Symbols such as flags, wedding rings, gestures, words, dress, objects, statues, and reli-
gious icons all have message value. The portability of symbols allows people to package,
store, and transmit them. The mind, books, pictures, films, computer memory chips, and
videos enable a culture to preserve what it deems important and worthy of transmission.
This makes each individual, regardless of his or her generation, heir to a massive reposi-
tory of information that has been gathered and maintained in anticipation of his or her
entry into the culture. Ferraro and Andreatta speak to this“entry into the culture”when
they write,“Without symbols we would not be able to store the collective wisdom of past
generations, and consequently we would be prone to repeat the mistakes of the past. Sym-
bols tie together people who otherwise might not be part of a unified group.”^27
As we have noted, cultural symbols can take a host of forms, but it is words, both
written and spoken, that are most often used to symbolize objects and thoughts. It is
language that enables you to share the speculations, observations, facts, experiments,
and wisdom accumulated over thousands of years—what the linguist Weinberg called
“the grand insights of geniuses which, transmitted through symbols, enable us to span
the learning of centuries.”^28 Bates and Plog offer an excellent summary of the impor-
tance of language to culture:
Language thus enables people to communicate what they would do if such-and-such
happened, to organize their experiences into abstract categories (“a happy occasion,”for
instance, or an“evil omen”), and to express thoughts never spoken before. Morality,
religion, philosophy, literature, science, economics, technology, and numerous other areas
of human knowledge and belief—along with the ability to learn about and manipulate
them—all depend on this type of higher-level communication.^29Culture is shared,
transmitted from
generation to
generation, and needs
to be internalized by
all the members of
each culture.
© Bill Aron/PhotoEdit42 CHAPTER 2•Communication and Culture: The Voice and the Echo
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