Wierzbicka and Cultural Scripts

Cultural scripts are an important part of our everyday social interactions. Without understanding the workings of a cultural script, or the unique aspects each culture uses to engage in their interactions, we leave ourselves open to insult, injury and just plain ignorance.

Culture clash

That's the term used when two cultures attempt to communicate with each other, but fail to follow the different cultural scripts each culture uses. For instance, in the reading this week, Wierzbicka (2002) talked about how bloody is a perfectly acceptable word within the Australian vernacular, yet British people tend to find it a completely offensive and Americans are kinda cool with it but kinda not cool with it. And there it is, three different nationalities, three different cultures, three different cultural scripts. You can just imagine this being the first line of one of those race jokes that talks about 'an Aussie, a Pom and a Yank sitting in a pub having some beers when one of them says...'

And I'm sure we're all very familiar with those types of jokes that hyperbolise the cultural scripts which are unique to each culture or nationality. But in all seriousness it is very important that we not only understand our own cultural script, but also cultural scripts employed by other cultures. In order to complete a successful (and positive!) interaction with others we need to be able to understand what they are trying to convey during the interaction, and we need to be able to convey our ideas in return.