by Vinícius Festa Rigo
After all the projects of the semester, the only possible definition of culture, for me is that everything is culture. The books that we read, the songs that we listen to, our discourse and all the aspects that constitute our personality can be defined as our own culture. There are too many ways to separate culture in sections (in religion, in a country, in a city, in a group of friends or even inside our own families), and in each section we can find different aspects that consolidate the definition of culture. Nevertheless, whereas it is what construct our personality and habits, we can consider that everything is culture.
However, even considering culture as something so personal, there are some cultural stereotypes that we cannot run away from. During a project about some cultural aspects with the foreign students at our university, we have noticed that some incomplete information can collaborate with the creation of stereotypes. In language, which was our topic of the project, I have tried to figure out some stereotypes created about Brazilian Portuguese. Among all stereotypes, we can highlight this one: reading about the fact that most of the countries in South America speak Spanish makes a lot of people think that in Brazil we speak Spanish too. In this way, some stereotypes about our spoken language can be created.
During the semester we have discussed a lot about other cultures, about the ways that we acquire different cultural aspects and how we express our own culture all the time. Learning that everything that we think or say is a response to something that we have learned before made me change the way I see myself and the people around me. This perspective made me a more open-minded person who tries to understand more how people react and respond to their own knowledge, and I started to comprehend and accept the differences between my perspective and others’.
Culture is something that we must to try to understand to learn about us and about others. Learning the cultural aspects of some groups, countries and individuals help us respect others. Culture is, despite all, respect and knowledge.
After all the projects of the semester, the only possible definition of culture, for me is that everything is culture. The books that we read, the songs that we listen to, our discourse and all the aspects that constitute our personality can be defined as our own culture. There are too many ways to separate culture in sections (in religion, in a country, in a city, in a group of friends or even inside our own families), and in each section we can find different aspects that consolidate the definition of culture. Nevertheless, whereas it is what construct our personality and habits, we can consider that everything is culture.
However, even considering culture as something so personal, there are some cultural stereotypes that we cannot run away from. During a project about some cultural aspects with the foreign students at our university, we have noticed that some incomplete information can collaborate with the creation of stereotypes. In language, which was our topic of the project, I have tried to figure out some stereotypes created about Brazilian Portuguese. Among all stereotypes, we can highlight this one: reading about the fact that most of the countries in South America speak Spanish makes a lot of people think that in Brazil we speak Spanish too. In this way, some stereotypes about our spoken language can be created.
During the semester we have discussed a lot about other cultures, about the ways that we acquire different cultural aspects and how we express our own culture all the time. Learning that everything that we think or say is a response to something that we have learned before made me change the way I see myself and the people around me. This perspective made me a more open-minded person who tries to understand more how people react and respond to their own knowledge, and I started to comprehend and accept the differences between my perspective and others’.
Culture is something that we must to try to understand to learn about us and about others. Learning the cultural aspects of some groups, countries and individuals help us respect others. Culture is, despite all, respect and knowledge.