Page 18 - CROSS CULTURE
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in Indonesian) has its roots in the Latin "cultura", a change from "colere"
which means the effort to nurture and advance the mind/mind/soul.
Associatively, it can be argued that the word "culture" or
"culture" has a basic understanding of the effort of reason / reason in
order to improve the quality and quantity (civilization) of human life.
This effort is manifested in three basic systems, including (1) the
complexity of ideas, concepts, and human thoughts, or commonly
called cultural systems, (2) the complexity of interactional and
transactional activities or commonly called social systems, and (3) the
complexity of objects as means / tools to meet needs or commonly
called instrumental systems.
Newmark (Newmark, 1981) describes culture as a way of life
of a certain society which is expressed by certain language. Clifford
Geertz stated that culture is a symbolic meaning system. It is semiotic
system in which symbols function to communicate meaning from
one mind to another. Cultural symbols encode a connection
between a signifying form and a signalled meaning. Culture might
also be defined as ideas, customs, skills, arts, and tools which
characterize a given group of people in a period.
Culture as described by Larson and Smalley is ―blue print‖. It
guides the behaviour of people in a community and is developed in
family life and helps us to know what we can do as individuals and
what our responsibilities as a member of a group.(Larson, 1998)
The following will put forward some definitions of culture in
more detail. These definitions range from the view that culture is an
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