed’s excerpt above.

a) ( ) Ragtime, freedom, jazz, racial repression.b) ( ) Monotheism, control, virus, personification.c) ( ) PaPa LaBas, black militant, street corner.d) ( ) Dance, Jes Grew Carriers, J.G.C.s.

10. Tick(√) the alternative below that, according to the text, DOES NOT contain a historical event that influenced the American culture.

a) ( ) The occupation of Haiti.b) ( ) The struggles of “The Wallflower Order,” c) ( ) The belief that President Warren Harding had black ancestry.d) ( ) Black militant Abdul Sufi Hamid

Documents

Cultura Anglo Americana