What is culture? Part1 Culture is often used to represent a complicated concept, which is ever-changing and, thus, not stagnant in its meaning throughout history. Nevertheless, this broad term is often used without reflection influenced by stereotypes. One reason for this one-sided view could be that people like to stay in their comfort zone and seldom interact beyond their known customs. Globalization and modern communication tools enabled people to intermingle and cultures to mix, however, their values as well as traditions are seldom questioned. The article “What is Culture?” by Werner Delanoy offers an introduction to the term culture with its various perspectives. In the course of history, beginning with the Romans, followed by the Renaissance and Romanticism the early definitions were often presented by philosophers and then lead to discussions. One defining factor hereby is to perceive culture and nature as opposing elements, where nature has to be tempered and is unpredictable. In the following high culture emerged, which is practiced by the educated elite, who should “temper and refine people´s wild impulses” and enforce unifications of nations. With Marx´s understanding as economy of the most important factor that influences culture, the definition shifted. Therefore, only a functioning economy can establish society with its beliefs and values. With the 20th century culture was mainly understood as a system influenced by language. Language acted as a system that used signs (or sounds) for communication. As a result, from a historic point of view definitions for culture are often provided by philosophers, intellectual movements and their main ideas. From a linguistic perspective, however, culture is defined by the usage of language. On the one hand analyzing literature and texts, means evaluating products in written form. Before being published literature is adjusted to embody a specific meaning and edited leading to a finished product of culture. The written word can be interpreted and, thus created meaning of practices of beliefs of people. In difference to that looks the “performative turn” at continuous acts of performance and the depiction of values. The performative act includes more than one meaning. It contains and investigated different levels of representation used in culture. In another interpretation culture from being perceived as a set of shared values to one of “zones of contention”. In this case culture includes several contradictory layers.