Intercultural One Video Transcripts

What is culture? Certain things, like dance, art, music etc., are clearly forms of culture. Different parts of the world have very different kinds of language, music, or dance, for example, but everyone seems to have language, music and dance. Does this mean we are all very different or does it mean we are basically all the same? And how about intercultural communication? If we are all very different, it is likely to be very difficult.

Thinking of culture as art, or music, or language, or pop culture may be misleading. When you try to communicate across cultures, you probably need a common language, so English may come in useful. And people may be interested in certain aspects of your culture, like origami, for example. However, in true acts of communication, we are not really dealing with obvious, visible parts of culture. We are dealing with the invisible aspects. There is a sense in which culture IS you and you ARE your culture. In this view, culture and mind are the same thing. This is where it becomes very complicated and very difficult.