Cultural Schemas Research Articles

Weapons Make the Man (Larger): Formidability Is Represented as Size and Strength in Humans

In order to determine how to act in situations of potential agonistic conflict, individuals must assess multiple features of a prospective foe that contribute to the foe's resource-holding potential, or formidability. Across diverse species, physical size and strength are key determinants of formidability, and the same is often true for humans. However, in many species, formidability is also influenced by other factors, such as sex, coalitional size, and, in humans, access to weaponry. Decision-making involving assessments of multiple features is enhanced by the use of a single summary variable that encapsulates the contributions of these features. Given both a) the phylogenetic antiquity of the importance of size and strength as determinants of formidability, and b) redundant experiences during development that underscore the contributions of size and strength to formidability, we hypothesize that size and strength constitute the conceptual dimensions of a representation used to summarize multiple diverse determinants of a prospective foe's formidability. Here, we test this hypothesis in humans by examining the effects of a potential foe's access to weaponry on estimations of that individual's size and strength. We demonstrate that knowing that an individual possesses a gun or a large kitchen knife leads observers to conceptualize him as taller, and generally larger and more muscular, than individuals who possess only tools or similarly mundane objects. We also document that such patterns are not explicable in terms of any actual correlation between gun ownership and physical size, nor can they be explained in terms of cultural schemas or other background knowledge linking particular objects to individuals of particular size and strength. These findings pave the way for a fuller understanding of the evolution of the cognitive systems whereby humans – and likely many other social vertebrates – navigate social hierarchies.

»... den letzten Rest von Poësie«

Cultural schemata are traditionally explored by reconstructing their conceptual history (Begriffsgeschichte). This method should be extended by the use of historical and literary semantics.Using the concepts of cognitive linguistics, especially Frame semantics, this paper deals with the semantic potential of the aristocratic (Adel) from the French Revolution onwards and shows how a cultural schema can survive in everyday awareness even after the related social group has declined.

The Effects on Reading Comprehension of Lexical Collocation Instruction, Subject Matter Knowledge, and Cultural Schema

This study investigated the effects of lexical collocation, topic and cultural familiarity on Iranian EFL learners’ reading comprehension. There were thirty-eight English Translation students in Chabahar Maritime University participating in the present study, 15 freshmen and 23 sophomores. They were chosen from among 45 students based on their scores in the reading comprehension tests. In the treatment period, all the students received three different types of instruction in three consecutive weeks, and took a reading comprehension test after each type of instruction. . In the first week, they received a text that was culturally familiar to them; it was about the origin and development of banks and corporations in Iran. In the second week, they were taught the difficult lexical collocations of the reading text along with their Farsi equivalents before taking the test. And finally in the third week, the students read a reading passage which had the same topic as the reading test before; it was about the communication and behavior of ants. All the students were requested to complete a reading comprehension test, adopted from the paper-based TOEFL tests, after each type of instruction. According to the results demonstrated by the statistical program, a significant difference was found in reading comprehension among the participants based on the type of instruction they received. The highest mean belonged to the third week, when the students read a passage with the same topic before the test as the treatment, followed by the collocation instruction. However, there was no significant difference between boys and girls, and freshmen and sophomores as a result of different types of instruction.

Defining a semantic mapping of VRA Core 4.0 to the CIDOC conceptual reference model

In the recent decades, we have witnessed a tremendous proliferation of metadata schemas, particularly in the cultural heritage domain. As a consequence, cultural heritage communities face a growing need to integrate these schemas as they encounter a number of problems, mainly concerning interoperability issues and loss of implicit knowledge. In this paper, we present a semantic mapping of VRA Core 4.0, a cultural heritage metadata schema describing visual resources, to CIDOC CRM. The mapping rules are expressed formally using a path-based mapping language called Mapping Description Language MDL. More specifically, each element of the schema along with its subelements and attributes is mapped to the equivalent CRM path represented as a sequence of classes and properties. In case an attribute is assigned to an element/subelement, this is also mapped to equivalent CRM paths, expanding the semantic correspondences between the two schemas. This work is part of a semantic integration scenario, where CIDOC CRM acts as a mediation schema.

A Sleeping Army: The Military Origins of Interethnic Civic Structures on Mexico's Colonial Frontier

This article describes warfare and diplomacy between colonial and non-colonial peoples on the northeastern frontier of New Spain in the eighteenth century. It considers the relationship of Spanish and Nahua colonists to indigenous populations in the north. It argues that shared assumptions about military hierarchy transcended cultural boundaries, permitting diplomatic exchange and political integration. Drawing on archival military and missionary records, the article illustrates the process by which European and indigenous political units were first rendered mutually intelligible, later connected by alliance, and finally integrated through joint settlement and corporate governance. Fundamental to these processes were the communication and synthesis of cultural schemata expressing the correspondence of military commands to each party's historical memory and social geography. This article offers a partial explanation for the development of Tlaxcalan-Chichimec pueblos and a general set of principles for understanding intercultural diplomacy in frontier environments.

If You’re So Smart, Why Aren’t You the Boss? Explaining the Persistent Vertical Gender Gap in Management

Since 1970, women have made substantial inroads into management jobs. But most women are in lower- and middle-management jobs; few are in top-management jobs. Human capital theory uses three individual-level variables to explain this vertical gender gap: women acquire fewer of the necessary educational credentials than men, women prefer different kinds of jobs than men, and women accumulate less of the required work experience than men. The authors argue that cultural schemas, specifically gender roles and gender norms, explain most individual-level differences between men and women and that when cultural factors are ignored, any observed effects of these factors can be dismissed as spurious. This analysis is based on data on nationally representative samples and the results of published research.

Intercultural (Mis)Communication: Why Would You “Out” Me in Class?

This paper conceptualizes Hopson’s notion of crash moments by exploring an intercultural interaction (between an individual who identifies as heterosexual and another who identifies as homosexual) within a graduate classroom by drawing on cultural schema theory and critical incident analysis. Ultimately, this paper deconstructs a communication breakdown through a self-reflexive process in which the researcher was “outed” (someone else disclosed the sexual orientation of a lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgendered individual in a public setting) by a classmate—which the researcher deems as a problematic occurrence, making the incident critical and fitting for analysis within an intercultural communication context. This paper also considers the complexities of sexual identity negotiation as an African American female lesbian at a Historically Black College/University.

Extending Culturally Symbolic Brands: A Blessing or a Curse?

Abstract Results from four studies uncover a relatively automatic cultural congruency mechanism that can influence evaluations of culturally charged brand extensions, overriding the impact of perceived fit on extension evaluations. Culturally congruent extensions (i.e., when both the brand and the extension category cue the same cultural schema) were evaluated more favorably than culturally neutral extensions, which in turn were evaluated more favorably than culturally incongruent ones (i.e., cue two different cultural schemas). The effects emerged with both moderate and low fit brand extensions, as well as for narrow and broad brands. However, they only emerged when both the brand and the product were culturally symbolic, likely to automatically activate a cultural schema but did not emerge for brands low in cultural symbolism. The effects were driven by the processing (dis)fluency generated by the simultaneous activation of the same (different) cultural schemas by the product and the brand.

Archıtectural Design Process in Creativity and Cultural Schema Context

Ozet: Yaraticilik bircok farkli alanda kullanilan oldukca genis tanimlari olan bir kavramdir. Kavram bazen su- rec, bazen urun ve bazen de bir tur kisilik yapisi olarak tanimlanabilmektedir. Mimari tasarim sureci baglaminda ele alindiginda ise yaraticilik; tam olarak tanimlanmamis bir alanda problemlerin ortaya cikarilmasi ve daha sonra bu problemlere bilissel mekanizmalardan faydalanilarak cozum bulunmasi olarak ifade edilmektedir. Bu surecte ise tasarimcinin kulturel semasi oldukca onemli bir yere sahiptir. Bireye ait kulturel (normatif kavram ve anlamlar) bilesenlerin, zihinsel sureclerle (bilissel semalar) kodlanmasi ile olusan kulturel sema, bireyin tasarla- ma eylemini ortaya cikaran tum sistemi ifade etmektedir. Bu baglamda bu calisma yaratici bilissel bir surec olan mimari tasarim ile kulturel sema kavramlari arasindaki etkilesim sisteminin arastirilmasini icermektedir. Ayrica bu calismanin amaci; mimari tasarim kavramini yaraticilik ve kulturel sema baglaminda, bilissel bir bakis acisi cercevesinde yeniden yorumlamaktir. Anahtar Kelimeler: Yaraticilik, kulturel sema, mimari tasarim, bilissel yaklasim Architectural Design Process in Creativity and Cultural Schema Context Abstract: Creativity has broad meanings in various fields. Concept can be described sometimes as a process, sometimes product and sometimes personality. Creativity, in the light of architectural design process, is de- scribed as revealing of necessary problems in an undefined area and finding solution pursuant to cognitive mechanisms. In this process designers cultural schema have an important role. Cultural schema emerges from codification of one's cultural variables (normative concept and meanings) with thinking process (cognitive schema) and represents whole system of design process. In the light of these, this study covers investigation of interaction between cultural schema and creative cognitive design process. Furthermore the aim of this study is reinterpretation of design process in the context of creativity and cultural schema in the frame of cognitive ap- proach.

Tropologies of Tradition and (Post)modernity in Nwagwu's Forever Chimes

In his article "Tropologies of Tradition and (Post)modernity in Nwagwu's Forever Chimes" James Tar Tsaaior explores Mark Nwagu's novel and postulates that the author succeeds in constructing a novelistic universe both concrete and fluid in its re-invention or re-fabrication of cultural traditions and identity formation processes. This universe is simultaneously traditional/indigenous and (post)modern. However, rather than to delineate these cultural formations through difference as oppositional categories, Nwagu suggests grounds for multicultural interactions and transactions. In this cultural schema, none of the cultures claims exclusive preserve or pre-eminence over the other as what exists is a democratic space for the cultures to assert their energies as they thrive and co-exist in healthy communion.

Being human and doing primatology: national, socioeconomic, and ethnic influences on primatological practice

The emerging manifesto, center of the essay collection this commentary is part of, points out that primatology is a primate's science and field of endeavor. It is about primates, and constructed and carried out by primates. But the relationships between different primates involved in primatology cannot be described merely as scientific, zoological, or conservatory. A main point emerging from this perspective is that the relationships amongst primates (as scientists and as subjects) are affected by primatologists' experiences outside of academic science and within the cultural schema that we acquire as members of human societies. My contribution focuses on the primatologists and their sometimes discussed, but too often ignored, cultural and ethnic contexts as influences on how they study, think about, and interact with other primates. In our views and bonds with other primates, do national, class, and ethnic factors count?

Cultural schemas in intercultural communication: A study of the Persian cultural schema of sharmandegi ‘being ashamed’

This paper explores the Persian cultural pragmatic schema of sharmandegi ‘being ashamed,’ which underlies the enactment of several speech acts in Persian. These include expressing gratitude, offering goods and services, requesting goods and services, apology, refusal, and accepting offers. For instance, the schema encourages Persian speakers to use the expression sharmandam ‘I am ashamed’ when inviting guests to the dinner table, suggesting that their food is not worthy of the guests. In this instance, this is a linguistic strategy to achieve positive politeness for the speaker. The paper presents some naturally occurring data from intercultural contexts where a Persian speaker has enacted the same schema communicating with Australian English speaking interlocutors. Elicited interpretations of the use of the expression of sharmandegi (such as ‘I am ashamed I didn't call you’ or ‘I'm sorry the food is not good’) from a number of Australian English speakers reveal the potential for misunderstanding on the part of non-Persian speakers in intercultural communication with Persian speakers who use this schema when speaking English. In general, this study further reveals the potential of cultural schema theory for studies of intercultural pragmatics and contributes to the body of research on intercultural communication involving speakers of Persian.

Persian Cultural Schema of Ghesmat (Fate): The Role of Age and Education

Ghesmat (roughly could be translated as ‘fate’) is one of the ancient cultural schemas among the Persians. This study explores the schema of ghesmat in the lives of Persian speakers as reflected in their language use among people with different age and educational level. Having introduced the schema of ghesmat in Persian, data was collected by giving a discourse completion test (DCT) to the participants of the study who were randomly chosen. The results of the analysis of data revealed that Persians instantiated the cultural schema of ghesmat in different contextual circumstances of their lives. In addition, the use of this cultural schema was different among people with different age and education. It seemed young educated Persian speakers drew least on the schema whereas old uneducated ones mostly favored ghesmat schema. Finally the study discussed about the possible pattern for the distribution of cultural schemas.

Acknowledging the Stigmatized: Sex Offenders and Their Outlooks versus Women in Relationships with Incarcerated Men and Their Perceptions of the Criminal Justice System

Offenders are a stigmatized group of individuals, making it difficult for society to proffer second chances so willingly. Furthermore, many women in relationships with offenders suffer the stigma that offenders themselves experience. This study offers a theoretical contribution that focuses mostly on sex offenders in an attempt to help reshape their perceptions and bring clarity to an existing theoretical framework. Sex offenders’ outlooks were examined and placed into a three schema approach (instrumental, political, and cultural schemas), implemented from a previous study, based on their overall mentality and how they have rationalized their offenses. Similarly, women’s perceptions of the criminal justice system, based on society’s views toward their relationship with an offender, were categorized into the three schemas to contrast the varying types of stigma. In this study, about 40 letters from sex offenders, as well as select stories from a book containing sex offender accounts, were coded and analyzed under this framework using Atlas-ti. Additionally, twelve interviews were carried out with women in relationships with incarcerated men. Results suggest that while many sex offenders desire change, they do not take full responsibility for their actions, meaning that these particular offenders’ outlooks do not fit neatly into one schema. A fourth schema, christened the “chimerical schema”, is proposed to further explain offenders’ outlooks. Mostof the women’s perceptions, however, easily fit into one of the three schemas, rendering the fourth schema unnecessary. This study will add to an existing theoretical framework, making it more applicable to other marginalized groups.

Implicit Aspects of Culture in Source and Target Language Contexts

In the context of Bible translation, the concept of implicit information has typically been constrained to cognitive information that was assumed to be known by the source language audience. In this article implicit information is expanded to include both source and target language contexts because the target audience also brings a wealth of information to the translation and interpretation of target language Scriptures. In addition, a prototypical model of culture is applied to more comprehensively explicate both surface and deep structural aspects of culture, i.e., knowledge, practices, beliefs, values, worldview, and image schema, that were either assumed by the original authors for their audience or are encountered in the interpretation by the target audience. A survey of “offline” author intrusive comments, mostly in the Gospels, suggests that the authors carefully gauged the cultural background of their audience, making explicit, as they deemed necessary, components of cultural knowledge, practices, beliefs and values. A selection of Bible translation issues from East African teams demonstrates that the target audience brings a rich cultural context to the target language Scriptures extending from surface cultural practices to deep structural components of worldview and image schema. The topic of implicit information is further investigated by comparing the perspective of two translation models, meaning-based translation practice and Relevance Theory. The somewhat overlapping technical vocabulary of explicatures and implicatures are contrasted including a comparative analysis of a biblical text. An attempt is made to broaden the scope of both models from cognitive processing of information to a more defendable incorporation of culture and its deep structure. For meaning-based translation practice, the concept of meaning should access the cultural deep structure underlying the source and target languages, which impact it. For Relevance Theory this means a consideration of inferences that are non-propositional—where cultural deep structure markedly influences cognitive effects. New definitions of explicatures and implicatures are proposed that incorporate surface to deep aspects of culture. Applications to translation training and practice are anticipated.

Radicalism and political reform in the Islamic and Western worlds

Kai Hafez. Radicalism and Political Reform in the Islamic and Western Worlds Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. 320 pages. Paperback $30.99In the West, misreading Islam is the norm. In fact, academics and journalists thrive on pillorying Muslims. Popular culture is only marginally worse. Illiteracy and chauvinism drive this habit. It enables Westerners to locate and assert their superiority. Even Pope Benedict XVI succumbed to it. In a university lecture in 2006, he slyly damned Islam as violent and irrational. He was silent on the destruction of a major state (Iraq) by Bush and Blair. Indeed, he oversaw Blair's conversion to Catholicism after the war. Since 9/11, killing Muslims and invading Muslim nations has been the new normal. Obama's military incursions and drone wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan are exemplary instances. The Western projects evince a passion to eviscerate Islam and erase Muslims. It is misguided to call this Islamophobia since fear is not the problem. What we are privy to here is the foreign policy of Mus limicide, the commitment to gutting and superseding the faith of Islam. It is no accident that Muslim cultures and peoples are under attack.In a series of superb apercus and incisive analysis, Kai Hafez offers a massive corrective to this incessant, illiterate and racist white noise. He tackles the anti-Islam philippics which drive Western and thus global discourse on Muslims. A German-bom professor of Media and Communication studies at the University of Erfurt, he is very well versed in Islam, political theory and social science. Hafez lucidly critiques the fallacies of the Western discourse on Islam and Muslim. His principal thematic foci are modernity, democracy and political violence. On this canvas, he comparatively lists the successes and limitations of Islam and the West. In particular, Hafez methodically exposes the illiteracy about Islamism, fundamentalism and political Islam, evident in Western scholarship and journalism.That fact is that anti-modernism is alien to Islam. So is the claim that secularism is un-Muslim. In fact, Western modernity was structured on the Islamic reconciliation of faith and reason. The intimate relationship between Arab and Western traditions of thought (17) was the achievement of the Arab/ Iranian, Shiite/Sunni, philosophers of Islam: Al-Farabi, Ibn Sina, Ibn Rushd and Al-Ghazali. In Muslim history, furthermore, secularism has co-existed with the faith since the birth of Islam. As consultation and as equal access to rulers, the ideal of democracy was intrinsic to Islam prior to Western colonization. But it was never a commitment to liberal individualist ethic or possessive individualism. In Egypt and Iran, the democracy in place is non-liberal, communitarian; it is authentic democracy within the bounds of Islam. It will evolve and accommodate versions of liberal freedoms in time. Intervention by the West in Muslim affairs has undercut this possibility.As Hafez shows in detail,,fundamentalism comes in different forms with distinct cultural and political reform schemas. Liberal Islamic reformers want the kind of modernity and human rights congenial to the Muslim sensibility. Yet they neither reject Islam nor insist on absolute secular rights. They realize that pure secularism is not available in the West either. Conservative Islamic reformers like Tariq Ramadan prize community. They want Quranic law to be the benchmark moral code. Thus in the Islamic context, fundamentalism is neither rigid nor closed to scrutiny and amendment. In both Egypt and Iran, it has long challenged tyrannical mies and practice in the name of Islam. As Hafez notes, such ethical spiritual acumen is ill-understood in the West.In the Western mind, political Islam and Islamism function as medieval manifestations of pure evil, pure terror. …

Cultural Foundations of Tokenism

Existing explanations of tokenism predict similar experiences for all numerically small, low-status groups. These explanations, however, cannot account for variation in the experiences of different low-status minority groups within the same setting. This article develops a theory of tokenism that explains such variation. Drawing on 117 interviews in the leveraged buyout industry (LBO) and a comparison of the differing experiences of female and African American male tokens in that setting, I argue that tokenism is contingent on the local cultural context in which it is embedded. Specifically, I identify two elements of an occupation’s culture—its hierarchy of cultural resources and its image of the ideal worker—that can specify some status characteristics as more relevant to and incompatible with the occupation’s work than others. In LBO, the industry values cultural resources that, on average, women lack but men possess, and the ideal worker is defined such that it directly conflicts with cultural beliefs about motherhood. Consequently, in this context, gender is a more relevant status characteristic for exclusion than is race, and female tokens are differentially disadvantaged. In addition to revising received wisdom about tokenism, this study integrates and advances social psychological and cultural theories of exclusion by deepening our understanding of the role of cultural resources and schemas in occupational inequality.

The Influence of Schema and Cultural Difference on L1 and L2 Reading

Reading in L1 shares numerous basic elements with reading in L2, and the processes also differ greatly. Intriguing questions involve whether there are two parallel cognitive processes at work, or whether there are processing strategies that accommodate both L1 and L2. This paper examines how reading in L1 is different from and similar to reading in L2. More specifically, factors of cultural difference and schema will also be examined.

Isolating effects of cultural schemas: Cultural priming shifts Asian-Americans' biases in social description and memory

Cross-national research on social description documents that Westerners favor abstract linguistic categories (e.g. adjectives rather than verbs) more than East Asians. Whereas culture-related schemas are assumed to underlie these differences, no research has examined this directly. The present study used the cultural priming paradigm to distinguish the role of cultural schemas from alternative country-related explanations involving linguistic structures or educational experiences. It compared Asian-Americans' descriptions of others and memory for social information following American versus Asian priming. Asian priming fostered more concrete, contextualized verb-based descriptions and reduced memory errors associated with trait inference, compared to American priming (and to separate samples of non-primed Asian-Americans and Euro-Americans). This provides the first incisive evidence that cultural schemas influence the linguistic categories used to describe and remember social targets. Implications for research on biculturals, culture-related schemas, and linguistic practices are discussed.

The Islamic Spirit of Capitalism: Moroccan Islam and its Transferable Cultural Schemas and Values

This article adds to and critiques current debates about the “spirit of capitalism” for being too “top down”, western and elite-oriented. It takes a bottom-end-up and ethnographic cultural perspective to examine the cultural conditions for the formation of willing, low priced labour power in a Moroccan case study example of the “Islamic south”. Tracing how the popular culture of Islam in Morocco provides a reservoir of religious meaning for the framing of, and accommodation to, capitalistic wage labour relations, we argue that capital both in the “north”, through migration, and in the “south” gains ready access to huge resources of labour. Popular Islamic religio-cultural practices and beliefs provide ready-made cultural schemas for enacting and reproducing social relations of master-disciple/saint-supplicant, which when applied to capitalist employment relations, despite some real and possible counter-tendencies and seeds of resistance, go a long way towards explaining the apparently submissive attitudes of most Moroccan workers. Further, subaltern classes in Morocco frequently look to divination, to the miraculous, to jinn-related rituals of trance-dance and eviction to arbitrate what they see as their hit-and-miss affair with Fate. This can produce what we term a magical emancipation seemingly releasing them, partially at least, from the sufferings associated with their crushing conditions of existence and offering some psychic space between immediate oppression and immediate suffering. But magical emancipation also obfuscates the true sources of their suffering and ensures, again, subjection to the maraboutic healer and in general to “the master”. Poverty and richness as well as social inequalities are perceived to a larger extent to be incurred by the machinery of luck, the evil eye, envy and the will of Allah rather than being the results of practices and discourses of exploitative economic relations.