What are cultural scripts?
Anthropological linguists and ethnographers of communication have long recognised that different speech communities have different "ways of speaking", not just in the narrowly linguistic sense but also in the norms or conventions of linguistic interaction. "Cultural scripts" are a way of spelling out different "local" conventions of discourse using the metalanguage of universal semantic primes. Using this method, cultural norms can be spelt out with much greater precision than is possible with technical labels such as "direct", "polite", "formal" and so on. Because they are phrased in simple and translatable terms, the danger of ethnocentric bias creeping into the very terms of the description is minimised.
Cultural scripts are not intended to provide an account of real life social interactions. Rather they are intended as descriptions of commonly held assumptions about how "people think" about social interaction. Because people bring these assumptions with them into everyday interactions, cultural scripts influence the form taken by particular verbal encounters but they do not in any sense determine individual interactions. Individuals can and do vary in their speech behaviour. The claim of the cultural scripts approach is merely that the scripts form a kind of interpretive background against which individuals position their own acts and those of others.
For example, the script below (cf. Wierzbicka 1994 a) is intended to capture a Japanese cultural norm.
A Japanese cultural script:
- many people think like this:
- when something bad happens to someone because I did something,
- I have to (= can't not) say something like this to this someone:
- "I feel something bad because of this"
- I have to (= can't not) say something like this to this someone:
- I have to (= can't not) do something because of this
This represents a hypothesis about a cultural norm which is characteristically (though not exclusively) Japanese. It is linked with the often noted tendency of the Japanese to "apologise" very frequently and in a broad range of situations, but it does so without relying on the culture-bound English speech-act verb apologise. The script is also more accurate and explicit than the English term in not implying any admission that 'I did something bad to you', which would be inappropriate for the Japanese 'apology'. One is expected to perform the speech-act in question whenever one's action leads someone else to suffer harm or inconvenience, no matter how indirectly. The script is readily translatable into Japanese, and is thus directly accessible to the intuitions of Japanese speakers.
The Japanese example concerned a fairly specific situation (i.e. 'when something bad happens to someone because I did something'). Cultural scripts can be used to articulate broader and more far-reaching views. For example, there is a wide range of sociological, historical and culture analytical literature to indicate that "individual freedom" and "personal autonomy" are among the primary ideals of mainstream Anglo culture. Terms like these probably stand for a whole complex of interrelated cultural scripts, but one of the most general can be stated as follows. This script is supposed to represent a component of the dominant "cultural ideology" in predominantly English-speaking countries like Australia, the United States and Great Britain.
An Anglo cultural script linked with "personal autonomy":
- many people think like this:
- when someone does something, it is good if this someone can think like this:
- "I am doing this because I want to do it"
It probably bears repeating that despite the possible connotations of the word "script", cultural scripts are not "binding" on individuals. They are not proposed as rules of behaviour but as rules of interpretation and evaluation. It is open to individuals in concrete situations whether to follow (or appear to follow) culturally endorsed principles, and if so, to what extent; or whether to manipulate them, defy them, subvert them, rebel against them, play creatively with them, etc. Whether or not cultural scripts are being followed in behavioural terms, however, the claim is that they constitute a kind of shared interpretive "background".
The theory of cultural scripts is still under development. The latest major work is "Ethnopragmatics" (Goddard ed. 2006). No-one yet knows how many scripts would be needed for a relatively comprehensive description of the "verbal culture" of any society (just as no-one has yet produced a complete ethnography of communication in conventional terms, or, for that matter, a complete grammar). It is clear, however, that the number would be large. Furthermore, various forms of "intertextuality" operate between and among cultural scripts (for example, some being more general than others, some taking priority over others, some competing with others). It is also important to note that many scripts must be tailored to particular types of interlocutors, settings, and discourse genres.