Culture – Language – Identity
by Michelle Cadeau

You know the question ‘which came first, the hen or the egg?’ When it comes to culture – language – identity, the question is not which came first but which one is more important.

Let me start by sharing an observation from the other day. It prompted me to look into this more and to write this article.

I am a born and raised Swedish woman married to a born and raised Haitian man. We live together in the US with our two young sons that are Americans (by birth!). My husband and I met here in NY and our sons have never lived anywhere else.  I speak Swedish with my children and they are today fluent in Swedish and English. My husband started out talking Creole with them but little by little he shifted over to English. Today he rarely speaks Creole at home. My boys do hear it when the rest of my husband’s family is around since that is their family language.

My husband’s cousin was here from Europe last week and we were all invited to a party in her and her family’s honor. Our sons are usually the life of the party. They will hit the dance floor as soon as they hear music, talk to people around them, even sing karaoke if there is one. At this party something was different. They pretty much stayed by my side (never happens!) and they only danced when someone forced them to (never happens) and my oldest son actually said he wanted to go home (NEVER happens).

I observed their behavior and couldn’t figure out why. It haunted me all night and it was still on my mind the next morning. I was reading a book about the research of children with minority languages and that morning I picked the book up and continued where I had left off.

The study I was reading about was a done by Verhoeven, a Dutch researcher studying bilingual Turkish children in Holland. The study was on which socio-cultural factors were most favorable for the Turkish children’s first language development (their first language was Turkish). This was done through interviews with parents, teachers and the children. The study focused on identifying the relationship between different types of cultural expressions and the attitudes towards them. One interesting result was that the contact with the language was less relevant in the child’s capabilities to master the Turkish language than their attitude toward Turkish lifestyle, Turkish folklore and the parents’ cultural behavior.

AHA! This was something that I have always believed in! Language means nothing if you don’t have the culture and the traditions. The culture means nothing if you don’t have the language and the traditions. The traditions mean nothing if you don’t have the language and the culture.


So what lies, by definition, within the word  ‘culture’?
Culture in its broadest sense is cultivated behavior.  It is the totality of a person's learned, accumulated experience which is socially transmitted.  Or more briefly, it is behavior through social learning.
A culture is a way of life of a group of people--the behaviors, beliefs, values, and symbols that they accept, generally without thinking about them, and that are passed along by communication and imitation from one generation to the next.
Culture is a collective programming of the mind that distinguishes the members of one group or category of people from another.
“Culture is communication, communication is culture.” (Choudhury, sec.1). 

Two or more cultures in a child’s life.

To be a part of two or more cultures can be a positive thing for most of us. However, it can create some problems and weird feelings when people point out that we do live in a multicultural situation; or even worse, if they ask us to side with one over the other. For our children this can be quiet hard and emotional. And most of the time our children don’t really have a choice so we make the choices for them.

This is something that my revelation about my children’s behavior the other day taught me. My sons are 5 and 2. It is not possible for them to choose their cultures right now. It is not possible for a small child to pick one culture over another.

It is my husband’s and my responsibility to guide them, not to be half Swedish and/or half Haitians but two young boys with many cultures.  A kind of “global person.” A person that has emotional roots and ties to all of the cultures in their family. A person that is not feeling weird in one of their own cultures. A person that can adjust because he or she is secure within it. A person whose soul does not solely belong to one group or one way of life but is open towards other cultures. A person who has his heart in all the cultures he was brought up in.

When thinking about the definition of culture and especially the paragraph that says, “Culture in its broadest sense is cultivated behavior; that is the totality of a person's learned, accumulated experience which is socially transmitted, or more briefly, behavior through social learning” (Choudhury, sec.1), I realize that our multicultural children have what it takes to be wonderful people; maybe even to be the generation that can change the world. If we were more like “global people” and had parts of different cultures and traditions, we would be more open-minded and accepting of other cultures and thus more open-minded and accepting of other people.

When it comes to culture, language and identity, one part is worthless without the others. There is not one part that is more important than the other; as a matter of fact, they all seem to feed off each other and as one is developed the other ones are just getting stronger as well. 

It isn’t even necessary for me to say that my husband and I are talking a lot about how to get our sons to embrace their Haitian part. And mainly, what we can do to help them in this process.

 
Reference
Choudhoury, Ifte."Culture."

© Michelle Cadeau

Michelle Cadeau is the founder of the Globe Moms network (www.globemoms.com) She is the initiator & creator of the online course “Children’s Multilingualism” in which she is one of the teachers. She started Svenska Mammor (Swedish Moms) in 2003 when her oldest son was little and has since then helped thousands of Swedish Moms that live outside of Sweden through the website www.svenskamammor.com.