Languages for intercultural communication and education

Cultural associations
This activity (based on Damen, 1987: 285) is another small-scale activity
to foster intercultural awareness. In this case, a specific subject is chosen
and learners find out as much as they can about it, comparing information
across cultures. One such ‘cluster’ of associations might involve food with
particular cultural significance. Table 5.1 charts what might be found if
learners investigated food from Brazil, Scotland and the USA.
Such ‘association charts’ are necessarily simplifications, even stereo-
types: feijoada, haggis and hot dogs are all eaten outside the times and
places specified, but there is an association in people’s minds with set
times, dates and places. Many Brazilian restaurants only serve feijoada on
Wednesdays and Saturdays; haggis is associated with the birthday of the
Scottish poet, Robert Burns, who immortalised it in verse; and although hot
dogs are one of many common American fast foods, they have a particular
association with sports. Seeking, learning and knowing this kind of infor-
mation can help one to understand cultural allusions and jokes in the target
Ethnographic Approaches to Culture and Language
109
Table 5.1
Foods of cultural significance
Brazil
Scotland
USA
food
feijoada
haggis
hot dogs
ingredients
salt pork, pork
sausage, ham, salted
tongue, pig’s knuckle
and trotters, black
beans, onion, parsley,
tomatoes, garlic
sheep’s stomach,
heart, liver, lungs
and windpipe;
onions, suet,
oatmeal, salt,
herbs
frankfurter sausage
(beef or beef and
pork), long, oval-
shaped bun,
optional mustard,
ketchup, pickle
meal/snack?
meal
meal
snack
where or
when eaten?
Weds & Sats
c. Jan 25th
sports games
accompanied
by?
rice, mandioca flour,
sliced kale, sliced
orange; hot pepper
sauce
mashed potatoes
and turnips
nothing
origins
peasant food
peasant food
convenience food at
sports games, etc
things to do
afterwards
lie down; doze; chat
sleepily
dance; listen to
speeches, songs,
poems
go back to watching
the game
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culture. It also casts light on cross-cultural similarities, such as the rise of
lowly haggis and feijoada from the status of peasant staple to ‘national
dish’. In the case of haggis, as Burns’ poem shows, the elevation of this form
of offal in Scotland’s affections is linked to a desire to present the nation as
honest, straightforward, down-to-earth and free of pretensions.
Like ‘Concept Training’, charting ‘Cultural Associations’ can be a useful
first step in perceiving ordinary phenomena as culturally significant. In
this, it helps develop an ethnographic turn of mind.