culture, but also hove aworeness and toleronce of the target cultures. Moreover, one should not ignore one's own cultural viewpoint with this firm ground to stand on, a person tends not to intentionally couse cultural conflicts. However, when miscommunicotion cannot be avoided solutions to have a better understanding can qurckly be pursued by those who are conscious of culturol differences. Definition of Culture, Language, and Personality It the question what is culture? is asked to a person on the street, the responses might include the following. Culture is language that people of the same nation share. culture is what people inherited from their ancestors . Culture will tell which nation the person belongs to culture has to be preserved for future generations. Culture means national costumes and festivities. There seems to be endless possibilities to define the term"culture In fact, there ore over 300 definitions of culture available. However, many people mistake"culture for"customs and traditions. Many Thai people have no idea how enormous the scope of this very term is. when they are asked to define "culture", they usually cannot respond with the best possible definition because answers like this cannot be simplified to three or four words. Brogger(1992), in speaking of the definition of culture, says that some anthropologists define culture so as to make it signify actual behavior, others make it represent material artifacts and products and yet others so as to make it designate people's view of the world, whereas many Anglo American definitions in the first half of this century tended to conceive of culture as empirically observable features such as habits, customs and artifacts Numerous post- World War ll definitions see it in terms of the ideas and values shared by the members of a society as a social group
Defining culture' might be one of the most difficult questions to ask Thais to answer what Thai culture is. It is not surprising to hear many Thais answering with, something about Thai food, Thai national costume Thai ceremonies, Thai festivals, etc. Obviously, many people in his country see culture in bits and pieces rather than a complex whole of inseparable bits. Many times "culture" is linked to the tourism business.