Linguistics & Communication
Readings
Cultural Relativity is the idea that differences exist among cultural systems, that different cultural systems can make as much sense as our own, and that we can learn to understand these different systems. The next term, “Ethnocentrism”, is often seen as judging others by one’s own terms but it is really more than this. Ethnocentrism means not understanding different systems on their own terms (Ottenheimer p. 4)
Ethnocentrism is almost the direct opposite of Cultural Relativity; not understanding different systems on their own terms. There are two aspects to this: The first involves using our own system to interpret what others are doing; the second involves insisting that your own system is the only one that makes any sense. An example for the first is traveling to another country where the monetary system is different and wondering how much things cost in “real” money (meaning your own money from back home). An example of the second is deciding that there is no functioning economic system in the country to which you have traveled because you don’t recognize what they are using as money at all! It is this second kind of ethno-centrism that anthropologists are generally referring to when they caution you to “avoid ethnocentrism”(Ottenheimer p. 4).
Consider the term Frames of Reference defined as “the ways we see, and interpret, and understand the world”.
I observed the first behavior while I was stationed in Stuttgart, Germany: I had joined a colleague for lunch at a nearby gasthaus, when a couple of Americans entered & walked up to the bar, ordered, were served their order and then when given the bill, one of them opened his wallet, pulled out two American bills and handing them to the barman commenting, “here take some real money” chuckling as he did so. The barman kindly refused the money and repeated the amount due in Deutsch Marks; after a long minute & a rude comment along the lines of “you can go to the bank and get it exchanged”, the American grudgingly put the unwelcome bills in his wallet, and from the other side of his wallet withdrew several Deutsch Marks. Handing them to the barman the change was given and out the door they walked.
For the second behavior, I have met one or two people concerned with travelling & staying in a country for some period of time, that in doing so they must give up their culture, or that it makes their culture less important. I have the sense that that thinking is borne out of the reality that such a decision removes one from all with which they are so familiar “with their eyes closed.”
(Ottenheimer 2006 p.6)
(Ottenheimer 2006 p.6)
Reference Cited: Ottenheimer, Harriet J. 2006 The Anthropology of Language: An Introduction to Linguistic Anthropology Pages 4 & 6. Thomson Wadsworth