Cultural assumptions and connotation

Cultural assumptions are an important aspect in understanding context. Culture is a system of beliefs, lifestyles, customs (usual habits and practices), values, attitudes and lifestyle of a particular people. Culture can refer to groups of people such as nations or smaller groups such as sporting teams. The culture of a particular person will influence the way they perceive (look at or understand) gender (male/female), ethnicity, religion, youth, age, disability, sexuality, cultural diversity, social class and work. A cultural assumption is when we assume that a person has particular values and attitudes based on their cultural background.

Understanding cultural assumptions and how they work will help to analyse spoken texts as well as help understand written text. Composers of texts often use cultural assumptions to reach their audience. A novel such as 'Looking for Alibrandi', written by Melinda Marchetta, for example, is based on a number of cultural assumptions. These are:

• Age - it is assumed that growing up is often a difficult time.
• Gender - that growing up as a girl has its own issues.
• Lifestyle/family - that it is the norm to have two parents.
• Ethnicity - that being Italian puts particular pressures/expectations on a person.

You will make many cultural assumptions in your everyday life. Think very carefully about the cultural assumptions that you make about:

• Gender - what are the characteristics of males and females? Are girls nice like sugar and spice and boys mean and never clean?
• Age - what are the characteristics of young people (perhaps you believe them to be fun-loving) and older people (perhaps they are boring).

These assumptions are based on stereotypes. A stereotype is an assumption made about a person based on superficial (only the very obvious) criteria. You must always be careful not to use stereotypes and remember that each person is an individual and their personality is not defined by their ethnicity, gender or age. Giving people characteristics based on race is racism and through gender is sexism. Be aware of how composers use stereotypes and be able to identify them.

We can also see examples of cultural assumptions that are made through language, in particular through gendered language. Examples of these in Australian English include referring to a car or a boat as she, 'She's a beaut new Holden, Tim' or 'Her bow sluiced through the roaring waves'.

Using cultural assumptions to analyse a text

The activity, understanding cultural assumptions will help you to see how cultural assumptions affect spoken texts.

Connotation

A connotation is when a part of a text or even a single word implies (makes something understood without expressing it directly) a value or meaning beyond the literal. Refer to the animation connotation example for an example of how this works.

In this chapter

It is important to be aware of the fact that each individual responder is positioned by their cultural background to attach meanings to particular written, spoken and visual cues. The interpretation of a text is often dependent upon the values that individuals place on age, gender, ethnicity and lifestyle as well as the connotations that arise from more subtle cues such as colours. An awareness of the use of these cultural assumptions will enable you, as a responder, to consider texts more objectively and, as a composer, to express views more concisely.