The Culture Framework

Flowerdew and Miller’s (1995) four-dimensional culture framework is based on a three-year ethnographic study in Hong Kong investigating perceived cultural differences between ethnic Chinese students and native English-speaking lecturers. Given the setting of the study, the examples used to illustrate each dimension of the framework relate mostly to Chinese contexts. The authors collected data from both student and teacher participants using a range of tools including questionnaires and in-depth interviews with ten lecturers, questionnaires and written self-reports from students, reflective journals by the lecturers, in-depth interviews with 18 students, field notes, classroom observations, focus groups with six to eight students, transcriptions of 34 lectures, and artefacts such as textbooks and student notes. The in-depth analysis of the data, therefore, provides a reliable source of information regarding how culture can play out in teaching and learning activities in an English-as-a-second-language (ESL) context in Hong Kong. Based on their findings, Flowerdew and Miller developed their four-dimensional culture framework, which I discuss below.

Ethnic culture. By ethnic culture, Flowerdew and Miller refer to the “social-psychological features” (p. 356) of individuals—i.e., both teachers and students—involved in teaching and learning activities. Examples include deferent Chinese students who grow up following the Confucian philosophy of maintaining social harmony. Another example relates to Arab students who may seek “help” from teachers with raising their grades with an attitude that may imply to many that grades are negotiable (p. 357). As is evident from these examples, social and psychological features are inherent to people but may vary from one context to another. In writing classrooms, particularly those that involve L2 writers, it is important for teachers to be sensitive to the social and psychological features that students bring in and to be mindful about what it may take to make them aware about the concept of ownership of texts.

Local culture. Flowerdew and Miller define local culture as “aspects of the local setting with which the members of a particular society are familiar” (p. 359). Thus, the concept of local culture implicates the perception of familiarity or unfamiliarity by classroom participants with respect to a given teaching/learning activity. In the context of academic writing, a closely-knit group of learners may develop academic writing styles and skills  as determined, for instance, by locally formulated expectations, needs, and practices, which may sometimes even involve copying from one another’s work (e.g., Flowerdew). In other contexts, writing practices may entail acknowledging and citing the sources used. Thus, student learners growing up in different local cultures or backgrounds may have different ideas and perceptions about the ownership of texts. A consideration of local culture can help raise awareness among students and teachers about how the ownership of texts plays out in academic writing.

Academic culture. Academic culture, according to Flowerdew and Miller, refers to “the particular academic values, roles, assumptions, attitudes, [and] patterns of behaviour” (p. 362) in a given teaching and learning context. They further maintain that academic culture can be “identified” at various levels, e.g., at the level of several countries, at the level of a single country, at the level of several academic institutions within a country, or at the level of a single academic institution (p. 362). The authors acknowledge that because academic institutions are situated within the context of an ethnic culture(s), it may be difficult to explain if certain practices are due to the influence of an ethnic or academic culture. The propensity for rote learning, large classes, and a teacher-centered pedagogy that revolves around the practice of deference to teachers, Confucian values, and a collectivist approach prompting students to help one another may be attributed to the academic culture that most Chinese students are part of. A Chinese academic culture that is specifically related to academic writing can be summarized as follows: “a good literary style requires copious literary citation from the texts [of literary masters]” (Flowerdew, p. 110). Consequently, it is important to incorporate academic culture into the writing pedagogy while discussing academic writing in the classroom.

Disciplinary culture. “Disciplinary culture refers to the theories, concepts, norms, [and] terms […] of a particular academic discipline” (Flowerdew & Miller, 1995, p. 366). To illustrate, the authors compare law schools/programs, where teaching-learning activities are predominantly structured around problem-solving tasks to exemplify legal concepts, with public and social administration, where teaching-learning activities  are structured around “a comparison between different models or systems” (p. 367). An important cultural dimension of a discipline is its evolution over time. For example, a discipline like computer science, with its fast pace of evolution, requires its members to constantly keep up with concepts that emerge and/or develop over time. Approaches to learning in a discipline like history, on the other hand, are rather static due to its relatively stable knowledge base. There are important implications of these disciplinary cultures for academic writing. Scientific writing, for example, is considered to be highly formulaic. As a result, the “copying of language” (i.e., not ideas) in scientific writing is thought to be a less “serious infringement on disciplinary practice” (Flowerdew, 2015, p. 110). In light of this, students need to be made aware of the norms and expectations in disciplinary writing so that their written texts align with their respective disciplinary cultures.

Given the complexity surrounding the notion of culture, Flowerdew and Miller’s four-dimensional framework provides a useful tool to understand the cultural determinations of writing. In particular, it is important to note that this framework moves away from dichotomous formulations of culture that have generally given rise to contentious debates. Additionally, the framework aligns with Holliday’s (1999) theorization of “small cultures,” deemed by scholars like Atkinson (2016) to be a useful way of culture studies. Finally, this is also a useful framework for understanding how writing as a teaching-learning activity takes place in and is shaped differently by various cultural milieus (e.g., see Flowerdew, 2015).

In the section below, I discuss how Flowerdew and Miller’s culture framework can inform pedagogical practices in the writing classroom to enhance students’ cultural understanding of the ownership of written texts.