Read Jeremy Harmer's plenary speech.
CULTURE or culture? Language, methodology and content in a complex world
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Jeremy Harmer
Introduction: I am right; you are dead
Every year the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) invites a prominent thinker to deliver a series of 'Reith lectures' on one of its radio channels (Radio 4). The Reith lectures are named after the founder of the BBC, John Reith, and in 2004, they were delivered by the Nobel prize-winning Nigerian author Wole Soyinka. He called his lecture series 'Climate of fear', and the final lecture of the series was titled 'I am right; you are dead' in which he argued that in a world of global violence and naked imperialism we should be afraid of:
a clear psychopathology of the zealot, one who is imbued with a self-righteousness that can only be assuaged by homicidal resolution. It moves all possible discourse away from even the dogmatic, dead-end monologue of I am right, you are wrong to that of I am right; you are dead.
The evidence for this is clear: the destruction of the Twin Towers, bombs in Bali, Casablanca, Istanbul, Madrid (amongst others), and the carnage and outrage of the Iraqi invasion and its aftermath.
How can our world struggle to come out of the dangerous mess it has got itself into? Well one way is to encourage everyone to move away from that mindset. Soyinka offers as an example the Orisa religion where there is a belief that there are many paths to truth and godhead and that the world need not be set on fire to prove the supremacy of a belief or the righteousness of a cause.
What relevance does all this have to the teaching of English? Well only, that to live peacefully we need to understand and accept those 'many paths' and recognize 'just causes'. There is a great need for us all to understand and tolerate each other, and one of the only ways to do this is to talk to each other, to communicate in and between cultures; to make our culture more accessible and learn more about others.
The language teacher is ideally placed to help this process along. It is our job, after all, to enable people to communicate. Our students, if successful, can talk to many more people than they would be able to do if they could not speak English. For English, like other powerful languages in the world (e.g. Spanish, Arabic) has some kind of world coverage and indeed, as we shall see later, has claims (perhaps even more than Spanish, Arabic or Chinese) to be a kind of lingua franca.
I am, of course, aware that some see this pre-dominance of English as evidence of linguistic imperialism (see, for example, Phillipson 1992, Pennycoook 1998) ; yet English is not unique in this respect. Indigenous languages in Latin America struggle to maintain their power and status against the might of Spanish just as other minority languages fight for their survival against more powerful varieties and dialects. It is certainly true that languages are dying (Crystal 2000), yet there may be other reasons for this rather than focusing solely on the marauding conquest of 'big' invaders. In order to preserve small languages, we should perhaps be looking as much at the societies where they are spoken - and think of how to preserve them - rather than focusing solely on the outsiders.
But that, anyway, is part of a different and much bigger discussion. At the moment English is, and because it helps people communicate across cultures in a way that is perhaps unique in human history, our jobs are about much more than the present perfect or the bi-labial fricative; at our best, we teachers of English might just help to make the world a better place.
If, however, we take upon ourselves such an important role, we will have to be aware of its cultural implications. What culture should English carry? What is the language of culture (and the culture of language) that we should offer to students through our materials and our classes? These are the questions I wish to examine.
What culture is appropriate for a lingua franca?
Many years ago Roger Bowers suggested that amongst other characteristics, culture is evinced by an inherited wealth of memories that the members of a cultural group shares (Bowers 1992). He used a pairs test to show how this operated, so that while many people the world over (though by no means any kind of majority) could easily complete 'Romeo and ….' , non-Spanish-speaking people, and even younger Hispanics, might find it difficult to complete the pair of 'Silvio Rodriguez and …. (Pablo Milanes) even though in the 80s and 90s these two Cuban singers were indelibly associated in the popular mind - provided you confined that popular mind to Latin America and Spain (and a relatively small number of outsiders). And if we become more specific, 'Jack and ….' (Jill) is only a natural pair for a much smaller group of those who knew their English nursery rhymes. 'Popocatepetl and …..'(Ixtacihuatl) are an easy pair for most Mexicans who know the names of their two most famous adjacent volcanoes, but you have to be a member of that particular (largely national) group to find the pairing easy.
The point here is that different groups share different knowledges, and that while 9/11 may be a recognised date for a large world group, 1066 is only known by a much smaller national group of British people as a key date in the history of England. When, therefore, teachers complain that their students don't know anything they are often bemoaning the fact that their students don't know the same things as they do - and that's a different comment altogether.
Sometimes, therefore, when course developers include cultural aspects in their teaching materials and programs they make the mistake of assuming this kind of group knowledge forgetting that is what is well-known to one group may be quite alien to another. Knowledge of events and facts, in other words, may not be the place to look for the cultural underpinnings of our language.
Custom and practice
A clear manifestation of the culture of a group is the way they greet each other. We are all familiar with the Japanese habit of bowing (though it is more subtle than many gaijin (foreigners) seem to suppose when they first try and fit in this way). It would be entirely feasible to teach bowing when teaching greetings in Japanese. But this is partly because Japanese is a language which, however rich, is mostly spoken in Japan. English, on the other hand, is spoken by many more people around the world as a second language than as a first. It has got away from its original 'owners' and has developed a new and powerful strain which Kanavallil Rajagopalan calls World English (WE) (Rajagopalan 2004), a variety which is increasingly prestigious and useful and in which a native speaker may be 'handicapped.' What greetings customs should the teacher of English suggest then? The handshake? Yet English people often greet each other without even this physical token. On the other hand many English people kiss each other on the cheek, but not all, and in some cases that would be entirely inappropriate. Texans, of course, may do a lot of backslapping, and Australians have their own greetings rituals. There may be a middle way, in other words, but greeting is often very nation- or group-bound and for learners of English as an international language this may not be helpful. Anyway, in some English-speaking groups, even shaking hands between men and women is disallowed.
So while (greetings) customs may be useful if students are pointing specifically at one cultural target-language community, they are less convincing as models for international English - although as we shall see - a comparison of different greeting practices is entirely appropriate for a language classroom.
Shared Art
CULTURE - at least 'high' culture - is about the arts, so perhaps we should start looking there for the kind of cultural content of a language course. Everyone, for example, knows about William Shakespeare, and a fair number of English-language teachers around the world can quote at least 'To be or not to be'. In terms of language and art, Shakespeare surely stands as an icon of international culture, especially now that he has been re-invented by film-makers such as Baz Lehman. Yet of course Shakespeare is unknown to the vast majority of people on the planet, and an ability to quote anything at all that he said is shared by only the smallest percentage even of speakers of English.
If such a powerful cultural icon is unavailable for immediate use (because he would demand explanation and de-complexing) what hope is there for artists (such as Bridget Riley, Lucien Freud or Damien Hurst) who are clearly part of the modern fabric of British culture, but tied only to a small national group or -where they are internationally known - known only to a self-selecting group of art lovers?
It's the same with music. Jacqueline Du Pré may be one of the most famous cellists of the twentieth century for British classical music lovers of a certain age, and her recording of Elgar's Cello concerto may be a canonic work for that same group but most people have neither heard of her nor of Elgar's cello concerto, or indeed of the composer himself, even though he is buried deep within the English national psyche as a result of his more patriotic music. For truly shared 'art' culture we would probably have to look at more global entertainers such as Kylie Minogue whose 'I just can't get you out of my head' became something of a commonplace at parties and in night clubs all over the world at the beginning of this century - except, of course, that even this mass-market confection is completely unknown in many countries, and both its sentiment and the kind of dancing it tends to provoke are culturally alien to many groups.
It may be that teachers and course designers can see reasons for introducing some form of shared high or low art into their teaching, but this would presumably be for its intrinsic interest rather than for its cultural content; the latter is, like customs and memories, bound to a group or groups that may be less 'international' than we would like to think. Of course, if our purpose is to expose students to particular aspects of, say, British culture, then British canonic writers, artists, musicians and designers of all kinds may be appropriate subjects o the curriculum. But it is less clear to see them as central if international English is the goal (and the same would be true for American, Australian or Irish high culture, for example).
Metaphor & idiom
A culture can often be found in the metaphors and idioms that become fixed in a language. After all idiom and metaphor are the descriptions that a group established and which have often been fixed over time by successive members of that group. They offer us, in other words, a window into how a group sees the world.
Animal metaphors are a good example of this. For example, the expression to be 'in the doghouse' (which means to be in a situation where someone is cross with you) is known and used by both British and American speakers of English, whereas the phrase 'a dog's dinner' (something that is meant to be fashionable but isn't - 'she was dressed like a dog's dinner') is quite specifically a British English idiom, unused by most other English varieties. To 'let the cat out of the bag' (to tell a secret by mistake) is not specifically British, but to 'the cat's whiskers' probably is.
The expression 'I may as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb' (which most British speakers would recognise, but hardly anyone uses) is an interesting example of how a group uses experience to 'mataphorise' concepts. In earlier times sheep stealing was a crime punishable by hanging in Britain. The size of the sheep made no difference. So if you were going to steal a sheep to feed your family and you were going to get hung anyway, it might as well be a big sheep. At least the family would all have a good meal!
Should we teach phrases such as this? After all they are very culture bound, and tied to a specific culture group (British English) and are anyway not that frequent. Nor are they easy to translate or learn for students of English, whereas phrases such as 'hold your horses', 'from the horse's mouth' or even 'a wolf in sheep's clothing' are more likely to have equivalences in other languages and cultures.
Idiom and metaphor certainly tell us something about a culture, then. But much of it is nation-group specific, or even area-group specific. It remains to be seen, therefore, how necessary such language is for the cultural content of ELT.
We will return to the issue of idiom and metaphor when discussing ELF (English as a lingua franca) below.
D-COMS
It may be that our search for appropriate 'culture' in the context of international English has, so far, been undermined by a focus on the culture of specific groups, which in the context of the massive second-language character of much English use is misplaced. Perhaps it would be better, therefore, to try and broaden the culture group we are thinking of. Instead of looking at cultural or national communities, we should perhaps be looking at broader discourse communities in the sense of offering models and content that '…the members of the community would be familiar with.' (Harmer 2004:16). And if that community is multi- or inter-national, maybe we are heading in the right direction.
An example of such culture might be a website, for example, of a company such as Easyjet (www.easyjet.com) which is instantly recognisable to people from almost all cultures and groups as a site where tickets can be bought for flights with that low-cost airline; and the point is that even though students may not know the company Easyjet itself (because it is only a European airline) still they are members of a wider community that visits and recognises such sites. Of course, I am aware that using the Internet is in many ways a bad example since there are many more people in the world who do not have access to the Internet than those who do. But in the Internet-using, inter-national discourse community such a site is a true example of supra-national 'culture'.
In the newspaper world, two examples will show the difference between international and group-specific communities. The back page of the British Guardian newspaper, for example, has the television listings, above which is a section called 'Pick of the Day' where some four programmes are listed. Now this is an extremely common type of layout in newspapers all over the world, whatever the language or script being used. The following text, however is more problematic (I have omitted the details of the person referred to, for obvious reasons):
|
NOTICE This is to inform all concerned that Mr K---- Y ----, holder of Indian passport No. ----, whose photograph appears alongside & who was under our sponsorship is absconding. He has not settled our accounts. He is requested to report to office and clear the amount, within 10 days from the date of this advertisement, failing which, the matter will be handed over to the concerned authorities. Any person/company dealing with him will do so at his/their own risk & responsibility. |
Many readers will be as unfamiliar as I was with this genre, but it is common in the Dubai Times and, I am told, in other English-language papers in the region. I looked at it with puzzlement: was it a 'name and shame' advertisement, a warning to others, or a warning to the named person? My confusion arose - and arises - precisely because I am not a member of the discourse community (very culture-specific) which is familiar with such texts.
Two more examples will show the difference between wide and narrow discourse communities. When investigating - for sentimental reasons - the website of the Guadalajara Reporter in Mexico (www.guadalajarareporter.com) I came across small ads for a real estate newcomer's seminar (because the paper/website caters for retired Americans who have chosen to live in that region of Mexico), for a professional photographer, for a car rental firm and for an English-speaking cardioligist. Such advertisements are entirely familiar to a wide discourse community, whatever language they are written in. But the following is far less clear:
|
MOSTLY CANADIAN-FREE-Tom's Texas Pit BBQ. Jocotopec. Brisket and Sausage. Thurs-Sun. Noon to 4.30p.m. At the junction of the Hwy to Morelia and the entrance to Jocotopec. Call….. |
It takes a little time to recognise that this is some kind of a barbecue restaurant. It helps readers if they know or realise that Jocotopec and Morelia are the names of towns (and this is possible to deduce, of course once the advertisement structure has been studied). We can deal with all of this because most of us belong to the worldwide discourse community which recognises the concept of small ads and restaurants. But the first three words have remained a mystery to me. Are they an example of 'Tom's' anti-Canadian bias? Do they refer to a case or cases of mad-cow disease' in Canada? And if so, how helpful is it to have meat that is mostly Canadian free?
But what language?
So far we have looked at culture itself, how language reflects the views and history of a cultural group, and how wider discourse communities may provide better models for the learning of international English than more specifically-targetted language does. But what of the language itself? What kind of language should we be teaching for users of a lingua franca? We might, for example, consider the following as an example of vibrant modern language:
|
We r at theatre looking 4ward 2 it. Will txt l8r. Glad ur there safely. |
This relatively recent language genre/register is widely used in many
contexts as an addition to other types of writing. Presumably, then, we
should teach it, though we will have to ask ourselves how group-culture-specific
it is.
What, though of this familiar register of language?
MinutesPresent Jan Moore (JM) In the absence of the Chairman, CLS was elected to act as Chair. Apologies Martin West, Chris Strachan, Mary Hancock, Sarah Willingale |
These minutes of a meeting by a committee of volunteers (for a philharmonic
society) show examples of abbreviated almost note-like language ('Minutes
were accepted as true record') and topic vocabulary and usage that are
peculiar to such events ('CLS was elected to act as chair', 'it was agreed
to …' etc). Whilst we might want students to understand this, presumably
it is not the language we want to make the cultural heart of our teaching.
Nor, unless our students are studying English for academic purposes, will
we think that language register of the next extract is an appropriate
model for the general English student:
|
In the years since the overthrow of Salvador Allende's government on September 11, 1973, the focus of historical research into the international history of Allende's Chile has concentrated on the controversy surrounding the involvement of the Nixon administration in the brutal coup which overthrew him, and the United States' covert operations in the country between Allende's election and that day in 1973. This debate has been, from the outset, highly polarised…………... |
This is clearly the discourse of academic study, and as such is not of great relevance to students whose English-language needs do not encompass the study of history (in this case) at this level.
An appropriate language model, then, would be one which was available to the greatest number of students, rather than examples (such as the minutes, and the history discussion) of specialist English. In that sense the text message has greater claim to our attention precisely because it is generalised across a wide range of language users within a given discourse community, though of course much will depend on how 'nationalised' such a community is. Research is needed to see how different varieties of English use txt in this way.
Recently I had to audition to keep my place in an orchestra, and like all my colleagues was extremely nervous about it in much the same way that teachers dread the visit of an observer or external examiner. A fellow orchestra member (who did not need to do the audition) sent the following email ('Martin' is the orchestra conductor who was to listen to my feeble playing):
|
YO JH BEST OF LUCK ON SUNDAY!!!!! Have fun. Shur why the hell not. Do a bit of a ceilidh dance while
playng and wear a little mini skirt and shur martin can only be
impressed |
This email might be thought to represent a satisfactory model for general English students because it is conversational in tone, and its message is clear. Yet it poses more questions, perhaps than it answers. Firstly the register is highly informal, and greetings such as 'YO JH' may well be time-located in that while they represent current informal greeting usage, such usage may not stand the test of time. Yet the exaggerated use of capitals and exclamation marks - and then the lack of use of capitals for proper names - is entirely consistent with current email writing conventions. However, both the e-mailer's spelling ('shur') and construction ('…and shur martin can only be impressed') mark the e-mailer out as a speaker of Irish English. This is not, of course, a problem. Irish English has as much validity as any other variety of English from an 'Inner circle' country and so may be an entirely appropriate model for students. If a teacher is a speaker of Irish English and if, especially, he or she uses Irish English materials then clearly this has as much claim to legitimacy as any other variety. The question remains, however, as to whether Irish English or British, Australian, Jamaican or Canadian English are appropriate models for students of international communication. Are inner circle varieties such as these appropriate models for an international language which is spoken more frequently as a second language than as a first? Or are they increasingly unimportant varieties whose earlier prestige is looking decidedly out of date?
ELFL & ELF
English as a foreign language is the type (I am not meaning 'variety' here) that is the usual province of published course books and teaching, whatever national variety they adopt. The model offered is almost always that of an inner circle country (though, of course, this, too, is problematic: there are many British English varieties many American English varieties). But in the real world, it is argued, when speakers using English as a second language talk to each other, they do not use this 'foreign' language, but rather a different but quite marked variety which Jennifer Jenkins, amongst others, has called English as a lingua franca - or ELF for short (Jenkins 2004) . This begins to sound similar to Rajagopalan's (op.cit.) concept of WE.
Insofar as data is available (and no one yet claims extensive corpora of such exchanges), certain features emerge. In the first place, speakers of ELF communicating with each other (a Belgian national talking to someone form Japan for example) spend a lot of time 'accommodating' - that is helping each other through disambiguation and other helping strategies - to make the conversation a success. Secondly, there is evidence that such speakers, amongst other things, drop the 3rd person 's' of the present simple third person, confuse the relative pronouns who and which, omit definite and indefinite articles, fail to use correct tag questions, and simplify out certain allaphonic variation (such as the different pronunciations of the 's' morpheme). Yet in none of these departures from native speaker norms does the communication suffer. On the contrary, because the speakers accommodate each other's efforts, the communication is highly successful and - I will return to this point - largely idiom free.
Such evidence leads some to suggest that, when teaching ELF (but NOT when teaching EFL), we should shift our concern as teachers of International English away from the native-speaker models so beloved of the EFL 'industry'. Maybe, Jenkins suggests, we should cease to correct developing language in the classroom and concentrate instead on helping students to accommodate more; we should expose learners to a wide range of non-native-speaker language; we should focus on core phonology and leave out unnecessary allaphonic variation; we should avoid, in the teaching of lexis, idiomatic language (Jenkins 2004: 40).
What is to be done with such proposals? Is an international language free of idiom and metaphor a desirable or concept? Does the fact of its (international) probable existence make it a good target? On the other hand, if we insist on the centrality of metaphor and idiom to language use we are faced with the kinds of condundrum about national culture groups which we discussed above. Does the apparent absence of the third person singular 's' mean that therefore we should not teach this native-speaker peculiarity? Indeed, just because we see that some second-language speakers use a different set of criteria for language use, there is no convincing evidence that learners of the language would want such a variety as the focus of their study (see footnote viii at the end of this paper). Clearly we need careful consideration before we come to methodological and curriculum conclusions based on as yet non-extensive evidence.
The methodology metaphor
In an attempt to try and find our way through the maze that many of the questions raised in this article have brought to the fore, it may be wise, for a moment, to stand back and see if we can approach the puzzle from a different angle. Could the metaphor of methodology, for example, be used to help us find our way?
Various studies have shown situations in which students and teachers misunderstand each other (see, for example Kumaravadivelu 1991, Sherman 1992). Often these misunderstandings are the result of different methodological assumptions on the part of instructor and instructed. Sometimes this is the result of cultural differences as when a Japanese student has a different view of a teacher's status from the teacher themselves (Kumaravadivelu op cit). Sometimes it is the result of different discourse conventions between cultures (Sherman op cit.). It is often the result of the fact that whilst teachers go on courses, read books and attend seminars to discuss methodology and develop their approaches, students do not. What well-prepared teachers accept as normal, students will sometimes see as strange. In such cases the effectiveness of a learning opportunity is often compromised by the students' miscomprehension about what is expected of them or their unwillingness to do what is asked because they can't see the point and won't therefore, 'buy into' it.
But there is a way out of such stalemates, and it is one that offers me hope of resolving some of the issues which this discussion of language and culture has provoked. Teachers and learners make some kind of contract with each other. Sometimes this is explicit, as when, at the beginning of a term or semester, the teacher and the class work out a joint 'code of conduct' which will guide class management for the rest of that term. Sometimes it is an unspoken contract which both parties have entered into merely as a result of choosing (e.g. for adult learners) to be there. But sometimes students and their teacher disagree about what they both want, and then the contract is in trouble.
Dilys Thorp had such a problem with students in China when they were confronted with listening tasks. She wanted her students to listen for gist - get general meaning - without getting hung up on the meaning of every single word. Her students, however, were not used to this idea; they wanted to be able to listen to tapes again and again, translating word for word. The teacher and the students were at methodological loggerheads. This is how she wrote about the situation:
In listening, where they needed the skill of listening for gist and not every word, and where they wanted to listen time and time again, we gradually weaned them away from this by initially allowing them to listen as often as they liked; but in return - and this was their part of the bargain - they were to concentrate on the gist and answer guided questions. These guided questions moved them away from a sentence-by-sentence analysis towards inferential interpretation of the text. Then, we gradually reduced the number of times they were allowed to listen. This seemed to work: it was a system with which they were happy, and which enabled them to see real improvements in their listening skills (Thorp 1991:115)
It is in Thorp's use of the word bargain that a way of resolving issues of culture suggests itself. Thorp's intelligent and humane response to the situation she found herself in can be generalised out to include other difficult oppositions and problems. Indeed it is the very idea of bargaining (e.g. 'meeting in the middle') which I think can be applied to the difficulties we have been discussing.
Making a judgement
I would like to suggest a culture 'suite' of questions which can be asked when deciding on the form and content of English language lessons and which, hopefully, will focus in on the kinds of questions we need to ask ourselves as materials developers and teachers of English as an international language. Its acrostic construction may be a helpful aide-memoire to the kinds of judgements we are frequently called upon to make.
C is for communal: what we teach and how we teach it should be something that can be shared with whomsoever students might wish to share it with. The cultural material that we bring into class should be appropriate for those target communities, and not tied to one particular culture group if students want to share more widely.
U is for useful: whatever we teach - and whatever topics we include in our teaching - should have the potential for usefulness. In other words we (and they) should be able to see that the information and language they experience in our classrooms has some future potential.
L is for 'lingua appropriate'? What matters in our choice of language variety and register is not so much which variety we teach or which registers they work in, but how appropriate the variety or register is for their needs. It is on that basis that we generally prefer varieties that are more universally intelligible than some minority culture-group varieties which are understood by fewer people. This is the basis on which we may want to make judgements about what language and what idioms (for example) to teach.
T is for translatable: this does not mean the ability to translate every word, but rather whether what we teach (language, topic and concept) is mirrored in any way in the students' own experiences. Can they imagine what the language means? Can they approach the cultural content of our lessons with any understanding?
U is for unprejudiced: in the age of 'I am right and you are dead' it is vital that what we teach and how we teach it should be unprejudiced, that is respectful of other cultures, feelings and procedures. This affects not only the cultural content of our lessons, but also the things we ask students to do. I am not suggesting the relativist position of 'anything goes', only that being unprejudiced is one way of respecting our students and the worlds we and they inhabit.
R is for reliable: whatever we include and do in class will be useless if it doesn't work.
E is for engaging: there is almost no more important responsibility laid on teachers than that of engaging their students. Of course they should not have to do this alone. Students should be able to come half way. But unless they are involved in what is going on, there is little hope of success.
These qualities are not absolute, of course, nor are they necessarily mutually inclusive. Fort example a lingua-appropriate? Judgement might suggest not teaching certain idiomatic usage, but at the same time students are often genuinely engaged in trying to learn and understand some of the more exotic ways we describe reality. A desire for communality might well militate against the inclusion of interesting facts about minority cultures. But a consideration of all the issues in the 'culture' suite will help us to get our bearings in this complex web of issues.
A final word
I suggested at the beginning of this article that language learning - and talking across and with cultures - might be one way of turning the tide on the world of nihilism and absurdity that Wole Soyinka discussed in his lecture on fear. But that does not absolve us from the problem of deciding what language and what culture we should be teaching so that English speakers can talk across cultures in this way. A discussion of culture in all its forms (knowledge, customs, art, language itself) has shown how potentially difficult it is to steer some kind of middle language-culture way in a difficult world. But I would be extremely unhappy if this article was taken to mean that we should not be interested in other cultures; on the contrary, Wole Soyinka's point is precisely the opposite. Rather, I have tried to show how when we teach English as an international language, normal cultural assumptions do not apply in the same way as they do, perhaps when students learn English because they wish to integrate into a particular target-language community (Britain, for example, or Ireland or the USA).
However, this cultural delicacy is not meant to suggest that we should not look at other cultures and compare them with our own, nor that we should not bring into our lessons examples of other cultures for students to think about in order to contrast them with their own. On the contrary, as Alan Pulverness pointed out some years ago, cultural learing 'will only be meaningful if it is comparative and contrastive' (Pulverness 1992:9). Inter-cultural study is good for us because in looking at how other cultures operate we end up with a better understanding of our own. But that is a topic for a different article.
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