Big C and little c.
Reflect on and describe your Big C and your little c. Describe in details what they are and how they have made your who you are today. Think about the implicit and non-verbal messages that your family conveyed to you as a child.
When discussing cutlure we often use the terms Big C and Little C. This refers to the cutlural world and how we label ourselves within it.
Big C
“Objective culture”
Architectural design, national-level politics, current legal trends, classic art works, formal societal value
Little c
“Personal” side
Communication norms, popular opinion, casual clothing, typical foods and mealtime norms, dialects, non-verbally conveyed assumptions
Cultural knowledge is often described in terms of “little c” culture, comprised of cultural beliefs, behaviors, and values, and “big C” culture, such as literature, art, and institutions. Students most often identify cultural learning with “big C” culture, which is a small part of the whole picture (Herron 2000). “Little c” culture is more subtle and more difficult to teach, but can reveal important cultural differences. For example, the Cultural project at MIT (Furstenberg 2001) found that “The word iindividualism, is a prime example where highly positive connotations of words such as ‘freedom,’ ‘creativity,’ and ‘personal expression’ and how they appear in the American lifestyle. The ability to notice, describe, and analyze these different perspectives, to ‘… reflect critically and engage with otherness’ (Scarino 2000) is termed ‘intercultural competence’.
Little c includes the routine aspects of life, such as how people greet one another, what they wear, what they eat, and their daily habits..” Little c culture encompasses everything as a total way of life, so big C culture is necessarily part of little c culture.”
Big C culture is very often the refinement of little c activities. For instance, little c food becomes big C cuisine; little c meals become big C formal banquets and all of the etiquette and ritual that goes with them. Little c clothing becomes big C fashion. They are linking together however, one cannot exist without the other.
