Cultural Studies in a Globalizing: An Investigation of Communicative World Codes Mujeeb Ali Murshed Qasim(1) Abbas Abdul-Malik Mohammed Mutahar(
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Abstract
This paper presents a diversity of overlapping terms under the broad area of Cultural Studies like 'culture studies', ‘cultural criticism’, and 'cultural materialism'. Through a descriptive analytical method, this study aims to show how culture operates by significant communicative codes in multicultural settings that humans learn from cradle to grave, acquiring cultural traditions, customs, and social roles. As a discipline and a school of criticism, Cultural Studies has changed the way of the study of literature. Those practiced cultural codes of religious rituals, daily activities, experiences, among others, have become the primary knowledge and recorded parts of the history of a particular society. It depicts a clear picture of how the knowledge of cultural codes and their social functions enable individuals to perceive culture and literature comprehensively and make a systematized reference to the culture of that particular society. It shows the development of Cultural Studies, late last century, laying its foundations to be accepted in the academic field, which paved the way for literary works to be reconstructed, re-appreciated, and reassigned in reference to their cultural field. This paper attempts to answer some questions about Cultural Studies and whether it can help us explore the functions of cultural products in a society or a literary work. It provides examples of some cultural codes and how they help us read and identify an individual regionally, socially, economically, and religiously. The Conclusion stresses on readers, critics and translators to be aware of the cultural codes when dealing with, reading of or translating from other societies.
Keywords: Culture; Cultural Studies; cultural codes; cultural criticism; cultural materialism
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References
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