Spoken Word

Culture with a Capital C

High Culture Low Culture
Everybody’s got culture

Everybody shares culture
With someone else

Find a culture where it happens
Who enacts it, what they do
Is it good? It doesn’t matter
Is it bad? We just can’t say

Is it real or ideology?
Is hegemony here to stay?
Money doesn’t make culture
It’s not a thing to buy or sell
Voting doesn’t create culture
It just happens by ourselves

High Culture Low Culture
Everybody’s got culture
Everybody shares culture
With someone else

Cultural Studies asks hard questions
By whom, for whom, and for what?
Tries to draw a “map of meaning”
With the question “What’s your sign?”

Finds that Language holds the answer
Cause we’re talking all the time.

High Language Low Language
Everybody’s got language
Everybody shares language
With someone else

A cat’s a cat; it’s not a dog
Gato, chat, katous are cat,
not
composite
There’s a striking differánce
Words are fixed in their meanings
In the context where they’re used
Are they real? It doesn’t matter
Are they true? I cannot tell you
That is something you must say
Culture is a conversation
each of us has a part to play.

High Language Low Language
Everybody’s got language
Everybody shares language
With someone else

(This won't let me put the formatting in that I want. This should look like a conversation. The lines go back and forth.)