Universidade do Estado da Bahia UNEB Departamento de Cincias Humanas Campus I Curso 403 Letras/ Lngua Inglesa e Literaturas

EVA CRISTINA DA SILVA ALVES

SOCIOCULTURAL FACTORS

Summary apresentado como requisito parcial para aquisio de nota no componente curricular Estudos Scio-antropolgicos no Ensino de Lngua Inglesa, sob orientao do Professor Edvan Cardoso.

Salvador Dezembro, 2012

BROWN, H. D. Principles of language learning and teaching. 4 ed. White Plains: Addison Wesley Longman, 2000.

Several definitions of culture are presented, such as, culture is a way of life; is the context within which we exist, think, feel, and relate to others; it is the "glue" that binds a group of people together; it is the ideas, customs, skills, arts, and tools that characterize a given group of people in a given period of time; culture establishes for each person a context of cognitive and affective behavior, a template for personal and social existence. Culture becomes highly important in the learning of a second language, because a language is a part of a culture, and a culture is a part of a language; the two are intricately interwoven so that they cannot remain separate without losing the significance of either language or culture. So, the acquisition of a second language is also the acquisition of a second culture. Regarding cultural stereotypes, it is said that people tend to often picture other cultures in an oversimplified manner, lumping cultural differences into exaggerated categories, and then view every person in a culture as possessing stereotypical traits. As examples of stereotypes: Americans are all rich, informal, materialistic, overly friendly, and drink coffee; Italians are passionate, demonstrative, and drink red wine. Stereotypes emerge from the cultural background that shapes ones world view in such a way that reality is thought to be objectively perceived through ones own cultural pattern, and a differing perception is seen as either false or "strange" and is thus oversimplified. If one recognizes and understands differing world views, one will usually adopt a positive and open- minded attitude toward cross-cultural differences. A closed-minded view of such differences though, often results in the maintenance of a stereotype. Regarding attitudes on language learning, positive attitude toward the target culture and language will lead to an integrative orientation to learn the target language, which turns to be a significant correlate of learning success. It seems clear that second language learners benefit from positive attitudes and that negative attitudes may lead to decreased motivation and, because of decreased input and interaction, to unsuccessful attainment of proficiency. Learners can however evolve through the hierarchy of affectivity: from awareness and responding, to valuing, and finally to an organized and systematic understanding and appreciation of the foreign culture. Regarding the second culture acquisition, it is said as the process of the target culture learning and that it continues over years and penetrates deeply into ones patterns of thinking, feeling and acting. The stages of culture acquisition are described as period of fascination with the new culture; culture shock,

the differences between old and new culture creating anxiety; anomie, feelings of social uncertainty and acceptance of the differences; recovery; assimilation and self-confidence in the new person. Regarding social distance, it is said of the cognitive and affective proximity of two cultures that come into contact within an individual; it refers to the dissimilarity between two cultures. It consists of parameters such as, domination, integration, cohesiveness, congruence, permanence. These though, were used to describe hypothetically language learning situations as "good" and "bad" situations. So, the greater the social distance between two cultures, the greater the difficulty the learner will have in learning the second language, and conversely, the smaller the social distance, the better the language learning situation will be. Regarding language policy and politics, the language policies become politicized as special interest groups compete for power and economic gain. So, English, as the major worldwide lingua franca nowadays, is the subject of international debate as policy makers struggle over the legitimization of varieties of English. The rapid growth of English as an international language (EIL) of communication has stimulated discussions about the status of English in its varieties of "what is now commonly called world Englishes.