Challenge of Intercultural Communication - Essay Example

TASK MEETING THE OTHER: BENEFITS OF INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION Dealing with other cultures is very interesting and rewarding, it provides me withnew interesting experiences. For example, I loved going to the concert of Iranian music with Ahmad, my friend from Iran. If I didn’t know him, I would hardly imagine the possibility to get such unusual cultural experience myself. Even if I listened to that music myself, I doubt I would understand it as deeply as I did thanks to my friend. Cultural differences are beneficial not only for making leisure time more exciting, but also are very useful in other activities, for example, in the process of studying. Intercultural perspective helps to deepen our knowledge and broaden horizons. During my studies I was involved in the common project with my Iranian friend, we provided each other with useful insights about our countries. Comparative analysis made our essays better and, as a result, we both got excellent marks. Even though now I understand how beneficial intercultural experiences might be, earlier I had some prejudice regarding meeting representatives of other cultures. I was especially suspicious about meeting Iranian men, whom I imagined as very closed-minded and even dangerous people. Probably, such prejudice was formed in my mind by popular mass media, talking a lot about Muslim terrorists and difficulties in negotiations with Iran. When I first met Ahmad, first representative of his race, ethnicity, nationality and religion, I was confused and hesitated to start conversation. However, our common task made me do so, and when we started talking, I realized that I met very interesting open-minded person with broad and yet deep knowledge in different spheres of social sciences. Ice was broken, we made a great common project and even became friends afterwards. Later on, I told him about my initial prejudice and we laughed together on it. This intercultural encounter has taught me to be more open to representatives of other cultures. I made more international friends which made my life more exciting. I believe that it is important to be able to overcome all stereotypes and prejudices as this is essential basis for our own well-being, the way to enrich our life and make it more interesting. Most importantly, this is the only possible way to peaceful coexistence in our world, which is so diverse and intercultural, though globalized and highly interconnected. TASK 2. ANALYSIS OF ADVERTISEMENTS Advertisement campaigns usually appeal to societal values, which are important for consumers. Companies try to understand the identity of the person who would buy the product and compose the message which can touch his or her soul and create the impulse to buy the product. Mass producers cannot direct their messages to each particular individual and try to find the universal messages, which reflect the broad societal values and moods. For example, advertisement of the Coca-Cola Company “Share the happiness” appeals to the common societal value of inclusion. We are social creatures and we are afraid to be lonely. Coca-Cola advertisement appeals to the feeling of loneliness and promises to save everyone from this feeling with the help of brand-related experience. Besides inclusion and sharing, Coca-Cola talks about happiness. This is essential socially accepted standard of living. People seek for happiness not only in order to fulfil their internal need, but also in their desire for socialization as if you are not happy you have less changes to be accepted by society. Advertisement of Apple promotes “thinking differently” which somehow means social exclusion. However, it appeals to another societal value of being appreciated by peers, through the attempt of becoming different and therefore better than others. Diesel tells us to “be stupid” which correlates with natural necessity of making things easier, which is another important societal value, correlated with social inclusion. Being simple means being understood and accepted by others. McDonald’s with its “I’m lovin’ it” campaign promotes another basic value – love. Besides that it appeals to the values of being loyal and consistent. Abovementioned examples show that while planning their marketing campaigns, big companies usually try to identify basic societal values and needs, which are common to the majority of their consumers and try to persuade consumers that their brands promote these values and help to fulfil basic needs. TASK 3. STEREOTYPES ABOUT AMERICANS It is common knowledge that representatives of every nation are subjects to stereotypes. Americans do not constitute exception to this rule. Most of stereotypes are made by foreigners, by people who do not live in the United States of America. So what do people usually think about Americans and why these stereotypes appear? First of all, a lot of people think that Americans are uneducated and not really interested in studying anything about other countries and cultures. This stereotype probably appeared due to the fact that Americans have great natural advantage – their native language is spoken all over the world and they do not necessarily have to study new language when travelling to another country or talking to people from different countries. Besides that, Americans have famous traditions of education in the atmosphere of love towards their own country, which makes others think that such patriotism means inattentiveness to the outside world. Secondly, people say that Americans are materialistic. It is believed, that average person living in the USA always wants to possess more and more expensive belongings, and fulfilling this need becomes the sense of his or her life. Americans are perceived among the brightest representatives of the “Western Materialistic Culture”. One of the reasons of this stereotype can be the fact that United States of America is very rich country. It suffered less than many other countries during the World Wars and produces now a lot of high-quality products, which are spread all over the world. As the result, middle class in the USA has comparatively high standards of living, which may cause envy of less developed countries. Besides negative stereotypes, there are also positive ones. For example, a lot of people would say that Americans are the most optimistic people in the world. A lot of people imagine a smiling face when they try to think about how average American looks like. The reasons of this stereotype might be connected with the reasons of the previously mentioned one. When people have comparatively high standards of life, they tend to be more satisfied with their life and therefore to be more optimistic. Usually, foreigners meet such people as they travel more to other countries. Besides that, Americans are usually taught not to express their negative emotions. Question “How are you?” is rather formal and it is not common to answer anything other than “Ok”. Of course, the range of stereotypes is much broader than those mentioned above. It is important not to have any prejudice and to remember that Americans are very different and none of the stereotypes should necessarily apply to any particular individual. MAJOR PROJECT Introduction We live in the globalized world, which becomes smaller every day. Language barriers become lower and transportation systems become more advanced, which makes travelling easier. People with different cultural and religious backgrounds interact more and more every day: at playgrounds, in schools, in universities or at workplaces. Different cultures influence each other, and the world becomes unified in its diversity. We become global citizens of the world, in which even the place of physical presence is no longer important, due to the development of information-communication systems. However, in our small unified world there still exist many nations and traditions, religions, believes and values, which might contradict each other. Such contradictions might raise conflicts. For example, we experience territorial dispute of East Asia, crisis in relations between Ukraine and Russia etc. We should deal with such diversity through intercultural dialogue, paying respect towards different values and points of view, implementation of shared values of peaceful coexistence. My argument is that in current realities intercultural knowledge becomes crucial for everyone. In current realities of growing threat of information wars it is essential to understand how different is the use of language by individuals with different national, ethnical, racial, and religious, class, gender, and sexual identities. Knowledge is the first step to objective analysis, which is based on logic, not on emotions. If everyone would have deep thorough intercultural knowledge, the possibility of starting information war would be very low as it is usually based on emotions and absence of logical thinking. Literature Overview According to the Iceberg Concept of Culture, proposed by Edward T. Hall (1976), one of the founders of the cultural communication theory, we can easily see just a very small part of the culture, which includes such basic exposures as audiovisual arts, language, traditions etc. At the same time specific usage of language, contexts, non-verbal communication and many other cultural aspects are usually hidden from our eyes and goes far beyond simple understanding of another cultures. Every culture has many dimensions. Trompenaars and Hampen-Turner (1997) identified seven different dimensions of culture, including the following: universalism versus particularism, neutral versus emotional, achievement versus ascription, individualism versus communitarianism, specific versus diffuse, internal direction versus outer direction, sequential time versus synchronous time. At the same time Judith N. Martin and Thomas K. Nakayama (2010) describe much more cultural dimensions, interpreting them through multiple levels of cultural identities and contexts, values, beliefs and norms. All these dimensions should be known and very well understood through the prism of various means of intercultural communication, including contextual analysis, analysis of language and non-verbal communication, value orientations etc. If people do not pay attention to these differences, conflicts may arise. These conflicts can be different by nature. According to Moore’s circle of conflict (1986), there exist relational, structural, value, data conflicts as well as conflicts of interests. Some of them can be resolved if you work with them accordingly, some are especially difficult and almost impossible to resolve. Regardless of the type, it is always better to avoid any cultural conflicts then fight with their consequences. Research Results For my research I decided to choose two “pen pals” from two cultures, which used to seem extremely similar recently but have almost nothing in common today. I chose representatives of two part of Ukrainian-Russian cultural conflict in order to understand better how misunderstandings in cultural dialogue, inability and absence of desire to understand each other lead to information and even physical conflicts and how important is to possess intercultural knowledge, which may help to create constructive cooperation environment. My first “pen pal” is Anna, Ukrainian girl, living in Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine. She is 21 years old, student of philosophy department of one of the biggest Ukrainian Universities. She is very proud of her country and her culture. In my dialogues with her I felt her very strong national identity. Besides that, she feels very strong regional identity. She identifies herself as European and is very proud to be part of “progressive Western culture. It was very interesting to know, that attitude of Anna towards her culture and her self-identification changed a lot during the last year. This is how she describes this phenomenon: Just a year ago I didn’t think much about my national identity. I was the same Ukrainian then as I am now. Nominally, nothing changed. But something very important changed in my mind, in my soul. Previously I spoke Russian and didn’t see something bad in it. It seemed so natural to speak your native language, the language of your family. But now I can’t speak it anymore, just can’t. Now I feel how different I am from Russian identity, how much European I became. I would better speak English than Russian now, even with Russians. These words of Anna surprised me a lot. I always thought that Ukraine and Russia are very close countries, that even regarding recent conflicts there are no national, cultural or language differences between them. I was pretty sure that people in these two countries speak the same language. My confusion from Anna’s letters about her self-identification and attitude towards Russia and Russian language was supported by my negotiations with the second “pen pal”. His name is Ivan, he lives in Moscow, the capital of Russia. He is 28 years old, he is middle class worker. His national identity has always been Russian, even though he has grandmother and some relatives in Ukraine. He says that he likes this country and does not want war. I decided to ask him about his thoughts on cultural differences between Russia and Ukraine. Here is what he answered: There is no such country as Ukraine. The current territory of Ukraine is just the part of Russian land which once decided to separate. I believe this decision is very stupid because there are no differences between Russians and Ukrainians: we speak the same language, we have the same religion, background, common values and the same history. We would be much stronger together. My “pen pals” have very different communication styles. Anna has rather high-context communication style. She usually expresses herself with a lot of emotions. When we talk by Skype I notice that one her look can mean much more than many words. I believe that she usually doesn’t even notice that she expresses herself this way. I believe, one of the reasons for such behavior is the fact that she is woman, and average woman is naturally much more emotional than average man. At the same time, communication style of Ivan is rather low-context. He is sure that his position is right. He has no doubts about what is happening in his country and all around the world. He always reminds me that Russia is huge and powerful country and every other country should be afraid of its power. He is not emotional at all, first of all because he is man and average men tend to show their emotions far less than women. Besides that, he seems to live in the situation of total stability, he is sure that all the actions of his country are right. Ivan expresses himself with low context, his words do not have double meanings. I believe that the reason of this fact is also hidden in his class identity. He is used to literal expressions at his work and in the family. He is very religious, believes in one God and never questions the fact that he exists in the same manner as he doesn’t question the fact that Vladimir Putin, the President of his country can do only correct things. At the same time, Anna tends to think a lot, to have many doubts, to analyze everything what is happening around her, events in her country. She sees ambiguous meanings in news, in decisions, even in her reality. I believe this influences a lot the way she communicates herself. I believe this also creates ambiguity in the style of her communication, which in turn makes in very high-context. I don’t think that these two people could normally communicate with each other. I am pretty sure they would have huge differences in understanding each other’s values or style of communicate. I don’t know if it is possible to extrapolate cultural differences between these two people on cultural differences between two big countries, Russia and Ukraine, but I think that communication with these two “pen pals” gave me some understanding of the current European conflict. These interactions taught me very important thing: even though sometimes people might seem very similar culturally, they might in fact be very different, when looking at their identities closer. People who speak the same language, have the same religion and the same history do not necessarily have the same identities. Another important thing which I understood: in current realities it is crucial to have intercultural knowledge, to do our best in the efforts to understand other people, no matter how similar or different are their cultural identities. This is one of the basic requirements for achieving peace. I am glad that I made this research as it broadened my horizons, showed me a lot of new interesting aspects of intercultural communication, made me aware about ongoing conflict between two countries, Russia and Ukraine, which were unknown to me before. Interactions with representatives of these two countries gave me important insights into the current political and cultural processes which are going on in Europe, made me understand global civilizational issues and proved the growing importance of intercultural dialogue. Conclusion In my research I analyzed my interactions with two individuals, very culturally similar and at the same time very different in the dimension of national identities and communication contexts. I realized how different might be perception of the same phenomena, even such seemingly unambiguous one as national identity. Besides that, I understood how different communication context might influence one’s behavior and possibility to establish constructive dialogue. These interactions made me sure that intercultural knowledge and ability to build constructive dialogue are among the most necessary skills of the person living in the modern world. All countries on the planet Earth are already strongly interconnected. Actions of just one country (for example, using atomic power) can lead to the global catastrophe for all humanity. Only unifying our diverse backgrounds and being able to build effective intercultural dialogue, being tolerant to each other and concentrating on our common values and goals can lead to peaceful coexistence. References 1. Hall, Edward T. (1976). Beyond the Culture. Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Press/Doubleday, pp. 256. 2. Trompenaars, Fons and Hampen-Turner, Charles (1997). Riding the Waves of Culture: Understanding Cultural Diversity in Business. 2nd edition. London: Nocholas Brealey Publishing, pp. 276. 3. Martin, Judith and Nakayama, Thomas. Intercultural communication in contexts. 5th ed. New York: The McGraw-Hill, 500 p. Retrieved on 01.08.2014 from: http://www.rasaneh.org/Images/News/AtachFile/15-8-1390/FILE634561743619907963.pdf 4. Moore, Christopher. (1986). The Mediation Process. San Francisco: Jossey Bass, p. 26 - 39 Read More