Edward T. Hall’s Cultural Iceberg Model

One of the things I was very much interested in when I came to Finland was the culture. As we all know and as I have written about in my previous posts, culture differs from people to people. I find culture as a very important impact in my life and growing up, I have always been through many different cultures. I must say that I do have many different influences on me caused by these cultures. For me, a culture is a new person, a different character.

So, this made me take in interest in Edward Hall’s Iceberg Model. In this model, we can see that many cultures have many important opinions about different topics. For example, some cultures have religion, some have people, and some have animals. It all differs and makes every culture unique in its own way. Along this, Edward Hall really pointed out how we have a surface culture and a deep culture. These all differ very much from people to people. I find it very interesting and think that it is a good way to reflect who we are to ourselves and even to find who we are as a person.

Here is what it looks like :

On the model below, we can see an example of what a person who represents a culture might have as a surface culture and a deep culture. I think that it is interesting to see what might be important to others that could be in deep culture could be in the surface culture of someone else. So, even to understand my own Cultural Iceberg, I decided to make my own Iceberg Culture.

Here are all the things that represent me within surface culture, deep culture and even unconscious rules.