Читать книгу An Introduction to Intercultural Communication - Fred E. Jandt - Страница 31

We’ve seen that some believe the term subculture implies “less important.” Others point out that co-culture doesn’t seem to be a realistic term as history suggests that one culture will be dominant over the other. The term subgroup seems also to imply “not important.” Others now advocate using the term microculture, which in biology refers to a small culture of microorganisms. Applied to human behavior, Microculture refers to any identifiable smaller group bound together by a shared symbol system, behaviors, and values. Microculture, then, clearly communicates a smaller size, but national cultures can be large while others are so small that they may be smaller than some microcultures.

Popular media today more commonly use the term community for what was defined earlier as a subculture, subgroup, or counterculture. While the term community may not be commonly used in academic literature, it has an important advantage. The effects on identity of labels matter. The terms subculture, subgroup, and counterculture all carry negative connotations. Therefore, this text recommends and only uses the terms culture and community.

Let’s now begin to address the statement from the beginning of this chapter that “culture and communication can only be understood together.”