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  Copyright © GOJAR 2022                                                                    Page 55 
 

 

Parameters for Determining Core Cultural Symbols: A 

Philosophical Analysis 

 

 

By 

Innocent Ngangah 

 

 

 

ABSTRACT 

There is need to work towards the identification of common parameters for 

determining core cultural symbols in philosophy of ethnic studies and other forms of 

cultural research. This has become cogent since scholars are increasingly utilizing the 

concept of symbolic transformation in various studies of cultural groups and identities. 

In such studies, symbols are treated as mental representations of cultural ideas, objects 

or realities. Within this context, core symbols are those symbols which represent the 

central cultural beliefs of a cultural group, be it racial, ethnic or any other group. This 

paper would attempt to identify parameters which would guide the cultural researcher 

through the intricacies of identifying a cultural group’s core symbols. This is 

important because a given cultural group’s core values and cultural systems can only 

be discerned and grasped through the recognition of its core symbolic logic. 

 

Keywords: signs, symbolic transformation, traditional African society, cultural 

philosophy   

 

 

 

1. Introduction 

hile the study of the culture of ethnic groups by foreign 

anthropologists, ethnologists and philosophers has waned, 

academic research on the culture of ethnic groups by scholars 

from those groups is believed to have risen globally. The “Humanities 

W 



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  Copyright © GOJAR 2022                                                                    Page 56 
 

Indicator”, an index of the American Academy of Arts and Science, for 

instance, shows that in 2014, “traditionally underrepresented racial/ethnic 

minorities received 17.0% of all bachelor’s degrees in philosophy (Indicator II-

50a)”, an increase of “eight percentage points from 1995 (the first year for 

which data of this kind are available)”. At the Masters level, these minorities 

“earned 10.2% of philosophy degrees awarded in 2014, up from 6.5% in 1995 

(Indicator II-50b)” while at the PhD level, they “reached a high of 7.9%, a level 

nearly three times as great as that observed in 1995 (Indicator II-50c)”. Both 

philosophy and their cultural backgrounds must have mutually benefited from 

these students’ researches.  

     And in Africa, where the primary research for this paper was conducted, 

there is hardly any philosophy department of any university that does not offer 

courses in African philosophy. At their basic level, cultural studies, including 

philosophical ones, are narrations about how culture and mind are related 

through symbols (Wagoner 2009). So, a clear understanding of what “culture” 

and “symbols” are, especially in the context of this study, is crucial to our 

appreciation of the necessity of setting parameters for determining core cultural 

symbols. We will explain what we mean by “culture” and “symbol” in 

subsequent sections of this paper which uses the culture and symbols of the 

Igbo people of south-eastern Nigeria to illustrate the heuristic role universal 

parameters can play in identifying any given group’s core cultural symbols. 

     The paper is in six sections, namely, the introduction, which states the 

importance of the topic within a backdrop of growing interest in the philosophy 

of cultural groups; cultural essence, a section devoted to explaining the 

meaning of “culture” as used in this study; signs and symbols – what they 

mean and the differences between them; core symbols – their relevance in 

mapping the core areas of any group’s culture; parameters for identifying core 

symbols – a set of theoretical rules and an illustration of how they can be 

applied; and conclusion. 

 

2. Cultural Essence 

What sets a social group apart in terms of its worldview, social organization, 

and ways of carrying out social functions or activities is what we call culture. 



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  Copyright © GOJAR 2022                                                                    Page 57 
 

Culture, therefore, accounts for a given group’s philosophy of life, ideas about 

existence, social relationships, work ethic, and ways of conducting transitional 

ceremonies (such as those associated with birth, marriage, and death) and 

religious rituals.  

     Culture, in determining and enforcing veritable values in a society, enables 

it to avert social chaos and disintegration. As reference.com puts it, “Society 

could not function without cultural norms that assist in governing behaviour 

and values, and culture could not exist without societal influences to create it.”   

     Culture is the traditional beliefs and practices of a society or a group of 

people within a society. In this sense, culture is synonymous with tradition, 

customs, heritage, and mores. Extending the meaning of culture even further, 

Adian and Arivia (1974) say that:  

 

Culture refers to the cumulative deposit of knowledge, experience, 

beliefs, values, attitudes, meanings, hierarchies, religion, notions of time, 

roles, spatial relations, concepts of the universe, and material objects and 

possessions acquired by a group of people in the course of generations 

through individual and group striving. 

 

      For us, here, culture consists of a cultural group’s beliefs, values, norms, 

language, attitudes, activities, ceremonies, and objects and the unique way of 

life which these entail or reflect. Hence, culture provides the social platform 

and points of reference within which a given group organizes, interprets and 

makes sense of their internal and external environment. In short, culture is the 

traditional system around which a society is organized and by which its guiding 

perspectives and practices are carried on from one generation to another, and 

this often dates back to ancestral times. In many societies, culture is conveyed 

and sustained by oral tradition.   

        A distinct social group, such as an ethnic or racial group, owes its 

uniqueness to a shared cultural identity founded on shared cultural values. And 

cultural identities can be socially and psychologically stabilizing for groups 

and individuals. Absence of such identities can be very disorienting and is 

known to have been the root of deviant, counter-productive and socially 

divisive behaviour. Such behaviour is experienced usually in those societies 



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  Copyright © GOJAR 2022                                                                    Page 58 
 

where the authentic culture has been supplanted by counter-cultural forces that 

violate a people’s definition of who they are and how they customarily do 

things.  

       It is generally agreed that culture is not an inborn trait but something that 

individuals and groups can learn. In other words, cultural traits are not innate 

but rather learned acquisition of a socially-integrating set of thoughts and 

actions as they were received or changed by previous generations via oral 

tradition. Such changes are not formal amendments and rarely constitute a total 

break with the past. More often than not, they are little departures from past 

attitudes and practices or merely generational adjustments that delicately tinker 

with the meaning and manner of a people’s cultural references and habits.  

     So, although culture is a continuum authenticated by roots in the distant 

past, it is at the same time intrinsically dynamic. In whatever form culture is 

manifested, symbols play a very key role in enabling it to generate meaning for 

members of a given cultural group. 

 

3. Signs and Symbols 

Having explained what we mean by “culture”, we now turn to “symbol”. 

Generally, a symbol is something that refers to a given reality, be it abstract or 

concrete. Charles Peirce, the philosopher who has conducted the most elaborate 

study of signs, sees a symbol as a type of sign, the latter being his basic 

semantic category. Peirce (1932) believes that all modes of thinking depend on 

the use of signs. For him, every act of reasoning is a function of the 

interpretation of signs. Thus, signs mediate between the external world of 

objects and the internal realm of ideas. According to Peirce, a symbol is a sign 

which refers to the object it denotes by virtue of a law. For him, a symbol is 

technically 

 

a sign which refers to the object that it denotes by virtue of a law, usually 

an association of general ideas, which operates to cause the symbol to be 

interpreted as referring to that object.  

 

    Symbols are, therefore, associative representations of objects or social 

realities. They are not mere representations of pictures or abstract ideas, as do 



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  Copyright © GOJAR 2022                                                                    Page 59 
 

normal signs, but are deemed to be symbolic signs because there is a 

“semiosis” or “cooperation” between the given objects and their symbols. A 

symbol is different from a mere sign in the sense that it reveals a reality that is 

beyond what a sign would normally indicate. Dukor (2006) explains:  

 

Symbols are cultural realities imbued with cultural meaning and any 

suggestive symbol...is epistemic and thematic. It is an overt expression of 

the reality behind any direct act of perception and apprehension, which 

really possesses scientific connotation outside its normal, obvious or 

conventional meaning. 

 

     Above, Dukor refers to a symbol as “an overt expression of the reality 

behind any direct act of perception”. This is noteworthy because reality is not 

independent of human consciousness but consists of symbols or objects and 

events as perceived by the human mind. Symbols enable humans to understand 

and communicate their awareness and interpretation of their physical, social, 

spiritual, and cultural environment.  

     A symbol makes sense within a given semiotic code. Explaining this post-

Saussurean term, Chandler (2019) says that every symbol “as part of its social 

use within a code” makes sense within a historical and connotative context to 

“members of the sign-users' culture”. This echoes Saussure’s position that 

“language is always an inheritance from the past” (Duan 2012) users are 

compelled to accept, a view Lévi-Strauss (Chandler 2007, 27) also expresses 

when he maintains that “the sign is arbitrary a priori but ceases to be arbitrary 

a posteriori - after the sign has come into historical existence it cannot be 

arbitrarily changed”. 

     This historically fixed nature of the symbolic sign is one of the elements 

that imbues it with cultural relevance and stability and enables certain symbols 

to emerge as core symbols. 

 

4. Core Symbols  

Core symbols offer the surest guide to the identification and understanding of a 

cultural group’s essence, defining values, and characteristic behaviour. 

According to Poon (2018), symbols, as cultural materials, in being used to “to 



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  Copyright © GOJAR 2022                                                                    Page 60 
 

signify ideas, beliefs, actions, events or physical entities” are “instrumental for 

human communication and commodification”. Paraphrasing Hall (1996), he 

stresses that: 

 

The study of symbols seeks to understand symbolic forms of mediation 

and the mediated, and aims to critically demonstrate symbolic 

construction in its cultural role as meaning-makers in postmodern era. 

 

     One of the first major philosophers to appreciate the meaning-making role 

of symbols in terms of their power to organise both thought and action is 

Susanne Langer. In her indepth study, Philosophy in a New Key: A Study in the 

Philosophy of Reason, Rite and Art (1954), she says that “the human brain is 

constantly carrying on a process of symbolic transformation" of experience 

because “the main themes of our thought tend to be transposed” into symbols. 

Core symbols are those symbols which reflect and represent the main themes 

that energize the belief system and customary practices of a cultural group. 

     Though this paper is not about “the logic of meaning” in a general sense, 

Langer’s thoughts and assumptions in this regard would illuminate our basic 

understanding of symbolic meaning, and it is necessary to let her explain this in 

her own words: 

 

Meaning has both a logical and a psychological aspect. 

Psychologically, any item that is to have meaning must be employed as a 

sign or a symbol; that is to say, it must be a sign or a symbol to someone. 

Logically, it must be capable of conveying a meaning, it must be the sort 

of item that can be thus employed… Both aspects, the logical and the 

psychological, are always present, and their interplay produces the great 

variety of meaning-relations over which philosophers have puzzled and 

fought… (Langer 1954, 42-43)   

 

     Langer goes on to assert that there is no quality of meaning because 

meaning is logically derived and logic does not deal with quality but with 

relations. Even then, meaning may not be said to be a relation as a relation is 

mostly viewed as “a two-termed affair”. She prefers to see meaning as “a 

function of a term” because a function is “a pattern viewed with reference to 



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  Copyright © GOJAR 2022                                                                    Page 61 
 

one special term round which it centers”, stressing that “this pattern emerges 

when we look at the given term in its total relation to the other terms about it” 

(44). In functional terms, therefore, we can share this view by stating that a 

symbol is regarded as a core symbol in terms of its total relation to the other 

cultural elements that contextualize its symbolic pattern. 

     This means that there can be a shift in the core essence of a core symbol if 

the semantic values of the cultural elements that circumscribe its meaning 

change over a given period of time. This is why a core symbol’s meaning is not 

instinctively or infinitely fixed. Its meaning can be modified, reviewed or even 

lost over time. Cowries, for instance, used to be the core symbols of wealth 

when they served monetary purposes across Africa. When they lost their value 

as means of exchange, with the emergence and dominance of bank notes and 

coins, they lost their long-term role as symbols of wealth. 

     In spite of their symbolic decline, as noted above, cowries proved more 

resilient than some other discarded traditional symbols, such as red mud, that 

became mostly irrelevant after such demotion. Cowries continue to function 

today as cultural symbols because the user communities reverted to using them 

for decorative, theatrical, and medicinal purposes (Ngangah 2013). When 

cowries ceased to serve as means of exchange, they became easily available to 

the common folk who now use them to decorate clothings, household items, 

and masks. Their theatrical uses are seen in custumes won by cultural troupes, 

masquerades, and dancers. Their use in traditional medicine is chiefly in 

divination and fortune-telling, which are key pre-clinical tools used by 

traditional healers across Africa to identify the spiritual cause of a serious 

disease.  

     The changing fortunes of cowrie, in terms of its symbolic roles, indicate that 

symbolic transformations are continual and epochal in nature and that major 

shifts in symbolic meaning are possible within someone’s life time. 

     Symbols are not immutable. As people and societies that imbue them with 

meaning change in physical, spiritual and psychological terms, the symbols by 

which they define and explain their various shades of existence undergo 

alterations that moderate or alter the essence of their symbols. With the 

exception of few radical departures from the past, such changes are usually 



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  Copyright © GOJAR 2022                                                                    Page 62 
 

gradual and cut across generations, and this make them barely discernible to 

most observers.  

     Thus, there would always be occasional, though infrequent, need to 

determine and re-determine what constitutes a given culture’s core cultural 

symbols. As earlier noted, this is a sine qua non for assessing a cultural group’s 

symbolic uniqueness, identity, and value. To avoid making the determination 

of the core cultural symbols of an ethic group an arbitrary, non-uniform, and 

unreliable exercise, a set of generally applicable parameters by which to gauge 

the cultural relevance of symbols needs to be put forward. This is what we 

would try to do and illustrate in the next section of this study.  

 

5. Parameters for Identifying Core Symbols  

The word, “parameter” is loosely used here as an identifiable and measurable 

characteristic or distinguishing feature by which a symbol can be classified as 

“core” or “peripheral” within a given cultural belief system and practices. The 

usefulness of a parameter, in most ordinary contexts, lies in its universal or 

non-specific applicability. For example, if an examination board sets the pass 

mark at 50%, it should apply to all courses and all students for it to be a 

predictable and reliable determinant of whether a student has passed or failed a 

course. 

     Just as in the above simple example, a parameter is usually derived from the 

elements or attributes of the system which it is meant to gauge or quantify. For 

instance, in our example, the number of marks (expressed as a percentage) 

earned by a student is used to determine whether he has passed or failed. If his 

personal relationship with the teacher, rather than his performance in an 

examination, is used in awarding marks to him, then that yardstick cannot be 

considered a parameter because it is extraneous to the usual system of testing 

and grading students. 

      Before we go into the parameters we have identified for the purposes of 

determining core cultural symbols, let us briefly explain what we mean by 

“core” and “peripheral” symbols. Every society has its cultural pillars or those 

elements of cultural beliefs and practices that define and sustain its key beliefs, 

values, institutions and essential practices. Symbols which are used to represent 



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  Copyright © GOJAR 2022                                                                    Page 63 
 

these elements or their respective essence are core symbols while symbols 

which signify other cultural elements (such as a palm wine tapper, the death of 

the king) or cultural events (such as the pre-marital fattening of the bride 

among the Ibibio) are peripheral symbols because they have no direct relevance 

to the essential and central functions of the cultural group. 

     Having said this, we can now turn to the parameters for evaluating core 

cultural symbols. Although what may qualify as core cultural symbols can 

differ from one culture to another, the under-listed set of parameters derived by 

this researcher in the course of his years of conducting research in the area of 

cultural philosophy constitutes a theoretical framework which can be applied to 

identify and set apart a cultural group’s core symbols from its peripheral ones.  

     There are six parameters this researcher has used and found helpful in this 

regard. The parameters are used only in determining if a cultural artefact is a 

core symbol. By artefacts we simply mean those modes of transmitting cultural 

beliefs and practices that are found among all cultural groups. According to 

Bauman et al (1972), three forms of artefacts are universally acknowledged; 

they include: 

 

 Oral traditions (e.g. oral history, tale) 

 Material culture (e.g. shrine, totem) 

 Customary lore (e.g. ritual, masquerade act)  

 

     An artefact would be regarded as a core symbol if at least 50% of the 

parameters mentioned below are applicable to it. So, it is possible that if three 

artefacts are tested using these parameters, one may be rated 50%, another 

70%, and another 100%. Because they all measured at least 50%, all would be 

regarded as core symbols although it is clear that their degree of cultural 

weight, acceptance or popularity obviously differs. This difference can be 

critical, as we would see later in this study, when gauging which cultural 

artefact should be adopted to serve a specific cultural or research purpose. All 

artefacts that score less than 50% when measured for degree of cultural 

relevance, using these parameters, should be regarded as peripheral cultural 

symbols. 



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  Copyright © GOJAR 2022                                                                    Page 64 
 

     Below, then, are the parameters for gauging the status of a cultural symbol, 

whether it is a core cultural symbol or a peripheral cultural symbol:    

 

i. A core cultural symbol should be an integral aspect of a cultural 

group’s controlling belief system, not an extraneous appendage. 

ii. It should be popularly shared across the social strata of a given 

cultural entity. 

iii. It should reflect or symbolize a core philosophic concept or 

worldview of the cultural group in question. 

iv. Its symbolic value should derive from or be in alignment with a 

given culture’s core values, particularly its spiritual and 

cosmological frames of reference. 

v. It should be easily accessible to or popularly understood by 

members of a given cultural group.  

vi. It should be an artefact around which the people gravitate – an 

artefact that generally attracts or entails popular participation in a 

limited or massive sense.  

 

     This researcher recently conducted a study among the Igbo of eastern 

Nigeria where he needed to determine which of the two key Igbo symbols, 

ikenga (a horned deity of the Igbo) and the Igbo masquerade, he should use as 

a core cultural symbol for the research. The fact that both were common core 

Igbo cultural symbols made it even more difficult to choose one over the other. 

For the purposes of the research, he needed to choose the most common core 

cultural symbol of the Igbo.  

     Having narrowed his choice to these two Igbo cultural symbols, the 

question was: which of them, ikenga or the Igbo masquerade, is more of a core 

cultural symbol than the other? To answer this critical pre-research question, 

the six parameters were applied in comparing ikenga and the Igbo masquerade 

and below is the result:  



Global Online Journal of Academic Research (GOJAR), Vol. 1, No. 1, November-December 2022 

 
 

  Copyright © GOJAR 2022                                                                    Page 65 
 

 Ikenga Masque-

rade 

 

1st Parameter: A core cultural symbol should 

be an integral aspect of a cultural group’s 

controlling belief system, not an extraneous 

appendage. 

 

  

2nd Parameter: It should be popularly shared 

across the social strata of the cultural group. 

 

 
 

3rd Parameter: It should reflect or symbolize a 

key philosophic concept or worldview of the 

cultural group in question. 

 

  

4th Parameter: Its symbolic value should 

derive from or be in alignment with a given 

culture’s core values, particularly its spiritual 

and cosmological frames of reference. 

 

  

5th Parameter: It should be popularly 

understood by and easily accessible to 

members of a given cultural group. 

 

 
 

6th Parameter: It should be an artefact around 

which the people gravitate – an artefact that 

generally attracts or entails popular 

participation in a limited or massive sense. 

 

 
 

 

As we can see, the Igbo masquerade doubly outscored Ikenga. The researcher, 

thus, adopted and regarded it as the most common core cultural symbol of the 

Igbo. Indeed, no largely non-verbal cultural expression in Igbo land is as 

popular and widespread as the Igbo masquerade act and certainly none offers 

as much drama, variety of music, colour, sport, and all-round fascination as 

much as the theatrical complements masquerades bring to enrich events and 

enhance audience participation.  

 

6. Conclusion 

     Let us note, as we conclude this study, that parameters mean different things 

to different people, depending on their area of discipline. What a parameter 

means in linguistics is different from what it means in engineering, 



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  Copyright © GOJAR 2022                                                                    Page 66 
 

mathematics or statistics. And no matter how it is expressed (as an equation, a 

function, or a simple set of rules, such as the above 6-point parameters), a 

parameter is not a variable value (Kilpatrick 1984).  

     A parameter is a fixed value. It does not change with circumstances and is 

not arbitrarily altered. None of the six parameters we have identified should be 

altered to suit a particular cultural or research need. It is either a cultural 

artefact wholly satisfies the specific demand of each of these parameters or it 

does not. This is the spirit behind this set of rules which, it is hoped, may be of 

some benefit to a cultural philosopher or scholar conducting a research that 

necessitates the identification of a cultural group’s core cultural symbols. 

     If this study has made some contribution towards the design and application 

of general parameters for determining not only the core symbols of cultural 

groups but those core symbols’ respective level of authenticity and relevance, 

then the main goal of this study would have been achieved. As Langer (43) has 

rightly noted, “the whole purpose of general concepts is to make the 

distinctions between special classes clear”. 

 

 

 

 

Works Cited 

 

Bauman, Richard; Paredes, Americo, eds. Toward New Perspectives in 

Folklore. Trickster Press, 1972 

 

Chandler, Daniel. Semiotics: The Basics. Routledge, 2007. 

 

Duan, Manfu. “On the Arbitrary Nature of Linguistic  Sign”. Theory and 

Practice in Language Studies, Vol. 2, No. 1, Academy Publisher, pp. 54-59, 

January 2012 doi:10.4304/tpls.2.1.54-59. 

 

Dukor, Maduabuchi, “Theistic, Panpsychic Animism of African Medicine”, 

Essence, Vol. 3, 2006, p.xvi 

 



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https://www.amacad.org/humanities-indicators/higher-education/racialethnic-

distribution-degrees-philosophy 

 

https://www.reference.com/culture 

 

Kilpatrick, James J. The Writer’s Art. Andrews McMeel Publishing, 1984. 

 

Langer, Suzanne K. Philosophy in a New Key: A Study in the Philosophy of 

Reason, Rite and Art. New American Library, 1954 

 

Ngangah, Innocent. “The Epistemology of Symbols in African Medicine,” in 

Open Journal of Philosophy, Vol 03, Iss 01, 2013, pp 117-121 

 

Poon, Stephen. Symbolic Perception Transformation and Interpretation: The 

Role and Its Impact on Social Narratives and Social Behaviours. IAFOR 

Journal of the Social Sciences, Vol. 3, March 8, 2018. 

 

Trimmer, John D. Response of Physical Systems. New York: Wiley, 1950  

 

Urban, Wilbur M.  “Symbolism in Science and Philosophy” Philosophy of 

Science, Vol. 5, No. 3 (Jul., 1938), pp. 276-299.  

https://www.jstor.org/stable/184835. Assessed December 5, 2019.  

 

Wagoner, Brady. Symbolic Transformation: the Mind in Movement through 

Culture and Society. Routledge, 2009  

 

Weiss, Charles Hartshorne Paul (ed.). Collected Papers of Charles S. Peirce. 

Harvard University Press, 1932 

 

 

Author Information: Prof. Innocent C. Ngangah is of the 

Department of Philosophy, Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu 

University, Igbariam, Anambra State, Nigeria.  

Email: ic.ngangah@coou.edu.ng. 

 

 

 

 

 


