Page 34 - Reading Between the Sign Intercultural Communication for Sign Language Interpreters

The Study of Culture 19

culture, it is the beliefs and rituals we apply to the event that make
it part of our cultural repertoire. As infants we begin to acquire our
culture from those around us—our parents, siblings, relatives,
friends, and teachers—who in turn learned it from their parents,
siblings, relatives, friends, and teachers. Thus the wisdom of the
group is passed down from generation to generation. Not only is
culture learned, but it is shared with a very large group. The quirks
of our personality (our fear of snakes and our love of ham sand-
wiches) mark us as individuals and do not define our culture, al-
though they exist within a cultural context. (In other cultural con-
texts, of course, the worship of snakes or a repugnance for eating
ham might be more defining.)
As an integrated system, each culture is an apt set of adapta-
tions which helps its members face the challenges of their envi-
ronment. “Culture facilitates living by providing ready-made solu-
tions to problems, by establishing patterns of relations and ways
for preserving group cohesion and consensus” (Harris and Moran
1982, 65). Examples of such cultural adaptations are igloos, well
suited for living in the arctic; afternoon siestas in tropical climates;
and sign language as the natural mode of communication for those
who cannot hear spoken language. Thus, culture is a means of
“sharing successful results of choices made by others in the past”
(Bohannan 1992, 13).
Most of our own culture is out of our conscious awareness. Like
water to the fish or air to the bird, it surrounds us so completely
that we may never notice it, and it may stay unnoticed until, like
a fish plucked out of the water, we find ourselves in a new envi-
ronment and begin to flounder. Or until we encounter a visitor
from a different place who acts “strangely,” as if the fish saw a
bird drop into the ocean and wondered, “What kind of odd crea-
ture is this who moves his fins about so much and doesn’t seem
to know how things are done down here?”
Since culture is so omnipresent, it may help us to examine it
indirectly through a few metaphors. Images that have been pro-
posed to illuminate the impact of culture include computer soft-
ware that regulates our actions, a tool kit that provides us with
what we need to manage our physical environment, and a rain-
bow that we can only appreciate fully once we are standing out
from under it.
My favorite metaphor for culture is an iceberg, only one-tenth
of which is visible above the water. The tip of the cultural iceberg

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