Topics

Sep

Culture Smart: How Do I Love Thee in French?

by Sheron Long on September 15, 2013

Girl playing daisy love game that varies across different cultures

Looking for answers in the daisy love game

Daisy Love Game in Different Cultures

In the USA, when wondering about the chance of love, people pull petals and alternate outcomes: He loves me. / He loves me not. It’s not that clear-cut in France, where the choices are recited like this:

Il m’aime un peu, He loves me a little,

beaucoup, a lot,

passionnément, passionately, Read more...

Sheron Long Comments

Cultural Diversity/France/Language & Culture/USA

Sep

Aha Moment Maker: The Potato Chips Are Down

by Your friends at OIC on September 14, 2013

SARATOGA SPRINGS, 1853—Hotel chef George Crum was just trying to get through another dinner service at Moon’s Lake House. But a cranky guest kept sending back plate after plate of Crum’s fried potatoes, insisting that they were too thick, too soggy, and too bland. As an insult, the chef sliced the next batch paper-thin, fried them until they were brittle, and purposely over-salted. Read more...

Your friends at OIC Comments

Your Own Aha Moments

Sep

Cultural Heritage Below the Water Line

by Sheron Long on September 12, 2013

An iceberg above and below the water line, serving as a metaphor for the cultural iceberg in which the visible tip of surface culture belies the "deep culture" vastness hidden below the surface.

Culture is like an iceberg where the visible tip belies the vastness hidden below the surface.

What’s a Cultural Iceberg?

The culture or cultures you grow up in affect your deepest attitudes and beliefs, giving you your sense of what’s good or right, what feels comfortable, what behavior is acceptable, and conversely what’s not. What other people see may be only those things “on the surface”—for example, the way you talk or act, what you eat and how you dress.

That’s why culture is often represented as an iceberg. Ten percent is the “surface culture” that shows above the water line and 90%, known as “deep culture, ” is hidden below. Read more...

Sheron Long 17 Comments

Cultural Diversity/Cultural Heritage & Traditions/Cultural Symbols

World Views: