How Do Human Beings Acquire Culture?
We humans are in the process of acquiring our culture, consciously and unconsciously, throughout our lives, though most of our basic cultural understandings are acquired early on from our parents and other intimates, schools, and religious teachings. By the time a child is 5 years old, many of the foundational aspects of culture have been internalized. By the teen years, these foundations have been thoroughly elaborated upon through the process of socialization. It is important to remember that culture is learned through language and modeling others; it is not genetically transmitted. Culture is encoded in the structure, vocabulary, and semantics of language. Persons acquainted with more than one language are aware that there are concepts, norms, and emotions that are available in one language/culture that are not available in the other, and this is a reminder of the inextricable link between language and culture. Much of culture is acquired out of consciousness, through exposure to th
