What is a cultural text?

What is a cultural text?

Firstly, by breaking down these two words we can attempt to produce a definition that encompasses both words. The definition of culture is vast and just like art varies from country to country. Culture governs a person’s actions based upon their values, attitude and ideas. Culture cannot be owned by one single person nor can be given as a gift. It is not something that people are born with, however being born gives you the right to be part of it. An entity that shapes working relations, from the coal mining communities of Wales to the bustling city of London. A hive of activity with the purpose of enriching communities and the people within them. Hofstede (1980, pp. 21-23) defines culture as “the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one group from another”.

The suffix to this phase is the word ‘text’ and I feel that this is a more straightforward word to describe. A text is a written body of work that forms the basis or core of a book or other printed material. The Oxford Dictionary (2015) defines it as: “A book or other written or printed work, regarded in terms of its content rather than its physical form.” This made me question can a text be a painting? Overall I determined that a ‘text’ alone can’t be a painting, however a cultural text can be. If a person’s values are taken into consideration when defining culture, then a cultural text should reflect this. When one thinks of culture around of the world, artwork is prominent in this thought. A cultural text sends a cultural message that goes beyond what we can see initially. This is why I have chosen a painting as my cultural text.