【Talk about English】 我们究竟是什么 (Episode2-1/5)

英语自学网

文化到底是什么呢？本期主播Marc Beeby会尝试解析这个问题，并且与大家分享为什么给“文化”一个确切的定义会这么困难。一起来听听吧。
       
       

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Rebecca Fong
        En-shala
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Culture is a difficult word to define, but that's what we'll be attempting to do today - trying to answer the question: what is culture? More importantly, perhaps, we'll also be thinking about why culture is so difficult to talk about. But let's start with a definition. Here's Rebecca Fong who teaches a course in intercultural communication at the University of the West of England.
When you think about it, culture is really a very difficult thing to define and if you ask yourself the question "What is culture?" and you try to come up with a definition. I think you'll find that all of us will come up with a slightly different type of definition. One very broad definition suggests that culture consists of ideals, values and assumptions about life that are widely shared among people and that guide specific behaviours. So we're talking here about shared assumptions or patterns of behaviour within specific societies.
En-shala is a very popular phrase in the Middle East. It means “if it is the will of God" literally. Now it doesn't necessarily have such overt religious connotations as we might expect. But what it does reflect is a certain fatalism amongst many people. They feel that life is, to an extent, controlled by external factors. So the concept of the Westerner as someone who's constantly striving to improve themselves and their situation is an anathema to people there who don't feel that there's very much in a practical way they can do to change that.