typical cultural features in english and vietnamese fables about philosophy of life a contrastive analysis = phân tích đối chiếu các đặc điểm văn hóa điển hình trong các truyện ngụ ngôn tiếng anh và tiếng việt nói

4 Chapter 2: Literature View In this chapter basic concepts relevant to the study will be reviewed with the aim of finding out what has been about the topic as well as forming a theoretical framework for the study. 2.1. Culture As stated earlier, culture is not tangible, only perceptive to human senses. There have been a large number of publications regarding culture from different points of view. Some authors do their best to give its definitions; others both give the definitions and discuss certain aspects of culture. As a consequence, the publications about culture are plentiful not only in number but also in its aspects as well. As is known, scholars all over the world have defined and regarded culture differently. In fact, it is believed that there is no commonly - shared definition. According to Gooddenough (1964:36), a proper definition of culture must ultimately derive from the operations by which we describe particular cultures. Because these operations are still in early stages of formulation and development, it is not yet possible to state precisely just what we mean when we speak of a society’s culture. He adds: “As I see it, a society’s culture consists of whatever it is one has to know or believe in order to operate in a manner acceptable to its members, and do so in any role that they accept for anyone of themselves. Culture, being what people have to learn as distinct from their biological heritage, must consist of the end product of learning, knowledge, in a most general, if relative, sense of the term”. (p.36) By this definition, we should note that culture is not a material phenomenon; it does not consist of things, people, behavior, or emotion. It is rather an organization of these things. As such, the things people say and do, their social arrangements and events, are products or by – products of their culture as they apply it to the task of perceiving and dealing with their circumstances. To those who know their culture, these things and events are also signs signifying the cultural forms or models of which they are material representations. 5 Given such a definition, it is obviously impossible to describe a culture properly simply by describing behavior or social, economic, and ceremonial events and arrangements as observed material phenomena. Goodenough (1964) gives further analysis: What is required is to construct a theory of the conceptual models which they represent and of which they are artifacts. We test the adequacy of such a theory by our ability to interpret and predict what goes on in a community as measured by how its members, our informants, do so. (p.36) Meanwhile, Hoijer (1964:445) employs a well – known definition by Tylor (1903) that culture is “… complex whole which includes knowledge, beliefs, arts, morals, law, custom and any other capability and habits acquired by man as a member of society”. Concerning another aspect of culture, Hoijer (1964:445) claims that some traits of culture are easily borrowed by one group from neighbouring groups. In essence, then, the similarities in culture which mark societies in the same cultural area result from contacts and borrowings and are limited to those features of culture which are easily transmitted form one group to another. Robert Lado (1957) views culture form another approach. He only focuses his attention to human behaviour. From his point of view, “cultures are structured systems of patterned behaviour” (p.111). In addition, he connects culture with anthropology. According to him, “cultural anthropologists have gradually moved from an atomistic definition of culture, describing it as more or less haphazard collection of traits, to one which emphasizes pattern and configuration” (p.111). He also compares this definition with the assumption by Edward Sapir (1921) that “all cultural behavior is patterned” (Robert Lado, 1957:111). This point of view is shared by Holliday, Hyde and Kullman (2004), they assume much of the debate on “culture” in the last fifty years or so have been concerned with challenging models of culture which have emanated from the field of anthropology. Meanwhile, when discussing the concept of culture, Risager (2006:32) briefly presents three dimensions of the concept of culture described by the Polish-British sociologist Zygmunt Baumann (1999). They are: The hierarchical concept of culture The differential concept of culture The generic concept of culture 6 In the hierarchical concept, Baumann (1999) regards a culture as something that the individual human being or individual society either “has” or “does not have” or “has” at a higher or lower level. This concept cannot exist in the plural and it is always value-laden. The criteria for what “culture” is – and thus the “ideal human” – are something for which a struggle takes place in a society. To attain culture is actually to attain an ideal nature: “There is an ideal nature of human beings, and the culture means the conscious, strenuous and prolonged effort to attain this ideal, to bring the actual life – process into line with the highest potential of the human vocation.” (Baumann, 1999:7). The differential concept of culture, according to Baumann (1999), has to do with culture as something that “marks off” group of people from each other. This concept can be used in plural. Following this concept, a culture is typically a cohesive unit that various anthropologists have described with the aid of such terms as ethos, genius, pattern, configuration, style and the like. Baumann (1999) adds that “a culture has the nature of a system that is self – contained and resists mixing; it mainly alters as the result of encounters with other cultures (“cultural clashes”)”. Baumann (1999) also assumes that cultures viewed in such a way can be compared, and the comparison can result in cultural universals being collected and categorised. Culture can be both “from the outside” and “from the inside”; the former involves observing behaviour on the basis of a general or universal apparatus, while the latter involves listening to and trying to understand what categories are relevant for the indigenous people themselves – consciously or unconsciously (Baumann, 1999, quoted in Risager, 2006:33). The generic concept of culture, on the other hand, has to do with what is common to humanity, that which distinguishes humanity from nature and all other living creatures. One could say that the more one emphasises the diversity of cultures and their mutual incompatibility, the more one needs, despite everything, to have a concept that applies to all humanity. The generic concept of culture can give rise to the view that there is only one culture, i.e. human culture everywhere and at all times. (Baumann, 1999, quoted in Risager, 2006:33). 7 Like William (1988) and Fink (1988), Risager (1999) distinguishes between three concepts of culture that have come into being at different times but all of which can be refound in present – day understandings of the concept: The individual concept of culture The collective concept of culture The aesthetic concept of culture With regard to the individual concept of culture, Risager (2006) assumes that this concept has been known since at least the time of Cicero, who uses the metaphor expression cultura animi , i.e. cultivation of the soul/mind, and this has to do with the individual’s mental cultivation, either via God’s cultivation of the soul. For the first 16 centuries cultura animi (or from the 16th century, cultura without a logical object) designates a process of mental cultivation, a pedagogical process. Not until the 17th century can the concept also signify the result of this process, i.e. the mental (intellectual, spiritual, aesthetic) level the person involved has attained. One begins to speak of “the cultivated person”. The individual concept of culture is generally speaking chracterised by a hierarchical understanding of culture (the hierarchical concept of culture). (p.36) As for the collective concept of culture, Risager (2006) claims that from the end of the 17th century, a collective concept of culture developed alongside the individual one. The collective concept of culture has to be divided into a hierarchical and a non-hierarchical variant. The hierarchical variant is the earlier, and it deals with either the societal conditions for the individual process of cultivation, or with what “cultivated people” have in common. (p.36) With reference to the aesthetic concept of culture, Risarger (2006) assumes that in the course of the 19th century, a number of special spheres crystalise in connection with modern development, including “art” with its subsections including literature, visual arts and music. These become a reference for the aesthetic concept of culture which develops during the same period, alongside other concepts of culture, and which adopts a narrowing, individual and hierarchising direction that focuses in particular on artistic products as supreme achievements of symbolic – aesthetic creativeness. 8 Like many authors who are interested in culture, Claude Lévi – Strauss (1958), an European sociologist and anthropologist proposes that all cultures reflect fundamental and universal principles of human mind. Cultures were shared creations of human minds. Meanwhile, Keesing (1974:78-79) when discussing Lévi – Strauss’s points of view supposes that the mind imposes culturally patterned order, a logic of binary contrast, of relations, and transformation, on a continuous changing and often random world. The gulf between the cultural realm, where man imposes his arbitrary order, and the realm of nature becomes a major axis of symbolic polarity: “nature vs. culture” is a fundamental conceptual opposition in many all – times and places. To conclude, there is no limit in the discussion of culture. This is a multi-facet subject matter. Yet, through the overview of the publications involved, we can focus our attention on some issues like the definition, concept of culture seen from different angles or the relationship between culture and anthropology. 2. 2. Fables as a type of literature 2.2.1. Fable There are many definitions for fables. David Emery (2010) views a fable as a short allergical narrative making a moral point, traditionally by means of animal characters who speak and act like human beings (About.com Guide). The website Questia.com shares this point of view. According to this online journal, a fable is a short, pithy, and animal tale, most often told or written with a moral tagged in the form of a proverb. Thus, to convey a moral is the aims of most fables, and the tale is the means by which this is done, providing illustration and compelling argument for the moral. The author adds that “fable does not originate as a folktale, though it may make use of folk material, and can also be composed into a culture and exchanged as traditional oral folklore” (http://www.Questia.com). Similarly, according to the free encyclopedia on Wikipedia, a fable is a “succinct story, in pose or verse, that features animals, mythical creatures, plants, inanimate objects, or forces of 9 nature which are “anthromorphized” (given human quality), and that illustrates a moral lesson ( a “moral”), which may at the end be expressed explicitly in a pithy maxim”. According to another definition on the free encyclopedia, fables can be described as a didactic mode of literature. That is, whether a fable has been handed down from generation to generation as oral literature, or constructed by a literary tale-teller, its purpose is to impart a lesson or value, or to give sage advice. Fables also provide opportunities to laugh at human folly, when they supply examples of behaviors to be avoided rather than emulated. With reference to fable characters, this author claims that the characters of a fable may be people, gods, animals or even lifeless objects. When animals and objects are used in fables, they think and talk like people, even though they act like animals or objects. For example, in a fable a clay pot might say that it is frightened of being broken. The stories told by fables are usually very simple. To understand a fable, the reader or listener does not need to know all about the characters. For this reason animals are often used in fables in a way that is easily understood because it is always the same. They keep the same characteristics from story to story.  A lion is noble  A rooster is boastful  A peacock is proud  A fox is cunning  A wolf is fierce  A horse is brave  A donkey is hard-working Fables frequently have as their central characters animals that are given anthropomorphic characteristics such as the ability to reason and speak. In antiquity, Aesop presented a wide range of animals as protagonists, including "the Tortoise and the Hare" who famously engage in a race against each other; and, in another classic fable, a fox which rejects grapes that are out of reach, as probably being sour ("sour grapes"). (Wikipedia) In summary, fables belong to fiction in literature. A fable is a simple story with the characters as persons, animals or even inanimate objects. At the end of each story, a lesson or