Class materials for January 29, 2012

Here is the link for the materials you'll need this week.

Also, another copy of the materials is below the jump (click where it says 'czytaj więcej')





Fifth Dimension:

LONG-TERM ORIENTATION
The IBM studies that resulted in measures of the first four dimensions of culture studied in this course used a questionnaire that was designed and composed by Western minds. Considering the scope and nature of the research this is a matter of concern. The question is not so much "Are the results accurate?" Indeed, the results have been replicated and pass other tests regarding reliability and accuracy. But since the research is about values and cultural relativity the question is "Does the questionnaire allow non-Western responders to fully express their values?
The results of the Chinese Value Survey (CVS) indicate that there are additional relevant dimensions of culture besides the original four. The CVS was the result of cooperation of Chinese social scientists from Hong Kong and Taiwan. It consisted of forty items felt to reflect traditional Chinese values. This test was administered initially in 22 countries around the world.
While few of the questions had direct equivalents in the IBM questionnaire most of them could be directly related to the dominant Chinese philosophical system – Confucianism. Confucian teachings are lessons in practical ethics with no religious content. Confucianism is not a faith, but a set of pragmatic rules for daily life derived from what Confucius perceived as the lessons of Chinese history.
Conveniently just as the IMB studies were divided into four dimensions, there are four major Confucian principles:
1.    The stability of society is based on unequal relationships between people: ruler-subject, father-son, older brother-younger brother, husband-wife, senior friend – junior friend. These relationships are based on mutual and complementary obligations. In each case, the junior owes the senior respect and obedience. The senior owes the junior protection and consideration.
2.    The family is the prototype of all social organizations. A person is not primarily an individual, rather they are a member of a family.
3.    Virtuous behavior towards others consists of not treating others as one would not like to be treated oneself. A person should be patient, courteous and kind.


4.    Virtue with regard to one's task in life consists of trying to acquire skills and education, working hard, not spending more than necessary, being patient and persevering. Conspicuous consumption is taboo as is losing one's temper, moderation is required in all things.
The first two of these principles correspond closely to Power Distance and Individualism and the third corresponds only slightly less closely to Masculinity. The fourth however does not correspond to Uncertainty avoidance.
After further investigation and analysis, a new dimension related to  the fourth Confucian principle was identified and named "Long-term orientation" At the pole that could be described as 'short-term orientation the following values, which are centered in the past or present can be found:
- personal steadiness and stability;
- protecting one's 'face' (honor) at all costs;
- respect for tradition for its own sake;
- reciprocation of greetings, favors and gifts (and of slights, disrespect and hostility).
The opposite 'long-term orientation' pole is oriented toward the future and is characterized by:
-    persistence (perseverance);
-    practical (not ontological) ordering of relationships by status;
-    thrift, being careful with resources;
-    having a sense of shame.
The religions from East Asia Hinduism, Buddhism, Shinto, and Taoism are separated from the West-Asian religions Judaism, Christianity and Islam by a vast philosophical divide.
The three West-Asian religions belong to the same thought family and historically grew from the same roots. All three are based on sets of Texts which propose the existence of a Truth which is accessible to believers.
In the East, neither Confucianism, which is a non-religious ethic nor any major religion is based on the assumption that there is a Truth which humans can embrace. Instead, they offer various ways in which a person can improve themself which do not depend on belief but in ritual, meditation and ways of living. Some of these may lead to a higher state and/or eventual unification with a God or Gods, but in all of them belief is less important than behavior.
This is one reason that a questionnaire developed by Western minds led to the identification of a dimension dealing with Truth (Uncertainty avoidance) while a questionnaire invented by Eastern minds lead to the identification of a dimension dealing with Virtue (Long-term orientation). 

Truth vs. synthesis
The West-Asian concern with Truth is supported by an axiom in Western logic, that a statement excludes its opposite. If A is true, then B, which is the opposite of A must be false. Eastern logic does not have any such axiom. If A is true, it's opposite B may also be true and together they produce a wisdom that is superior to either A or B. This principle is sometimes called the complementarity of yang and yin. Human truth in this philosophical tradition is always partial. People from East and Southeast Asia can quite easily adopt elements from different religions or adhere to more than one religion at the same time. In countries with such a philosophical background, a practical non-religious ethical system like Confucianism can become a cornerstone of society. In the West, ethical rules tend to be derived from religion: Virtue comes from Truth.
During the Industrial Revolution which originated in the West 200 years ago, the Western concern for Truth was an asset. It led to the discovery of the laws of nature which could then be exploited for the sake of human progress.
By the middle of the 20th century, the Western concern for Truth gradually ceased to be an asset and turned into a liability. Science may benefit from analytic thinking but management and government are based on the art of synthesis.
Chinese scholars, despite a high level of civilization, never discovered Newtonian laws as they were simply not looking for principles. But when the results of Western analytically derived technologies became freely available, Eastern cultures could start putting these technologies into practice using their own superior synthetic abilities.
In management, what's true or who's right is less important than what works and how the efforts of individuals with different thinking patterns can be coordinated towards a common goal. In the modern world countries that can practice Virtue without a concern for Truth are at a strategic advantage.
On the other hand, many countries with a dominant Muslim tradition are still searching for ways of coping with modernity. Muslim countries which have temporarily collected enormous riches from their oil resources have hardly adapted better to the modern world than those which have remained poor. Indeed, the oil benefits may have been more a liability than an asset.


There was a period in history from around the 9th to 13th century when the Muslim world was not only militarily but also scientifically advanced while Christian Europe stagnated.  But with the renaissance and reformation, Christian countries entered the road to modernization while the world of Islam has retreated into traditionalism. Most opinion leaders in the Muslim world interpret modern technology and Western ideas as a threat rather than an opportunity. The concern for Truth which Muslim cultures share with Christian ones can be seen as having become a competitive disadvantage.
Entrepreneurship and values
At the short-term orientation pole, many of the values tend to discourage or be maladaptive to entrepreneurship. Personal steadiness and stability discourage initiative, risk-taking and flexibility when markets change rapidly. Protecting one's face, when pursued to extremes, distracts from the business at hand. Too much uncritical respect for tradition impedes innovation. Reciprocation is a social ritual more concerned with good manners than performance. In more Western societies these features are realized as oversensitivity to social trends and valuing conspicuous consumption (Keeping up with the Joneses) which are more highly valued than thrift or perseverance.
The values at the long term pole tend to highly correspond with entrepreneurial success. Persistence and perseverance are essential to begin new undertakings. Practical (not ontological) hierarchical relationships make things run smoother. Thrift leads to savings and availability of capital (for reinvestment). The value of a sense of shame supports sensitivity to social contacts and a stress on honoring commitments.


DEAFNESS, LANGUAGE AND CULTURE (three problems)

Problem 1: Sam was a young boy whose interests hard started to turn to the world beyond his family. He noticed a little girl living next door who seemed to be about his age. After a few tentative encounters they became friends. In most ways she was a satisfactory friend but she was also very strange.
The problem was that he couldn't talk with her the way he could with his family. She seemed to have extreme difficulty understanding even the simplest, most basic efforts to communicate. After several futile efforts at communicating he gave up. He finally just pointed at things (which she did understand). If he wanted to go somewhere he just dragged her along. He wondered what was wrong with her, but they had developed a way to interact with each other and for the most part he was happy to accommodate her peculiar needs.
Then one day, they were playing in her home when he saw her mother walk up to them and begin to make strange animated movements. As if by magic, the little girl looked up, then picked up some of her toys and moved them to another place and began making the same kinds of strange movements with her mother. Sam went home and asked his mother what was wrong with the people next door.

Question: What did Sam's mother tell him?


Problem 2: An adult woman is visiting a friend's house and is talking to her friend's two young daughters. The older is seven and the younger is five. All of them are deaf..
The visitor notices a toy the little sister is carrying with her everywhere and asks about it. The conversation is translated from American Sign Language (ASL).

Little sister: My friend Mark gave it to me.
Big sister (giggles): Mark's her boyfriend!
Little sister: No he is not! Anyway Mark is deaf.
Big sister: No, Mark is hearing.
Little sister (confused and not convinced): No, Mark is deaf!
Big sister: You're wrong! I know! Daddy said Mark is hearing.
Adult: Well, which is he? Deaf or hearing?
Little sister: I don't know …
Adult: (intrigued) What do you think?
Little sister: (thinking) Both! Mark is deaf and hearing!

Question: What logic is the younger sister using? How is her reasoning different from her older sister's?


Problem 3. Consider the following conversations. All the interlocutors are deaf. The conversations are translated from ASL.

Anne: Is all of Bob's family hearing?
John: Yes, except for a younger brother.
Anne: Does the brother know sign language?
John: No, he's only a little hard-of-hearing.
Anne: What about his wife?
John: She's very hard of hearing, almost deaf.
Anne: That's nice.

Marvin: Did you hear? Chris got a new job.
Harry: Where?
Marvin: At an office.
Harry: Deaf?
Marvin: No, they're hearing, but she does okay, after all she's just a little hard of hearing.

Bill: My TTY broke and I can't use the phone.
Jim: Can your wife use the telephone?
Bill: Yes, she can. She's very hard-of-hearing.

Susan: I have to go to the doctor; I'll have to call deaf services to get an interpreter.
Tom: Jack went to the doctor last week.
Susan: Do you know if he used an interpreter.
Tom: He must have. After all, he can't talk; he's only a little hard-of-hearing.

Question: How can you account for the different meanings of: very hard-of-hearing and a little hard-of-hearing?




Hint for Problems 2 and 3: Two deaf high schools are playing a game of basketball against each other at one of the school's gymnasiums. A student who couldn't go to the game later asks her friend about the result.

Sue: Who won?
Dana: We did, the deaf team beat the hearing team by ten points.




Deafness, Language and Culture

Different definitions of "deaf"
Audiologically deaf : This refers to hearing loss that interferes with understanding speech. It doesn't imply any relation to the hearing majority.
'Prelingually' deaf : This refers to hearing loss before a spoken language is fully acquired. The onset age of deafness may be anywhere from birth to the age of 10 (give or take a year or two). Typically as they become adults these individuals join the Deaf community.
Late deafened : This refers to hearing loss after a spoken language has been acquired. This is the most common kind of deafness. The late deafened do not generally join the Deaf community.
Culturally Deaf : The refers to hearing loss, the use of a natural sign language and association with other Deaf people. Collectively the culturally Deaf in a given area are known as the Deaf community.

deaf : audiologically deaf

Deaf : culturally deaf

Myths about Sign Languages: Hearing people have several, mutually contradictory, ideas about sign languages.

Myth: There is a universal sign language
Truth: There is no one universal sign language. Deaf people have as much right to linguistic diversity as do hearing people.

Myth: Sign language has the same structure as the main spoken language of the area.
Truth: The grammar of sign languages and spoken languages are independent of each other (though spoken languages influence them in various ways).

Myth: Sign languages are not much different from pantomime.   The meaning of signs is easy to guess.
Truth: The structure of sign languages has little in common with pantomime. From the point of view of a child learning a sign language signs are almost entirely arbitrary.  Much of sign language vocabulary is motivated, but so is the vocabulary of spoken languages.

Myth: Sign languages were invented by hearing people to 'educate' deaf people.
Truth: No hearing person has created a sign language in use by Deaf people.


Kinds of Sign Languages

Home sign : These are ad hoc collections of signs that typically arise in hearing families with one more deaf members. These arise and disappear quickly. In an isolated community with hereditary deafness Home sign may evolve into a Community Sign Language. These are still common in parts of the Third World.

Community Sign Languages : These arise in isolated, endogamous communities with hereditary deafness. Eventually every family has a deaf member or two and a sign language will arise. Hearing people will be bilingual and sign or speak depending on the circumstance while the deaf people sign. In such communities deafness is not a major disability but an occasional minor nuisance. These languages differ from Natural Sign Languages in important ways.

Auxiliary Sign Languages : These are not full languages but rather auxiliary communication systems used for limited purposes by hearing people. Examples include Plans Indian Sign Language, Australian Aborigine sign languages (used for ritual purposes) and Monastic sign languages (used by those in religious orders who take vows of silence).

Deaf School Languages : When a country establishes education for deaf children, they are usually brought together in dormitory schools. In such a situation when deaf children are continually in each others' presence a Deaf School language will arise. There may be a variety of sources from Home Signs and/or Community Sign Languages used by some students with or without manual instruction systems used by teachers. Within a generation a new sign language will have arisen. This process was recently documented in Nicaragua.

Natural Sign Languages : Eventually children from Deaf schools return to the larger community. They while they may integrate somewhat into hearing society they usually choose to maintain as much contact as possible with each other. Thus the language that originated in school becomes the language of choice of Deaf adults outside of the school setting.

When they marry about 90% of them will choose a partner who also attended a deaf school and their children, deaf and hearing naturally learn their parents' language. By now the language that began in school is a Natural Sign Language. These are full-fledged languages which have their own grammatical structure and are independent from spoken languages and each other. Generally each industrialized country has one or two main Natural Sign Languages. In the US this is American Sign Language (ASL, also used in most of Canada) in Poland it is Polish Sign Language (Polski Język Migowy – PJM). Note that the main sign languages in the US, the UK and Ireland are not mutually intelligible. The main sign languages in Australia and New Zealand, however, are very closely related to British Sign Language. The main differences in difference sign languages are lexical. Grammatical differences exist but are relatively minor.

Artificial Sign Languages : These are artificial languages usually created by hearing people. They usually take vocabulary from Natural Sign Languages but try to reflect the structure of spoken languages. In the US there is more than one system, perhaps the best known is called Signing Exact English. It uses special signs (not used in ASL) created to reflect English 'function words' or endings of English. In Poland the artificial sign language uses fingerspelled endings. These systems are awkward to use and there is no recorded case of generational transmission. Children whose sign language exposure is limited to them spontaneously modify them in the direction of Natural Sign Languages.

Similarities between deaf people and linguistic-cultural minorities: The deaf community is a biologically based group held together by shared language and cultural norms.
Unlike the traditionally defined linguistic and cultural minorities the Deaf community is not defined by birth but by hearing loss. Hearing people are never regarded as full members even if they have native knowledge of a sign language and Deaf cultural norms
Cultural norms within deaf communities often differ from those of the larger hearing communities. Hearing people in Poland who come into extended contact with the Polish Deaf community typically suffer symptoms of culture shock.

Some typical values of the Polish Deaf community.

- In group equality : Many of the personal characteristics that give a person status among hearing Polish people count for little in the Deaf community. Age is largely irrelevant and older and younger Deaf adults typically treat each other as equals. Signs that correspond to Polish words like 'pan/pani' are never used among deaf people and are strong indicators that a person is regarded and treated as an outsider. The sign that is usually translated as 'proszę' is very sparingly used.

- Sharing information : The signs for 'private' and 'secret' in Polish Sign Language carry strongly negative connotations. On a day-to-day basis Deaf people suffer from a feeling of being denied necessary information by hearing people. When they are around other Deaf people they expect information (including personal information that hearing people prefer to keep confidential) to be shared freely. There is no concept of the entitled and non-entitled recipient of information. In the sign language environment anyone present who can understand is fully entitled to take part in a conversation. If confidentiality is strongly desired it is acceptable to remove oneself from the immediate environment and return afterwards.

- Personal toughness : Often the way that members of minorities treat each other seems unnecessarily rough or cruel to outsiders. This might be best described as a process of toughening. The idea is that a person needs to be strong in dealings with outsiders and so the co-members of the group make sure that the individual remains tough. Weakness or sensitivity are liabilities that have to be burned out of the individual. Anything that a group member is sensitive about is mercilessly attacked ('rough' teasing) until that person is desensitized.

Dissimilarities between deaf people and other linguistic cultural minorities:
Most members are not born into the group. In the US this is referred to as the 90 - 90 - 90 rule.

- 90 % of Deaf people have hearing parents.
- 90 % of Deaf people who marry, marry another Deaf person.
- 90 % of the children of Deaf adults are hearing.


In the US traditional Deaf boarding schools have been largely replaced by 'mainstreaming' programs (which are generally disastrously wrong for Deaf children). Therefore deaf children often have limited contact with Deaf adults and good models of ASL. In order to retain group integrity Deaf adults in the US go out of their way to find and offer models of behavior for deaf children. In Poland full or part boarding schools are still the norm.

On the other hand, not all who are born into the group are members of the group.
Often enough hearing children of Deaf parents grow up with a Sign Language as one of their first languages (often enough the spoken language of the country they live in is not acquired until school)




A hearing model of deafness:

Hearing
Normal    Reduced        Absent
"Hearing"    "Hard of hearing"        "Deaf"
< + positive --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- negative - >

explanation: There is a single variable (hearing) and it has a value attached. Hearing is good (+) and not hearing is bad (-). The further to the left an individual falls on this line the better.



A culturally Deaf model of deafness:

    Uses sign language    Does not use sign language

Hearing loss    Deaf community    "Oral" deaf, late-deafened
        adults, "languageless" deaf etc.


No hearing loss    Hearing children of Deaf parents    Hearing people in general
    Interpreters,
    Some family members or
    friends of deaf people etc.

explanation: There are two variables and no particular values attached. While Deaf people are happy when hearing people take an interest in the Deaf community there is no particular negative attitude toward those who don't.
If there is any negative value it would toward those with hearing loss who do not use a sign language.