Quotes About Culture

Instead of saying that all gender is this or all gender is that, let's recognize that the word gender has scores of meaning built into it. It's an amalgamation of bodies, identities, and life experiences, subconscious urges, sensations, and behaviors, some of which develop organically, and others which are shaped by language and culture. Instead of saying that gender is any one single thing, let's start describing it as a holistic experience.

I see fashion as a proclamation or manifestation of identity, so, as long as identities are important, fashion will continue to be important. The link between fashion and identity begins to get real interesting, however, in the case of people who don't fall clearly into a culturally-recognized identity.

Given any binary, it's fun to look for some hidden third, and the reason why the third was hidden says a lot about culture. The choice between two of something is not a choice at all, but rather the opportunity to subscribe to the value system which holds the two presented choices as mutually exclusive alternatives. Once we choose one or the other, we've bought into the system that perpetuates the binary.

We have looked for myths that include us in great novels, music, the latest comic book, or even some stupid advertising campaign. We'll look anywhere for a mythology that embraces people like ourselves.

Instead of saying that all gender is this or all gender id that, let's recognize that the word gender has scores of meanings built into it. It's an amalgamation of bodies, identities, and life experiences, subconscious urges, sensations, and behaviours, some of which develop organically, and others which are shaped by language and culture. Instead of saying that gender is any one single thing, let's start describing it as a holistic experience.

I believe in books," her friend whispered. "We have to save them all.

Our culture may be highly sexualised, promiscuous and pornographic, but men and women will go to extraordinary lengths to hide their sexual activity. They value honour and monogamy: very few men are prepared to leave their wife for a mistress, and there is some evidence to suggest that people value sexual fidelity more than ever before now that so many other aspects of life cannot be relied upon.

Even in societies vastly different from America's, common facial expressions like happiness, fear, surprise, and shock are the same.

Nor am I saying that English conversation codes do not allow men to express emotion. English males are allowed to express emotion. Well they are allowed to express some emotions. Three, to be precise: surprise, providing it is conveyed by expletives; anger, generally communicated in the same manner; and elation/triumph, which again involves shouting and swearing. It can thus sometimes be rather hard to tell exactly which of these three permitted emotions an Englishman is attempting to express.

Class in England is no more determined by wealth than it is by occupation.

Native speakers can rarely explain the grammatical rules of their own language. In the same way, those who are most 'fluent' in the rituals, customs and traditions of a particular culture generally lack the detachment necessary to explain the 'grammar' of these practices in an intelligible manner. This is why we have anthropologists.

when the English say 'Oh really? How interesting!' they might well mean 'I don't believe a word of it, you lying toad'. Or they might not. They might just mean 'I'm bored and not really listening but trying to be polite'. Or they might be genuinely surprised and truly interested. You'll never know.

Even the English, who understand it, are not exactly riotously amused by the understatement. At best, a well-timed, well-turned understatement only raises a slight smirk.

The reasons for our prolific understating are not hard to discover: our strict prohibitions on earnestness, gushing, emoting and boasting require almost constant use of understatement.

I mentioned earlier that someone once said that the English have satire instead of revolutions (or something to that effect): we complain bitterly, and often wittily, but we do not actually do anything about it.

Kate Grenville

What he had not learned from Latin or Greek he was learning from the people of New South Wales. It was this: you did not learn a language without entering into a relationship with the people who spoke it with you. His friendship with Tagaran was not a list of objects, or the words for things eaten or not eaten, thrown or not thrown. It was the slow constructing of the map of a relationship.

Then they were moving again. Frank told her it was because of Benni, the nursemaid who looked after them. Benni was half Chinese, that golden skin. Her mother was ordinary Australian, was how Benni put it. That

A broken off chip of England resting on the surface of this place.

There's money, and then there's class. The two are often separated.

Uh, puedo hablar con Andrew Nelson, por favor?" I asked, feeling like an idiot. "Quien?" "El americano," I explained. "Muy grande americano." In trying to describe my father, I sounded like I was ordering coffee. But it worked.

Coitus can scarcely be said to take place in a vacuum; although of itself it appears a biological and physical activity, it is set so deeply within the larger context of human affairs that it serves as a charged microcosm of the variety of attitudes and values to which culture subscribes. Among other things, it may serve as a model of sexual politics on an individual or personal plane.

Under patriarchy the female did not herself develop the symbols by which she is described. As

Because of our social circumstances, male and female are really two cultures and their life experiences are utterly different—and this is crucial. Implicit