Analyzing Cultural Elements: Norms, Values, Social Hierarchy, Past Times, Language and Taboos

Remember from Grade 7

In Grade 7 you analyzed cultural elements such as values, rituals, architecture, art and dance and how they shape meaning.

In Grade 8 you'll look at elements that are often invisible until someone breaks them: norms, social hierarchy and taboos, along with values, language, and the way stories set in past times show different rules.

Hook: The unwritten rules

Nobody hands you a rulebook, but you know them: in an elevator, you face the doors. In a library, you whisper. At a hockey game, you can yell your head off. These are norms. You only notice them when someone breaks one. Writers use exactly that moment to create conflict and meaning.

Text 1: The Foreman's Bell (historical fiction written for this website, set in Toronto in 1912)

The bell rang at seven, and two hundred sewing machines began to clatter at once. Rosa, fourteen, bent over her pile of sleeves. At home, in the two rooms her family rented, everyone spoke Italian. Here, you spoke English, or you didn't speak at all.

Mr. Pike, the foreman, walked the rows with his watch in his hand. The owner, Mr. Whitfield, came down from his office only twice a year. When he did, every worker stood and looked at the floor.

At noon, Rosa heard two women at the next table whisper a word she didn't know: union. When Mr. Pike turned, they went silent so fast that Rosa understood two things. The word was important. And it was dangerous.

On Saturday, she gave her pay envelope to her mother, unopened, as she did every week. Her mother counted it twice and said nothing about the dollar that was missing, fined for talking.

Text 2: Hands at the Table (a personal essay written for this website by a character named Maya)

In my family, dinner is loud, but you can't hear it. My parents and my older brother are Deaf, and we talk in ASL. If you want someone's attention, you tap their shoulder or wave, and nobody thinks that's rude. Looking away while someone is signing is rude: it's like covering your ears.

When my hearing friend Lily came over, she whispered something to me at the table. My dad's face went still. In our house, talking in a way that shuts someone out is about the worst thing you can do. I signed to my dad what she said (that the soup was good), and Lily learned the sign for delicious before dessert.

Now she signs delicious at every meal she eats with us. My dad says she's family.

Text 3: Year of the Horse (a poem written for this website)

Grandma says don't sweep today, you'll sweep the luck right out the door, so the floor keeps last night's peanut shells and the red envelopes crinkle in our pockets. She gives my cousin two, never four. I asked her why once. She just smiled and said the word for four sounds too much like goodbye. I think she meant a bigger word. I let her keep it.

In some Chinese families, Lunar New Year customs include not sweeping on the first day (so you don't sweep away good luck), giving red envelopes with money, and avoiding the number four, because in Mandarin and Cantonese the word for four sounds like the word for death. Customs vary from family to family.

In the poem, the grandmother softens a taboo word, saying goodbye instead of death, and the speaker understands and accepts it (I let her keep it). The taboo becomes a way to show respect and love between generations.