Culture and Communication
Yesterday I read chapter 6 from Communicating Christ Cross-Culturally, titled “The Role of Culture in Communication” by David Hesselgrave. It is an explanation of how important it is to have an understanding of culture (and cultures--your own and the respondent's) in order to communicate more effectively. “Culture” takes into account linguistic, political, economic, social, psychological, religious, national, racial, and still other differences (p. 99). All these interact and play a role in the communication process.
There are different layers to culture. Going from surface to deep they are:
True biblical discipleship comes with the introduction of that which is supracultural into the respondent culture. The term “supracultural” refers to anything that has its source outside of culture (103). “However ... it is often difficult for even the most spiritual missionary to maintain a proper distinction between that which is supracultural and that which is cultural at the practical level. Nevertheless that is part of the missionary task. In fact, solutions to some of the most perplexing of all cross-cultural problems ... depend on our ability to analyze and resolve tensions between the supracultural and the cultural” (104).
Hesselgrave suggests that the missionary should work to develop cultural self-awareness. "That is, he should attempt to understand his own culture” (105). Though this may sound easy, it is actually quite difficult to analyze why we speak the way we do, use forks instead of chopsticks, place so much importance on individual rights, emphasize competition and winning, etc.
This cultural awareness will help us avoid “cultural overhang.” Cultural overhang is “the tendency to take the ways of our own culture into the new culture and deal with the new culture on that basis” (105). Granted, there is a wrong kind of cultural relativity that denies all absolutes and insists that “morality” is a culturally relative term. But, says Hesselgrave, “there is also a right kind of ‘cultural relativity’ that says that although there are divinely dictated absolutes of right and wrong, one’s own culturally prescribed assumptions of right and wrong will reflect them imperfectly at best and may not reflect them at all. Moreover, many cultural prescriptions are not matters of right and wrong at all but simply matters of utility or tastes” (105).
In communicating truth, the missionary is actually dealing with three cultures (all which must be consciously engaged): the biblical culture in which the message was originally given, his own in which he has learned the text and sought to apply it, and the respondent’s. An able communicator is more aware, not less aware, of the different cultures in which he revolves.
There are different layers to culture. Going from surface to deep they are:
- Material artifacts, observable behavior
- Institutions (marriage, education, law, etc.)
- Values
- Ideology, cosmology, worldview
True biblical discipleship comes with the introduction of that which is supracultural into the respondent culture. The term “supracultural” refers to anything that has its source outside of culture (103). “However ... it is often difficult for even the most spiritual missionary to maintain a proper distinction between that which is supracultural and that which is cultural at the practical level. Nevertheless that is part of the missionary task. In fact, solutions to some of the most perplexing of all cross-cultural problems ... depend on our ability to analyze and resolve tensions between the supracultural and the cultural” (104).
Hesselgrave suggests that the missionary should work to develop cultural self-awareness. "That is, he should attempt to understand his own culture” (105). Though this may sound easy, it is actually quite difficult to analyze why we speak the way we do, use forks instead of chopsticks, place so much importance on individual rights, emphasize competition and winning, etc.
This cultural awareness will help us avoid “cultural overhang.” Cultural overhang is “the tendency to take the ways of our own culture into the new culture and deal with the new culture on that basis” (105). Granted, there is a wrong kind of cultural relativity that denies all absolutes and insists that “morality” is a culturally relative term. But, says Hesselgrave, “there is also a right kind of ‘cultural relativity’ that says that although there are divinely dictated absolutes of right and wrong, one’s own culturally prescribed assumptions of right and wrong will reflect them imperfectly at best and may not reflect them at all. Moreover, many cultural prescriptions are not matters of right and wrong at all but simply matters of utility or tastes” (105).
In communicating truth, the missionary is actually dealing with three cultures (all which must be consciously engaged): the biblical culture in which the message was originally given, his own in which he has learned the text and sought to apply it, and the respondent’s. An able communicator is more aware, not less aware, of the different cultures in which he revolves.
Labels: culture, missions, Tim reading
posted by TimBix | 1:33 PM
1 Comments:
True. You will struggle with "prescribed presumptions" whether you know no culture but your own or are in a strange culture beside your own. That is partly because the third culture is so foreign to both, and mostly because the dice is loaded in favor of our depraved wills determining the prescribed presumptions. May God continue to discover our own hearts to ourselves.
Love Dad
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