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individuals, to develop curiosity and openness to others and to discover other cultures.
Language learning helps them to see that interaction with individuals having different
social identities and cultures in an enriching experience.” (Council of Europe 16). To all
appearances, it seems that this significant segment of The White Book is more likely to refer
to majority groups, rather than minority or ethnic ones.
Generally speaking, regardless of whether we are talking about members of majority or
minority groups within a society who learn one or more foreign languages, another stumbling
block is the adoption of the concept of different social identities. These identities belong to
different social groups, which is in perfect harmony with the aforementioned „exchange of
views between individuals and groups with different ethnic, cultural, religious and linguistic
backgrounds and heritage”.
One of major cultural issues which are put forward nowadays is whether it is possible
to view the culture of the Balkans as a unique, comprehensive and compact cultural
phenomenon which appears in different forms and in different areas of the Balkans, or as
a parallel existence of several cultures, i.e. different forms of cultural differences within a
relatively clearly defined cultural and civilizational milieu of the Balkans. In most general
terms, it is the existence of numerous identical, identical or similar cultural traits which
allow us to talk about the existence of the Balkan culture and the cultural milieu of this
region. However, Balkan culture per se is still not a uniform phenomenon, as can be seen
in the field, and it is not unique; in certain aspects its forms differ across societies, nations
and regions due to strong social, civilizational, political and religious influences; they left a
lasting impression on cultural activities of the people who were underexposed and eventually
became susceptible to them. That is why Hall in his book The Silent Communication states that
culture is a complex of most various elements connected by human activities, whose origin
is deeply buried in our past. That is why he looks at culture as a form of communication and
defines it like this: „culture is communication and communication is culture” (Hall 1959: 14).
The main feature of Balkan culture is the fact that it is an unambiguously complex
phenomenon which comprises separate collective (i.e. national) instances of cultural
awareness, which means that each individual, who can belong to a nation, or an ethnic/
minority group, is an integral part of the community he/she belongs to and which gives him/
her a corresponding (social, national, political, linguistic) identity. In other words, there is
still a strong impact of identity of society on the individual in the Balkans, and it causes both
the community and the individual to identify themselves as being one and the same thing.
This form of culture is the total opposite of the individualistic one as can be found in Western
Europe or North America, where the identity of the individual is determined by his/her
role in the society, rather than by the fact that he/she belongs to either an ethnic or a social
community. Since there still is no large-scale individualization of the individual, collective
cultures of the Balkans, like other collective cultures, appear to be less tolerant toward
other cultural varieties and patterns of behavior (Burgoon et al. 1996) when compared to
individualistic cultures.
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