In 2014, Merriam-Webster announced that the word ‘culture’ is their Word of the Year. People searched for the word’s meaning the most in their website. This reveals the truth that people have confusion in defining the word ‘culture’. In this essay, I would like to express my own opinions on the word’s meaning and why it is very hard to define the word with the support of the essays we have read in the class.

Oxford Dictionary writes that ‘the origin of the noun from French culture or directly from Latin cultura ‘growing, cultivation’; the verb from obsolete French ‘culturer’ or medieval Latin ‘culturare’, both based on Latin colere ‘tend, cultivate’. In late Middle English, the sense was ‘cultivation of the soil’ and from this arose ‘cultivation (of the mind, faculties, or manners’); culture dates from the early 19th century.’. When we look up the dictionaries of Oxford, Cambridge and Merriam-Webster, they share a common understanding of the word. Yet, in my opinion, Merriam-Webster takes this work further and gives a detailed analysis of the word. At least, it is obvious that the first definition of the word is ‘cultivation’.

With renaissance and reformation, people began to become enlightened. They improved their abilities in every aspect of life and had different tastes about their creations. Therefore, a new meaning of culture came into existence, which is ‘enlightenment and excellence of taste acquired by intellectual and aesthetic training; or, acquaintance with and taste in fine arts, humanities, and broad aspects of science as distinguished from vocational and technical skills’. To give an example, when we talk about how someone is cultured, we take this definition into consideration. If a person is cultured, she or he should have knowledge about the historical background and recent news about books, movies, theatres, exhibitions, politics or workshops, seminars.

As time passes, with 20th century, people started to see the world as containing different cultures and groups. Therefore, we accept the definition of ‘culture’ in this aspect as ‘the way of life, especially the general customs and beliefs, of a particular group of people at a particular time’. But, this definition is not solely enough. If we add certain characteristics to this definition and limit this broad meaning, it could be much more intelligible. When we get culture as a set of shared practices and values, Turkish culture can be given as an example. Or, we could also consider ‘rap culture’ , ‘ghetto culture’, ‘party culture’, ‘hippies’; these are examples of subculture. Subculture is the common ground for a group of people who are supporting different norms and values than the majority of society.

However we can also say that even though this definition of culture is now extended to a wider understanding , with this negative aspects were also gained. These can be exemplified with rape culture or lynch culture . In the rape culture we observe that men make themselves believe that this is actually what the women wants , – this violence. We can gather how much this understanding is accepted by the fact that it became a culture. So even though throughout my essay I focus on generally the positive turnbacks within the culture it’s significant to mention this negative aspects follows the culture as well.

On the other hand, there is working class culture which developed during the Industrial Revolution. Arthur Miller states that ‘..The professional folk singer sings from the outside looking in, in most cases, but working class culture also needs to express itself from the inside of the working class experience. A rich celebrity like Bruce Springsteen singing about work and the working class is a sick joke. We need more Joe Hills and fewer celebrities. All American popular music, folk, blues, country, jazz, rock, and hip-hop, have their roots within the working class.  What started as self-expression deep within the soul of our class got stolen and corrupted by capitalism and capitalists found ways to sell back to us our class creativity. That which capitalism does not destroy it assimilates. That which was once free creative self-expression of working people was assimilated into the system and became a profit producing industry controlled by the rich…’ From this quotation, it is clear that culture once was a spontaneous expression, but turned into something that is controlled by mass-production. We can understand that we cannot separate culture as white and black; but rather as a grey area with the improvement in mass-production of texts and artefacts. About this issue Williams states that with the mass-circulated texts, it becomes impossible to separate the notions that culture is  ‘a whole way of life’ and ‘the forms of signification’.

Before we mention Raymond Williams , we should also briefly mention three divisions , categorization of culture which he states. The first division is the ‘ideal’ and this refers to the enrichment of the individual. We see that this understanding was widely used for 19th century culture as it was associated with reading a lot , or knowing about basic arts. The second division is a particular way of life. This can be considered as the american culture , Italian culture etc. I will try to explain this further in my essay. The last but not least we see that culture is achieved in a means of ‘activity’. So here it is identified as the activity itself by Williams. This can be understood in the means of the going to museums or the cinema etc. So what we here again see is a kind of tension because there is no final definition. In my opinion that is the uniqueness of the culture. It can have many definitions at the same time but also do not carry any meaning.

Furthermore, Raymond Williams makes us remember  the Russian theorist Bakhtin’s notion that ‘the class struggle extends to the interpretation of individual words and that meaning is dialogic and polysemic’. In the essay ‘Culture is Ordinary’, the title reflects that polysemic structure. It suggests the idea that every society has its own unique meanings and characteristics in their own institutions. In my opinion, he is quite right because as we have discussed culture could mean anything for anyone. While defining the word ‘culture’, you set the limits. Williams prefers to use both the definitions of culture as the way of living and  intellectual achievement. I think it is obvious that we use all definitions of culture regarding to the context. 

Furthermore, to give another aspect, we can discuss the culture’s meaning of civilization. Prometheus gave human-beings the fire, and they became civilized in time. As they began to live together, they formed societies; and thus, civilizations. Cambridge dictionary defines the word ‘civilization’ as ‘human society with its well developed social organizations, or the culture and way of life of a society or country at a particular period in time’. Williams supports the idea that culture was opposed to civilization. Although civilization was a progress, culture was spontaneous expression. However, we have discussed the binary opposition nature and culture or civilization in our literature classes.So, there is an ambiguity of the word in our minds. Nowadays, we take culture for civilization. Something must have changed in time with this new definition. We are confused if it is positive or negative. There is a huge gap in our minds about how the word ‘culture’ came to mean so many things which we cannot define obviously. In my point of view, because of too much modernity, civilization or culture may have a negative connotation, of course ironically. 

On the other hand, to give a very different aspect, we can consider the selfie culture or celebrity culture. It is like a virus we got in our veins, which is hard to realize and get it cured. People use applications as facebook or instagram too show off. They take pictures of themselves, or of what they eat or read in their leisure time. Some of them even take a picture of the book that they are not reading, but post picture to seem ‘cultured’. Or, going to a party may be popular; and, when people go to that party and take a photo they feel relieved with upcoming likes and comments. It is a pathetic way to scream that ‘I exist!’. If this make someone cultured can be discussed, but we cannot deny that there are common values and behaviors in the society, therefore this is defined as ‘culture’, too.  So, ‘culture’ continues to gain new meanings in time. 

Culture is a hard word to define with only one meaning because of its dynamic structure. In my opinion, culture is shared patterns of behaviours, habits and beliefs which are passed by generations. Culture could be anything. It could be about how we talk, cook, eat, sit at the table, walk; what we listen to and how we are influenced by the songs; the rituals of birth, marriage, divorce, death. We, generally, do not question these until the realization of individuality. I consider that this realization comes with intellectuality, which connects us to the other definition of ‘culture’. I believe that all these meanings of the word are related, and could only be separated with their use in the context.  

WORKS CITED

Williams, Raymond  CULTURE IS ORDINARY (1958)

Miller, Arthur  WORKING CLASS CULTURE

Joshua Rothman, The New Yorker, The Meaning of “Culture”

culturematters.org Culture is ordinary: the politics and letters of Raymond Williams