The society in which we live constantly operates with the concept of "culture". Modern life is practically inseparable from this concept. However, it can be quite difficult for the average person to give him an exact definition. The expression "horticultural cultures" immediately comes to mind for some, others associate it with theater and music, others will talk about the "culture of speech". Let's see what culture is and what functions it performs in society.
The term and its definition
The term "culture" itself comes from the Latin colere and originated about 2000 years ago. At first, this word meant tillage and all kinds of agricultural work. The concepts of "agriculture", "horticultural culture", "agricultural culture" and others still echo the past.
BIn the first century BC, Cicero first used this term in relation to a person, designating with it the upbringing, education and values of a citizen and an individual. Since then, this cultural concept began to develop in a new direction.
Since upbringing and education are inconceivable without separating the human world from the environment, very soon culture began to mean this circle of special values and activities that turn just a person into a reasonable person, and eventually into a privileged person - having access to knowledge, books, theater or science.
Over time, the term acquired new meanings. With the development of science, the word "culture" began to refer to various time milestones - "the culture of ancient Rome." Used it to highlight certain social groups - "hippie culture" or areas of life - "urban culture".
In everyday life, this culturological term began to denote a certain hypothetically ideal moral character of a person as a synonym for "good manners".
Today, there are about 1000 definitions of the concept of "culture", more or less overlapping with each other.
Culture functions
Based on the foregoing, we can conclude that culture plays a crucial role in the life of each individual society and all of humanity as a whole. It is a kind of means of collecting, storing and transferring all human experience to future generations.
Cognitive, adaptive, educational, normative, entertaining, symbolic and communicative function of culture is studied by cultural studies. All these functions flow from each other or serve as the basis for one another.
One thing is undeniable: culture is the basis, the foundation of humanity, and accumulates all the experience and knowledge ever gained into a system that regulates the life of society at all its levels.
Any individual exists in a certain cultural space. A person is inseparable from culture and throughout life they interact, changing and complementing each other.
Initially, the child's attitudes, values, attitudes and interests are formed under the influence of the environment in which he is placed and in which he is forced to function. A person grows, and over time, already on the basis of the formed ideas, he, in turn, already changes and forms the environment in which new future individuals grow.
The implementation of this interaction is impossible without the communicative function of culture.
Communication as the only productive type of interaction
The emergence and existence of any society is impossible without communication. The Dictionary of Cultural Concepts defines communication as a process of interaction, the main purpose of which is the transfer of information.
Within one article it is impossible to cover the fullness, types and features of all types of communications possible in society. Therefore, let us dwell on some of them.
According to the method of information transfer, communication can be divided into verbal andnon-verbal. The "culture-man" system uses both types of communication to implement one of its most important functions - the first includes all types of languages ever created by man, the second - gestures, facial expressions, body movements, voice timbre and other paraverbal means.
The communicative function of culture implies the interpersonal interaction of people. It so happened that a person is strong precisely in society - alone he is not able to cope with any difficult problem.
In most cases, without communication, a person falls out of society, does not feel like a full-fledged individual, and long-term isolation, as a rule, leads to moral degradation. Only through communication do people become members of society, and then, in turn, communicating and interacting, they create and develop this very society. Thus, the communicative function of culture is realized.
The story of the Tower of Babel
As we have already found out, the communicative function of culture is that it provides communication between people in the process of any activity. First of all, the need for such interaction arises during joint work.
A very clear example of the communicative function of culture is the biblical story of the Tower of Babel.
After the flood, Noah's sons and their wives had many children, and then grandchildren. There were many people, and they all spoke the same language. And then they decided to erect a huge tower as high as God and thereby "make a name for themselves, rather than be scatteredthroughout the earth".
People enthusiastically set to work - some of them made bricks, others kneaded clay, others carried materials to the foot of the tower. The building grew before our eyes. God did not like their ambition and plans, and therefore he descended from heaven and confused the languages of all people.
The next morning they woke up and could not understand each other - brothers and sisters, parents and children spoke different languages. Construction slowed down a lot, and then stopped altogether. People scattered all over the earth and founded their cities and countries.
If we discard the religious and moral component of the biblical parable, this story is very valuable from a cultural point of view. It clearly shows that the communicative function of culture ensures effective interaction between people, without which it is impossible to achieve common goals.
Communication process
We have already found out that the communicative function of culture is to ensure unhindered communication between individuals, as well as between society and the individual.
People use all kinds of languages to communicate. This includes not only natural, historically formed dialects, but also all kinds of artificial languages - codes, mathematical and physical formulas, signs and symbols.
All artificial languages can be conditionally divided into two large groups. The first includes those created to replace the natural language, and the most striking example is Esperanto, composed of the words of Latin andGreek origin. This also includes Morse code and all kinds of sign systems.
The second group includes languages created to solve various problems. This primarily includes the language of mathematics and physics, computer coding language and various algorithms.
The communication process can be roughly divided into three parts:
- coding information;
- transmission of information;
- decoding the message.
At all three stages, information may be lost or distorted. Why is this happening? It is quite obvious that the communicative function of culture is implemented unevenly across the globe.
Different natural conditions, historical background, cultural processes form completely different human societies. Each of them develops a completely individual language, which is almost impossible to translate into other languages without losing any part of the information.
This is facilitated by the presence of so-called linguistic lacunae - the absence in the lexical system of one language of a concept to denote any phenomenon or object.
This is quite easy to illustrate with the Russian word "hand", for which there is no suitable definition in English, where the actual hand is divided into two components - hand (the hand from the hand to the elbow) and arm (the hand from the elbow and above).
It would seem that such a simple word can hardly create significant problems in communication, but foreign language learners will easily prove to youthe opposite. How are you holding the baby? On hands. Should I use hand or arm for this?
And if difficulties arise in such simple cases, then what about more complex gaps, when not only the word, but the whole phenomenon or concept is absent in the recipient or source language?
Such linguistic dilemmas cause great damage to the communicative function of culture, but at the same time give rise to interesting phenomena like code switching. We'll talk about this later.
Switching codes in language culture
What is code switching? This is a concept that appeared at the intersection of linguistics and cultural studies. It has become widespread among immigrants. This is spontaneous switching from one language to another and back.
There is an internal (single-word insertion) and an external (phrase or sentence insertion) switching. Almost always, a similar phenomenon occurs in place of a language gap.
Let's consider the effect of switching codes on the example of Russian Germans. In German, there is a rather capacious word Termin, meaning a certain appointed time, a meeting. This is an appointment with a doctor or a hairdresser, and a scheduled meeting with friends. There is absolutely no exact equivalent of this word in Russian, so most immigrants after a few months of living in Germany stop looking for a Russian word suitable for each specific case, replacing it with German.
Communicative culture: concept, features, structure, functions
The effect of switching codes is inextricably linked with the communicativethe culture of the speaker. What does this phenomenon mean? Consider the concept, features, structure and functions of communicative culture in more detail.
Communicative culture is a set of personal knowledge and skills that provide friendly communication with other individuals. Its structure is made up of basic communication skills - general literacy, the availability of speech for the interlocutor, the adequacy of the use of words and expressions, the appropriateness of the chosen tone of conversation, control over the psycho-emotional state.
Communicative culture is a link, a component of all kinds of cultures. Without it, effective interaction is simply impossible. The child begins to comprehend the communicative culture literally from birth - with songs and nursery rhymes, with the first poems and songs, copying and tracing the tone, phrases and reactions of people close to him.
A person in the "communicative culture - individual" system is both a recipient and a donor. The formation of a communicative culture of an individual involves:
- development of a number of psychological and mental properties;
- mastering the means of communication;
- shaping social attitudes;
- develop communication skills.
Thus, we can conclude that the main function of communicative culture is the formation of human thinking and the search for the most effective ways to interact with other people. Developing effective communication skills will allow you to feel confident in any company and in any conditions, as well as learn how to influenceto develop the situation in their own interests.
The role of the communicative function in artistic culture
The main task of art, like language, is the preservation and transmission to future generations of certain knowledge, skills and all kinds of information. Regardless of whether an artist, actor, musician or other cultural figure has plans to convey some information to other people or considers it only as a way of self-expression, art bears the imprint of the personality of the creator and the spirit of the times, and therefore, in essence, is a means communications.
What is the communicative function of culture and art? The whole point of the existence of the latter is to accumulate and transmit spiritual experience to other people. This means that art in itself is a kind of means of communication not only between individuals, but also between different generations.
Being, however, a rather peculiar means of communication, art has its own specific features:
- Erasing the boundaries. The communicative possibilities of any language are limited by the society of people who understand it. Art erases the boundaries between people, being a universal and accessible means of communication for all.
- Specificity of the task. If the goal of any verbal communication is to convey the most reliable information possible, then the task of art is to fill people with its ideological content, to educate them spiritually.
- Uniqueness. If the information encoded inone language can still be transcoded into another, then a work of art is unique in nature - its value lies not only in content, but also in form. Thus, the magic of dance cannot be conveyed through painting, and the depth of painting cannot be expressed in any way through theatrical performances.
Sports and communication: points of contact
Sport plays one of the main roles in the life of society. Without it, it is impossible to form a he althy society. And here we are talking not only about the physical, but also about the spiritual he alth of the nation.
How does sport affect spirituality, and how does it relate to the process of communication?
Physical culture is a social phenomenon closely related to all aspects of modern life - politics, economics, education and others.
Sport can change and shape a person's body, at the same time changing his self-esteem, mood, and idea of his own capabilities. These changes cannot but affect other spheres of objective human activity.
The communicative function of physical culture consists in the formation of business and personal contacts of people, their communication and rapprochement through joint sports activities. In addition, physical education is one of the most important areas of international communication, a vivid example of which is the Olympic Games.
Intersections of cultural functions
Culture performs many different functions in the life of society, which are studied by cultural studies. Likemost sciences, cultural studies do not stand aside, but are in close interaction with other areas of humanitarian knowledge. In addition to cultural studies, for example, linguistics studies the sign and communicative function of culture.
To comprehend any cultural heritage, a person needs to master a certain sign system. Language as a means of interpersonal interaction is the object of study of linguistics.
Scientists-linguists explore the language from the point of view of its nature, functions, historical development, internal structure. In turn, culturologists, based on the research of linguists, build their theories about the influence of language on the development of culture and society.
The accumulation and multiplication of information as the starting point of the function of culture
As we found out above, one of the most important functions of culture is the accumulation and transfer of experience, knowledge and information to future generations. Without knowledge of one's past, without awareness of mistakes and their adequate assessment, it is impossible to form a full-fledged personality that is able to adequately predict the future.
To transfer this experience, sign systems were invented - languages, codes, art. People used all the ways available to them to save knowledge about the past for children. Thus, the information and communication function of culture is realized.
Until the last moment, the natural individual and collective memory of the people, speech, material means - books, photographs, albums - acted as a means of storing these data. ATat present, an increasing part of the collective culture is stored on electronic media.
