course material

1. ENC1101 English Composition I
Answers:
Culture often affects how individuals perceive others’ behaviours, actions and use of words.
The paper will discuss the topic. Cultural orientation helps in perceiving the behaviours
shown by others. Depending on the similarity and dissimilarity of the behaviour, the groups
are considered either an ingroup or an outgroup (Abbink and Harris 2019).
Culture can shape our view of the world around us. Cultural orientation often guides the
perception of information from the surroundings. It affects the brain's processing in its
process of interpreting the visual information gathered about the actions of others. The
culture shapes the way one works, plays and acts. This cultural aspect colours the value
system in individuals and thus sets the parameters which measure the right and wrongs in
the individuals. This is how the perception of others actions are also done (De Mooij 2021).
For example, in one culture, touching the feet of the adults to seek their blessings are
considered important whereas in some other cultures, one needs to bow before the Adults
to show their respect. This is the cultural difference that makes us think and perceive the
behaviours of others. Categorisation of the people is done based on the customs and
institutions that one has learned through their cultural identity. The racial, religious and
ethnic identity provides the members with their teachings which are then used to
categorise the people of the other ethnic and racial communities. The cultural influence is so
strong that people often tend to forget that other people who belong to other communities
might have other beliefs and their unique identities. At times this inability to accept or
perceive the difference gives rise to strong negative feelings like hatred and biasness
(Bower 2020).
The social categorisation can lead to various negative consequences like the target
populat)ion can be stereotyped against. The social categorisation can lead to further
segregation of the society into ingroups towards which the group members show positive
emotions and are emotionally involved with the group, and the outgroup, with which the
ingroup members show dislike or are perceived to be potentially dangerous (Frain 2016).
Language or words were spoken often colours the perception of people around. Even if a
slight difference exists in language, the said statement can give rise to stereotypical

2. thoughts about the other community. Language is often considered to be a social,
psychological and cultural phenomenon. Language is the most important aspect of the
culture as it is through which people communicate with others and it colours the sense of
the different cultures. Words spoken to communicate are coloured by the core cultural
component of the society. Often cultural and linguistic diversity is not perceived on a
positive note and thus resulting in racial discrimination (Piller 2016).
It can be concluded from the above discussion that one’s culture influences the way the
words and actions of the other person will be perceived. One’s cultural identity colours the
perception of the other person’s culture to the extent to which they can be discriminated
against or stereotyped against.
References
Abbink, K. and Harris, D., 2019. In-group favouritism and out-group discrimination in
naturally occurring groups. PloS one, 14(9), p.e0221616.
Bower, G.H., 2020. Mood congruity of social judgments. Emotion and social judgments,
pp.31-53.
De Mooij, M., 2021. Global marketing and advertising: Understanding cultural paradoxes.
Sage.
Frain, A., 2016. Transference and social categorisation (Doctoral dissertation, The
Australian National University (Australia)).
Piller, I., 2016. Linguistic diversity and social justice: An introduction to applied
sociolinguistics. Oxford University Press.