Communicating Cultures

Local Cultures in a Global World

MÁIRÉAD NIC CRAITH

The communication of local cultures incontemporary society raises many issues. Theserelate to the concept of culture itself, thequestion of ‘authenticity’ or legitimacy and thecultural infrastructure. Essays in this volumehave addressed precisely these cultural questionsin several different locations and contexts andhave had a particular focus on traditional andmodern modes of communication.

Cultural transmission does not occur in aneutral environment and minority cultures inparticular have frequently engaged with processesof repression or assimilation. Contemporarysociety has become more tolerant of culturaldiversity and most nation-states theoreticallyendorse different cultural worldviews. However,this does not prevent the denigration of certaincultural perspectives. Several contributions inthis volume examine the representation ofcultures as different or ‘other’.

This exclusion/inclusion process is frequentlybound up with issues of ownership in specificterritories. In an increasingly globalised world,concepts of space rather than place have come toinfluence the process of cultural transmission.International cultures have become de-territorialised and are no longer associated withspecific localities. Local cultures which weretraditionally rooted in particular places, nowhave the potential to travel. In theory,

2 Communicating Cultures

modernisation and multimedia have enhanced thecommunication of cultures across space and timebut the impact of globalisation on the quality ofcultural transmission is yet to be assessed.

This final essay will review some of the issuesraised in earlier contributions to the book. Itwill focus on culture as praxis and the processof cultural transmission in a world that hasbecome increasing global. In particular, it willreview the challenges and opportunities of moderntechnology for the communication of localcultures and suggest that multimedia may enhancerather than inhibit the communication of localcultures.

CULTURE AS PROCESS

The concept of culture is complex and isapproached differently in disciplines such ascultural studies, geography or sociology. AsEuropean Ethnologists, contributors to this bookhave primarily approached culture in ananthropological fashion – i.e. ‘as a way oflife’. Suzanne Österlund-Pötzsch, for example,considered the everyday life of Swedish-speakingFinn descendants in North America while VytisCiubrinskas explored Lithuanian migrants in asimilar context.

In some instances, authors explored specificelements or ‘nodal points’ of culture. Cliona O’Carroll and Fintan Vallely examined the conceptof traditional music while Iwan Wmffre andKonstanze Glaser considered the importance oftraditional languages. In these essays the

Local Cultures in a Global World 3

contributors appraised specific elements ofculture as indicators of the more generallifestyle or cultural worldview and set thecommunication of these cultural elements in thecontext of a way of life.

Culture cannot simply be reduced to any singleelement. Instead it is a mosaic of meanings or acomposite ‘web of significance’ (Geertz 1973).Although a traditional culture may give theimpression of stability and appear to be simplyinherited as an undifferentiated set of customsfrom one’s ancestors, it is largely a fluidconcept, and the mode of transmission is not aneutral process. A living culture is constantlyre-worked, re-negotiated and re-defined. It is‘an evolving thing, and different generationshave different ideas as to what makes up theirculture…. Culture evolves and changes.Everybody’s culture is different for them’ (Hall1999: 4).

Culture is a concept that encapsulates thenotion of difference. If I (or others) regardmyself as part of a distinct cultural group, thenI assume that there are boundaries to thisimagined community. Several chapters in thisvolume examine issues relating to culturalinterpretation and the erection of boundariesimplicit in the process. Elka Tschernokoshewa’scontribution explores the simplistic andsometimes stereotypical representation of theSorb – the cultural other – in the German media.Yusuf Devran’s essay examines the representationof Turkish cultural values on a televisionserial. In these programmes, Turkish traditional


values are set in contrast (or even incompetition) with Western culture.

All contributions reinforce the notion ofculture as process – as a practice of structuringand re-structuring rather than the structuresthemselves (Bauman 1999). The negotiation andtransmission of culture requires someresourcefulness, and this creativity is, in fact,the oldest definition of culture, the making ofsocial forms or community (Chaney 1994: 193).One’s cultural actions and relationshipsinfluence the manner in which one shapes andregulates one’s life. Culture structures theidentity of a person in a particular manner butthe nature of culture is unpredictable, changingalthough not necessarily ephemeral.

Although culture is essentially a process, muchconfusion around the concept stems from the waythat the anthropological sense, and the everydaysense (or senses), of the word are quitedifferent. In contemporary anthropology, cultureis thought of as referring to an activity. But topeople in the street, ‘my culture’ tends to beobjectified. What they mean, (translated into‘anthropologese’) is ‘my identity’ or ‘myethnicity’. In this sense people can essentialiseculture. Sometimes this can also lead to theobjectification of the process of culturalcommunication in the quest for the preservationof the authentic.

AUTHENTICITY AND LEGITIMACY


Authenticity and ‘invention’ have become thefocus of much attention in recent times andHobsbawm and Ranger’s Invention of Traditions (1983)generated considerable debate regarding thevalidity of particular cultural customs andemblems. It is commonly assumed that certaintraditions and languages have existed since timeimmemorial. This applies particularly to nationalsymbols that have been internalised andnormalised for some centuries. Bourdieu (1977)coined the term ‘habitus’ to outline the usualprocess of remembering and forgetting in civicsocieties. It is also a useful expression todescribe the manner whereby a person or communityinternalises and accepts symbols, rituals andlanguage.

Many contributors to Communicating Cultures raisethe issue of authenticity. For example, O’Carroll explores the concept of traditional musicand examines the control exerted by pub owners onperformers of Irish music in Berlin in thepursuit of a legitimate or valid music session.Vallely assesses the question of authenticity inmusical traditions and highlights the generationof a new musical genre in Northern Ireland toendorse and legitimise a particular cultural andpolitical British perspective.

Usually the degree of legitimacy acquired by acultural concept depends on the extent to which agroup or community has internalised it and thisis a gradual process and is influenced by severalfactors. For proponents of traditional Ulster-Scots music, self-affirmed legitimacy is vital


step in conferring authenticity on that musicalform or tradition.

The notion of self-affirmation also featuresstrongly in Ullrich Kockel’s examination of theemergence of a new ‘Celtic’ consciousness in latetwentieth century Germany. This had a strongemphasis on living in harmony with nature,promoting a spiritual unity of Celts across theEuropean Continent. In Kockel’s case-study, theauthenticity of the historical character of theCelt was irrelevant, but this was not to implythat the contemporary quest for Celticity wasitself inauthentic. For proponents of the Celticquest, the spirit of the Celt was authenticalthough self-affirmed and was valid as anexpression of increasing discontent with Americanimperialism and with many of the questions raisedby a post-industrial society.

It seems that the perception of authenticity isvital to the process of legitimization of anycultural icon or act. For this reason, someparticipants in Jenny Butler’s case-study of Neo-pagan ritual practice in Ireland spoke Irishrather than English during their pagan rituals.The return to the ancestral language somehowserved to ‘guarantee’ the traditionality of theprocess and gave it authenticity. Language alsofeatured in Vytis Ciubrinskas’s contribution onLithuanian culture in American society. Purity ofethnic language and cultural inheritance areconsidered vital to the preservation of anethnically pure or legitimate Lithuanianheritage.


Legitimacy itself is an important, but elusiveconcept and can operate on two axes – thehorizontal and/or vertical. At the horizontallevel, legitimacy is self-affirmed and can bevalidated at a local, non-governmental level.This was the case in Butler’s, Kockel’s and O’Carroll’s case studies. Legitimacy can also beconferred vertically by an official or outsideobserver, such as a government organization.Vallely’s contribution queried precisely thisprocess. In funding Ulster-Scots music, Vallelybelieves that the British Government isconferring authenticity at a vertical level on anundetermined tradition.

In contrast with Ulster-Scots, the legitimacyof Irish or any of the Celtic languages isunquestioned at Government level, but this is notto imply that their authenticity is unchallenged.Wmffre queries the quality of Celtic languages inthe mouths of learners rather than native-speakers and considers the implications of anever-increasing number of learners for theauthenticity of these languages. Although theauthenticity of Celtic languages is generallyunquestioned, Wmffre argues that it isjeopardized by a serious depletion in numbers ofnative speakers. He suggests that a language thatis largely spoken by learners rather than native-speakers will ultimately lose its legitimacy andauthenticity.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF LANGUAGE


Culture frequently presupposes language andseveral chapters in this book focus on thesignificance of language and the linguisticcontext for the transmission of traditionalcultures. Österlund-Pötzsch, for example, notesthat language was often the decisive factor foridentification among the Swedish-speaking Finndiaspora in North America as large numbers ofthem joined Swedish rather than Finnish societiesand activities. Although they had emigrated fromFinland, some of these emigrants adopted aSwedish ethnicity.

Glaser’s contribution queries the influence ofScots-Gaelic as the medium of Gaelic culture andlife-style patterns in Scotland. She debates twointriguing perspectives. The first argues thatGaelic culture and language are mutuallydependent. A decline in the use of Scots-Gaelicinevitably heralds the death of Gaelic culture.An alternative viewpoint separates these twoelements and argues that the language hassurvived – albeit in a seriously impoverishedmanner – despite the decay of Gaelic culture.

From the first perspective a culture dies ifthe language in which it has been traditionallytransmitted is no longer spoken. Languagecontains the worldview. Many linguisticcommunities, such as the Catalonians think interms of their ‘own’ language (Conversi 1990:59). In Northern Ireland, the expression ‘our ownlanguage’ is often used in relation to Irish(Maguire 1991). To belong is to be with a peoplewho understand your codes and ‘speak yourlanguage’ (Ignatieff 1994: 7).


The second perspective suggests that languagesand cultures are not mutually dependent andseparates these two elements. Glaser’s conclusionagrees in part with this second perspective bysuggesting that new forms of Gaelic-relatedcultures and identities will emerge despite theloss of the traditional language – but this willinevitably happen in the context of a spokenEnglish that is heavily influenced by Scots-Gaelic.

Although both perspectives may seemcontradictory, they highlight the significance oflanguage for culture. Language can be perceivedas the bearer of a culture and makes mutualcomprehension feasible. This idea was firstpromoted during the Romantic Movement whenlanguage was first invoked as the basis for theconstruction of a sense of nationhoodparticularly among German and Italian liberalmiddle classes. A separate medium ofcommunication identified a distinct nation thatwas entitled to self-government. Fichte andothers emphasized the purity of originallanguages as legitimizing a sense of nationality(Crowley 1996: 115).

National consciousness in nineteenth-centuryGermany was derived from the ideology of Herderand the Grimm brothers who emphasized theimportance of the German volk and their culture.The German language and its peasant literaturewas of primary significance. Ultimately, Germannationality is in one’s blood and in theory onerecognizes members of one’s own familialcommunity through the use of a common language,


but there are some complications with this lineof reasoning.

During Herder’s lifetime, the territory thatwas to become Germany hardly comprised a singlerecognizable language. Instead there were severalmutually unintelligible ways of talking, none ofwhich had established its own legitimacy as the‘correct’ or ‘standard’ form of an overall Germanlanguage (Billig 1995: 32-3). ‘Dialectaldiversity did not prove a stumbling block andboth the politicians and intellectuals who werethe architects of unification and the populationswho acquiesced in it accepted the ambiguity ofgrouping diverse dialects into a singlelanguage’. In reality, print rather than spokenlanguages united people and ‘permitted thecontinued existence of very dissimilar spokenvarieties of the language in the differentregions of the state’ (Wright 2000: 41).

The German language is still considered ofgreat importance in contemporary Germany.Migrants from Russia who come to Germany speakingan unintelligible dialect of ‘German’ areconsidered part of the German community if theirancestors were German. Moreover, Germany extendsmembership of its Kulturnation to German speakersoutside of its boundaries. In 1995, for example,the German government offered the right to aGerman passport to 70,000 Germans living in thePolish region of Silesia. Although Germany itselfdoes not allow those residing within itsboundaries to have two passports, SilesianGermans are permitted to retain both their Germanand Polish passports (Wright 2000: 46).


But it is interesting to note that language isalso of limited importance in defining membershipof an imagined community. Second and thirdgeneration Turks speaking perfectly fluent Germanand living in Germany are considered Ausländer(Outsiders). Their fluency in German does notguarantee membership of the German community(Watson 2000: 31). Not only is languageinsufficient as a marker of identity for Germanethnic nationalism, it actually serves toemphasize difference. Despite fluency in thelanguage, one may never be accepted as a memberof the German nation. However this perception mayultimately be challenged by recent laws whichoffer automatic citizenship rights to immigrantchildren born on German soil.

Many nation-states have promoted the notion ofa common language as the route to cultivating asense of cultural and political belonging. Thisis hardly a surprise in the case of an ethnicnation such as the Basque country (Kockel 1999),where some 600,000 people speak Euskarra or theBasque language, which is the only non Indo-European indigenous tongue in Europe. The Euzkadi taAskatasuna (Basque Homeland and Freedom) group haveincluded the Basque language as part of theirnationalist demands for independence from Spain.Its founder Jose Luis Alvarez Enparanza hasargued that Basque was the primary or perhapseven the only valid definition of the nation.While the Basque people were defined as unique bytheir ethnicity, this was a product of theirlanguage. If Euskera were endangered, the Basquenation would disappear (Clark 1984).


But I would argue that the link betweenlanguage, culture and identity is equallyimportant in the case of civic nations, which areculturally neutral in theory. In the case ofFrance, the Revolution provided an impetus forlinguistic unification. Education was one of thestate’s primary mechanisms of homogenization.Participation in the revolutionary army was alsoa vital force as military commands were deliveredin one language. Soldiers returning home hadacquired fluency in French. After the Revolution,the nation-state pursued an officialassimilationist policy (Ager 1999, Judge andJudge 2000). French was authorized as the solelanguage of public life, including education.Today the French language is given pre-eminenceover all others in state law and the country isofficially monolingual. Although the future ofFrench is secure and French is now a globalrather than a local language, its purity isfiercely protected in the home territory.


CULTURE IN ITS PLACE

Cultures are usually perceived as rooted in aparticular place and there is still theimpression that one’s culture can only be fullyenjoyed at home. ‘Celtic’ cultures, for example,are largely associated with ‘Celtic’ countriessuch as Ireland, Scotland or Wales and dinnshenchus(placelore) plays an important role in theancient Gaelic tradition. Smith suggests that inWales and Ireland, Celtic communities pay specialattention to what he terms ‘their sacred land’(1992: 447).

Butler’s contribution highlights precisely thispoint with the identification of place as asacred space. Many of the Neo-pagan rituals inher case-study are held in places that areregarded as special such as stone circles or agrove of trees on the natural landscape. Sacredspaces are regarded as safe places which areprotected from negative influences. They aresymbolically marked off in Neo-Pagan rituals withthe casting of a circle.

Land guarantees continuity and the pattern ofethnic survival legitimates members of acommunity as the original occupants in theterritory. Specific groups are located inparticular territories and a historical narrativelends legitimacy and authenticity to the ‘native’culture. Perhaps the claim to land is bestexemplified in the Welsh language. According tothe English speaker, the people living in Walesare ‘Welsh’, which is derived from the Anglo-Saxon word wealth, meaning ‘foreigner’. In the


Welsh language, however, they are the ‘Cymry’,the ‘kinsfolk’, who live not in the ‘land ofstrangers’ (Wales), but the ‘land of fellowcountrymen/women’ (Cymru) (Bowie 1993: 186).

The significance of place emerges quitestrongly in McLeod’s contribution whichhighlights the importance of place as well aslanguage for a sense of self and identity. Sherefers to the question ‘Cò as a tha thu?’ [where areyou from?] which is usually designed to set anindividual in context. McLeod locates theimportance which Scottish Islanders attach toplace in the sense of insecurity in previousgenerations, when there was little or noownership of land.

Following the Jacobite risings, the estates ofrebel clan chiefs, the homelands of the people,were forfeited to the crown and the majority soldby auction to pay creditors Rents weredramatically raised and tenants were pressurisedto surrender their holdings to make way forlarge-scale sheep farming. Memories ofdispossession and the ‘Clearances’ are stillprevalent in these islands.

However the significance of place for cultureis changing. People are increasingly migratingfrom one country to another. Territories can nolonger contain cultures and meanings find ways oftravelling (Hannerz 1996: 8). As the process ofglobalisation gathers momentum, peoples and powerbases are less connected to particularterritories and traditional sociological modelsmay no longer apply.


The implications of contemporary migration fortraditional cultural patterns are explored inÖsterlund-Pötzsch’s contribution on thecommunication of ethnic heritage among Swedish-speaking Finn descendants in North America. Inher case-study Swedish-speaking Finn descendantsappear to benefit from the de-territorialisationof their ancestral culture. By choosing certainSwedish ethnic elements over mainstream‘American’ elements, their life experiences areconsiderably enhanced. The fact that thesedescendants can draw creatively on their ethnicheritage in different public and privatesituations does not imply that their heritage issuperficial. It simply means that Swedishheritage is not confined to a particular placebut can be negotiated across frontiers.

Ciubrinskas’ contribution draws a similarconclusion from the perspective of Lithuanianculture in America. He traces what he calls the‘mind-’ and ‘value-codes’ which are transmittedas integral to Lithuanian culture and heritage toLithuanians in America and explores ethnicstrategies and practices for the communication of‘Lithuanianness’ to different generations ofLithuanian-Americans. The heritage of Lithuanianculture is no longer confined to the traditionalterritory. Instead it has crossed frontiers andtaken root in ‘foreign’ territory, but this isnot to deny the significance of the hometerritory and one of most critical issues for allgenerations of Lithuanian immigrants in Americais a normative image of their home country.


Migration and population movement are hardlynew phenomena. Transnational allegiances havealways existed alongside national ones. Thereligious imperative involving Christian Crusadesto the Holy Land or the drive of Muslim armiestowards Western Europe constitute classicexamples of a global trend in earlier centuries,but the onset of mass media and informationtechnology has ensured that the process ofglobalisation now has a velocity and an urgencythat has hitherto been unmatched. This has majorimplications for the communication of cultures.

MEDIA AND TECHNOLOGY

The onset of media and modern technology hasgenerated new opportunities for the communicationof cultures. Many traditional communities havebegun to appreciate the potential benefit oftechnology for the transmission of culture acrosstime and space. Travellers in Ireland, forexample, claim that the introduction of mobilephones has greatly benefited their language, i.e.Cant (McDonagh 2002; Stewart 2002). Mobile phoneshave had a positive impact on Traveller cultureand engender a positive image of a closely-guarded language (Power 2000: 163). Moreover,Travellers are conscious of the lack of privacyin conversations conducted on mobile phones, andmany of them have increased the use of their ownlanguage to protect their transactions. Thegrowth of a feeling of community among Sámipeoples in the Artic Circle has been made


possible through technological innovations. Inparticular, the use of radio has overcomephysical distances and borders in a new way.Radio has provided a new and international toolfor the communication of Sámi culture andprotects it against the overwhelming force ofother Scandinavian and international cultures.(Lehtola 92).

Essays by Tschernokoshewa and Devran in thisvolume illustrate the importance of the press andtelevision in the representation of traditionalcultures and in the setting up ofinclusion/exclusion dichotomies. Bothcontributions highlight the significance of massmedia in the categorisation of the modern worldand the reification of subjects and perspectives.These media discourses can have a tremendousimpact in structuring the way we perceivesreality.

Tschernokoshewa’s contribution focuses on therepresentation of the Sorb minority in the Germanmedia. Her examples illustrate the efforts tocategorise Sorbs as a traditional rural societywho have failed to come to terms with moderntechnology. Ultimately such representations setup a discourse of exclusion/inclusion. The Sorbsare the ‘Other’ within German society and‘Otherness’ is associated with the past.Therefore the Sorbs are represented as an ancient(almost antique and withering!) group. German andSorb cultures are represented as mutuallyexclusive categories. While the Germans enjoy thebenefits of the Internet and modern technology,the Sorbs are represented as enjoying a


traditional lifestyle that ultimately has nofuture.

The power of the modern media to categorise isalso evident in Devran’s exploration of a weeklysoap on Turkish television. His contribution isinteresting in that it contrasts mediarepresentations of upper and middle-classlifestyles. While the upper class family in theTurkish soap has every material comfort andemulates Western civilisation, the familyencounters many emotional problems.

This contrasts with the daily life of themiddle class family which benefits from moretraditional, Turkish culture. Although hardly aseconomically wealthy as their Westerncounterparts, the middle-class family enjoys thesecurity offered by a traditional culture and isin a position to resolve its economic issues. Theclear implication of such representations is thatWestern culture may appear superficially moreattractive, but the advantages of a moretraditional lifestyle are greater.

Both examples illustrate the presumed dichotomybetween tradition and modernity, between old-fashioned lifestyles and modern technology. It issometimes assumed that one excludes the other andthat ultimately globalisation and moderntechnology will eliminate local cultures. Manyprophets of doom insist that satellite televisionand computers homogenise and Americanisetraditional cultures and spread the use ofEnglish at the expense of other languages.

Forces of globalisation are perceived asspecifically disadvantageous to minority


cultures. ‘The Gaelic comedy show Ran Dan was nottoo far off the mark when it showed a Gaelichousehold waking in the small hours of themorning, putting on tea and racing downstairs intheir night-clothes to see the half hour ofGaelic programming’ (Dunbar 2000: 71). Yet thereare several aspects to this scenario that havenot been fully explored.

When satellite TV Channels were established,their initial intention was to acquire as largean audience as possible in as wide a territory aspossible. Economically this required the use ofinternational languages such as English and manynew TV industries filled the airwaves with cheapimports from America. As competition foraudiences increases however, satellite TVChannels have introduced languages other thanEnglish and developed programmes for national andregional rather than global audiences.

Home produced programmes are exceedinglypopular in many areas. At the time of writing,the most popular TV show in South Africa is‘Generations’; a locally produced multiracialsoap. ‘Julie Lescaut’, a French police series inFrance attracts very large audiences. One of themore popular programmes in Brazil is ‘O Clone’; atelenovela produced by TV Globo. As globalisationprogresses, the demand for locally producedtelevision programmes increases and minoritycultures acquire an increasing presence on theairwaves.

This is not to imply that internationalcharacters such as Disney’s Mickey Mouse are notin demand. A contribution to the Economist in 2002


reported on the involvement of this American iconin an experiment in locally tailored programming.An art show for the Disney channel was producedoutside Maidstone in England. Some three-fifthsof each show in the series ‘Art Attack’ consistedof shared footage. This section demonstratedclose-ups of the hands of a Liverpudlian artistconstructing the cut-out of a bumble bee. Theremainder of the programme was filmed separatelyin each instance and involved editing the headand shoulders of local presenters speaking locallanguages in with the Liverpudlian hands.Although different presenters were flown in tocomplete each local version of the programme, theproduction costs of the local programmes weregreatly reduced and viewers in different regionsidentified with the local version.

Disney is not the sole American channelproducing ‘regional’ versions of its content. Thepioneer in this regard was MTV, which now has 35different channels worldwide. 15 of these are inEurope; some eighty per cent of the content ofprogrammes on MTV Italy are produced in Italy. Atthe time of writing, there are some 22 differentversions of CNN, including one in Turkish and twoin German. This trend has not been generated by adesire on the part of satellite TV stations tocater to local cultures. Instead it iseconomically driven and makes good commercialsense. The advantage of such formats is that itmeets both the growing need to export and theincreasing demand for locally producedprogrammes.


The presence of advanced technology not onlyaffects the geographical distribution of localcultures, it also impacts on the time frame.Thomas Taaffe’s contribution to this volumeexplores the significance of speed in thetransmission of news worldwide, when reportersare racing against a ‘pace’ determined bytelevision transmission slots. Taaffe’s essayfocuses on the manner in which technologicaltransformations in the news industry have alteredour understanding of the world around us. Thespeed and terms of the television news productionprocess shapes the character and content of newsreports. As reporters are encouraged to publishmore and more quickly, there is less opportunityfor independent investigation and greaterdependency on second hand sources. Speeddominates the agenda. News is delivered in bite-sized portions and images from anywhere in theworld can be transmitted in seconds. Space andspeed have become more significant than place andaccuracy.


CULTURE ON THE INTERNET

The significance of space over place incontemporary society is captured by Poster (1990:74) who asks if he ‘can speak directly or byelectronic mail to a friend in Paris whilesitting in California’, and ‘can witnesspolitical and cultural events as they occuracross the globe’ on television without leavinghis home, and if a database at a some remotelocation contains his profile and informsgovernment agencies which take decisionsaffecting his life and if he can shop at home byusing his television or computer, then where ishe and who is he?

The invention of computers has had a tremendousimpact on the communication of cultures.Initially the Internet appeared to homogenisevast areas of the globe with their use ofEnglish. As computers were largely invented inEnglish-speaking areas, computer hardware andsoftware served the needs of English-speakers inthe first instance. Moreover, as text basedcommunication was unable to cope with accentedcharacters, it was almost impossible tocommunicate in languages using non-roman writingsystems (Graddol 1997: 30).

But computers have become more widely used innon-English-speaking countries, and it isreasonable to expect a greater range of languageson the Internet. In 1996 the Internet Societypublished protocols for browsers on the webfacilitating the use of web pages in differentlanguages. Since then computer users are


increasingly browsing the web in the language oftheir choice.

While English appears to have accounted for 80per cent of computer-based communication in the1990s, Graddol (1997: 61) predicted a significantdecrease within a decade. Statistics from theGlobal Reach website indicate the accuracy ofthis prediction and the use of languages otherthan English on the Internet is already on theincrease. Calculations from the Global Reachwebsite suggest that 36.5 per cent of peoplecurrently online are native speakers of English;35.5 per cent are native-speakers of Europeanlanguages other than English while 28.3 per centspeak an Asian language as their mother tongue.

Moreover they estimate the proportion of webcontent in English at the time of writing tostand at 68.4 per cent, representing aconsiderable decline from the previous decade. Itshould be noted, however, that this proportionvastly exceeds that stored in any other language.Web content in Chinese, for example, is a mere3.9 per cent and that in German in 5.8 per cent.

The scenario of language restriction haschanged, and computers can be effectively used topromote languages and cultures other thanEnglish. There are Chinese versions of many ofthe major American programmes, including theMicrosoft Word processor and the Windowsoperating system. Computer software has rapidlybecome customised for lesser-used languages andchildren in many regions speaking a lesser-usedlanguages use locally produced software inschools.


Modern technology allows local cultures todevelop international imagined communities. Inrecent years Radió na Gaeltachta (radio of Irish-speaking regions) has acquired an internationalaudience. Through their computers, Irishemigrants in Brazil, Britain, Canada and the USAare listening to Irish-language radio. In 2001 anew Internet journal Beo was established withgreat success. This is a glossy journal, whichfocuses on issues of concern to Irish speakers athome and abroad, but it does not confine itselfto such topics – a mistake that occurred in otherjournals in the past. Each month Beo reviews theextent of an Irish-speaking community abroad. Inthis manner it is gradually establishing and re-defining the ‘imagined community’ of Irishspeakers as international rather than local orperipheral.

Other traditional cultures are availing of thebenefits of modern technology. Media experts inCanada’s Northwest Territories are optimisticthat the Internet will facilitate thepreservation and enhancement of Dene, Inuit andMétis cultures and prevent the further decline ofaboriginal languages. Contemporary researchindicates that language revival tends to serve asa catalyst for the re-invigoration of culturaltraditions including the renewal of traditionalrelationships with the environment. ‘Theisolation of many indigenous communities may beovercome by the Internet because it is arguablyprovides and ideal medium for aboriginalcommunities’ (Coombe 2001: 180).


Computer software has become incrediblyadaptable, and desktop publishing systemsfacilitate shortrun printing in minoritylanguages. The Internet ensures equality forspeakers of different languages as the ‘cost of aWeb page is the same, whether the contributor iswriting in English, Spanish, Welsh or Navajo’(Crystal 2000: 142). Currently, there are morethan 500 languages with a presence on theInternet. As this number increases, the Internetwill become an important facility for thecommunication of cultures.

CONCLUSION

Globalisation is ultimately a process of tensionbetween the global and the local, a process,which inevitably impacts on the culturalinfrastructure and the nature of culture itselfin contemporary society. In earlier centuries thetransmission of local cultures was a communalmatter. Children became familiar with local mythsand traditions through their mothers, teachersand storytellers. Moreover, local cultures wereusually transmitted in a mother tongue and thelanguage of transmission was as significant asthe content. The mother tongue guaranteed boththe authenticity of the process and the product.

However many of these traditional tongues havedeclined and the loss of local languages has hadserious implications not simply for the processof cultural transmission but for the content that


is also passed on. It is sometimes assumed thatmodern technology has further damaged thisprocess of cultural transmission, particularly ina minority cultural context, but I have arguedagainst this assumption for several reasons.

Culture is an ongoing process rather than aproduct and continually adapts to and adopts thelocal environment. Although some traditionalsocieties are keen to highlight the epic memoryskills of previous generations of storytellers,it is logical to assume that the process ofcultural transmission has always involved lossesand gains at every stage. The notion that ourancestors somehow transmitted their cultures inan unchanged fashion is a myth which implies thatculture and cultural communication can only beauthentic if they are essential. This is to denythe unstable nature of culture itself.

Multimedia enhances rather than damages theprocess of transmission and this applies in bothminority and majority cultural contexts. Astechnology advances, the modes of communicationof different cultures will proliferate and therewill be far greater opportunities for thedissemination of local cultures over a greaterspace. Cultures are no longer confined to aparticular place or space and territorial bordershave become even less relevant.

Moreover, culture is hardly confined to aparticular timeframe and new media technologieswill now permit us to ‘bind time’ and recordevolving cultures. In consequence ‘the culturalheritage just grows and grows and grows’ (Hannerz1996: 24). An enhanced cultural infrastructure


affords numerous opportunities for thepreservation, maintenance and communication ofcultures to new generations.

From this perspective, the communication ofcultures will become an issue of increasingrather than decreasing relevance and complexity.Although some languages have declined, thecultures associated with them will continue toexist – albeit in a transformed manner. Radio,television and the Internet have already becometools of cultural communication which exist alongwith rather instead of the more traditionaltools. Globalisation may not necessarily act as aforce of homogeneity. Instead the process willserve as an agent for cultural fragmentation,enrichment and diversity.

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Communicating Cultures

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