Melting Icebergs

Paper Summary:

This paper uses contemporary migration trends in Peru illustrate that the cultural iceberg is melting. The popular metaphor for understanding differing cultures as an iceberg does not always clearly depict the justifications for cultural behaviors. This paper examines the iceberg metaphor and applies it to Peru's cultural attitudes toward education with a particular focus on Spanish-language learning.

From the Paper:

"Contemporary cultural studies rely heavily upon the culture-as-iceberg theory for their analytical, experiential and statistical formulations. The theory appears so widely used that its authorship is unclear. Sharon Ruhly described it as early as 1976 in her book 'Orientations to Intercultural Communication.' "Culture has been likened to an iceberg; nine-tenths of it lies beneath the surface, out of our immediate awareness" (Ruhly cited in Ishii, 1990, para. 1). Ruhly's metaphor can now be abundantly found in travel blogs, cultural education for children and articles on cross-cultural software uses. It remains today as important a tool for intercultural understanding as it must have been in the 1970's. This paper will apply Ruhly's metaphor to current education trends in Peru."

More papers on Melting Icebergs:

• Book Review # 133461 : "Our Iceberg is Melting" by John Kotter"
• Book Review # 103990 : "Our Iceberg is Melting" by John Kotter: A Report"
• Analytical Essay # 45865 : "The Melting Pot"

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