The Concept of Culture Shock - Essay Example

? Culture Shock School Culture shock The Concept Different countries vary in their cultural practices and social and ethical values. Whenpeople go abroad, they find everything is different ranging from language and cuisines to customs and traditions (kidshealth.org, 2011). The newness of all these factors in addition to the lack of access to things and interaction with people one grows up with becomes the cause of stress and anxiety which is termed as the culture shock. Not everybody necessarily experiences the culture shock despite the clash of cultures. An individual’s tendency to experience the culture shock, depends to much an extent, upon the degree of freedom an individual allows himself/herself in matters of ethical significance as well as the extent to which the individual is extroverted or introverted. Most of the people experience the culture shock in their voluntary attempt to merge in the new culture. “You have to force yourself…to start acting like the people in this country. You don’t want to be looked at as a stranger. No one wants to be in this position” (Fadam, 2008). The more they try to enhance and facilitate their adjustment, the more they feel drawn out and sidelined. The feeling remains for a certain amount of time after which things begin to change for the better. Culture shock can be defined as the psychological distress and disorientation which an individual may feel when he/she moves from one culture to another with marked differences. Culture shock takes place when an individual’s “...cultural clues, the signs and symbols which guide social interaction, are stripped away. ...A difficult part of this process for adults is the experience of feeling like children again, of not knowing instinctively the ‘right’ thing to do” (Piet-Pelon & Hornby, 1985). Culture shock makes an individual review his/her limits in different aspects of life. What makes the culture shock all the more complicated as a condition to identify oneself with is the fact that the person experiencing it does not actually know that he/she is affected by it. People undergoing a culture shock know that they are lonely, agitated and all but happy, but they are generally unaware of the fact that these feelings are associated with the cultural shift. The culture shock does not set in until after some weeks have been spent in the new culture. Typical feelings that can be taken as the symptoms of the culture shock include but are not limited to the preoccupation with physical unrest, agitation over insignificant matters, a longing desire to go back to the home country, inability to take proper sleep, sudden and unexplained mood shifts, lack of self confidence, idealization of the home country, lack of competence to solve simple issues, and the feeling of being abused and humiliated. America is a multicultural society. People from different parts of the world have been migrating to America over the centuries to make it increasingly multicultural. There are so many immigrants in America that the indigenous culture of the native Americans has become just one of many that exist in America today. What fundamentally makes the American culture stand out from the queue of the cultures of the rest of the countries is the very multiculturalism and dynamism the American culture has always displayed. A vast majority of people who migrate to America in search of a better standard of living come from the underdeveloped countries with more conservative cultures. These conservative cultures are very inflexible and are shaped and controlled by strong religious principles. The religious principles of the majority shape the culture of the underdeveloped countries. Hence, when people from the conservative cultures move to such a modernistic culture as that of America, they experience culture shock. American culture provides its citizens with the flexibility and freedom that the immigrants are not quite used to. Aspects of the American culture that become the basis of culture shock include but are not limited to the American fashion, American accent, and the American cuisine. Culture shock is not limited to America. Whenever the cultures of two countries differ, people migrating from one to the other do experience the culture shock unless the cultures are similar like that of India and Pakistan, or UAE and Oman. An Indian immigrant in China may experience the same level of culture shock that he/she experiences in America because the difference between the Indian and the Chinese culture is just as obvious as that between the Indian and the American culture. If American culture is diverse, flexible and pro-freedom, Chinese culture is equally unique, inflexible and repulsive towards the external cultural influences. Hence, every country has its own cultural traits. An immigrant always experiences a culture shock when he/she is not used to them. According to Kwintessential (n.d.), an individual who migrates to America from another culture experiences the culture shock in four stages. The first stage is the stage of excitement. In it, the immigrant feels terrific. The immigrant can speak and comprehend English to communicate with people. People seem nice and kind. The places seem wonderful. The immigrant feels that he/she is going to have the time of his/her life here. This stage is called as the “honeymoon stage” because of the excitement one feels in it. The immigrant thinks that he/she has already adjusted into this culture which is why he/she is enjoying everything so much. In this stage, the immigrant feels that he/she has the all of the knowledge, skills and motivation which are the three fundamental elements required for the communication competence in light of the component model (Spitzberg & Cupach, 1984). The second stage i.e. the stage of withdrawal commences after few weeks of the immigrant’s stay in America. The immigrant starts to react to problems that he/she would normally let go of. The immigrant feels impatience, discontent, agitation, sadness and low self esteem. The excitement of the first few weeks wears away completely. The immigrant no longer is a happy tourist. He/she more starts to feel like a regular family member who can be taken for granted. The immigrant starts complaining about the fact that the host family cannot find enough time for him/her and also that the children of the host family are very ill-mannered and beyond control. The second stage is the toughest stage of the culture shock. In this stage, the immigrant feels that he/she has the knowledge and to some extent, the motivation to be competent in communication, but lacks the skills required to display the communication competence while dealing with the American people. In the third stage which is the state of adjustment, the immigrant starts to regain the sense of humor he/she had temporarily lost. The newly found mastery in the American English and awareness of the American trends and cultures feels good. The immigrant may not feel comfortable with all of the customs, yet he/she has discovered sufficient traits of the American culture that he/she can live with. The immigrant realizes that he/she had given premature statements about the American culture before and that the first few weeks were too less a time to give any rational judgment about the culture as a whole. The immigrant begins to set new goals. In this stage, the immigrant starts to regain the confidence he/she had in his/her communication competence at the outset. The fourth stage is the stage of enthusiasm. This is when the immigrant starts feeling “at home” in America. America becomes a second home to the immigrant by this stage. The communication competence at this stage is maximal. The reverse culture shock occurs when the immigrant goes back to the home country. The individual finds everything changed, even if they have actually not. The bizarre feeling is both irritating and mesmerizing in many ways and stays until the end of the first few weeks in the home country. “Perhaps the best way to depict the shock or difficulty of reentry [into the US] is to set forth a series of vignettes, with some comments. These touch two key areas--namely, U.S. society in general, and second, the Catholic Church in the United States” (Schineller, 1991). To deal with culture shock, it is imperative that the immigrant’s avowed identity is rightly perceived by the indigenous people and vice versa. People talk to one another based on their assessment of the ascribed identity of the other individuals, but the interaction becomes frustrating when the groups one feels comfort and affiliation with have not been correctly identified by the other person. “[T]he competent communicator is the person who can affirm others’ avowed identities. Other notions of intercultural competence focus on the communicator’s goal attainment; the competent communicator is the person who can convey a sense of communication appropriateness and effectiveness in diverse cultural contexts” (The World Bank, n.d., p. 2). Specific aspects of the communication competence that are related to the area of culture shock include but are not limited to the knowledge of cultural ethics of the host society, nonverbal communication, ascribed identity and avowed identity. References: Fadam, A. (2008, Aug. 6). Leaving Baghdad: Culture Shock in America. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/06/leaving-baghdad-culture-shock-in-america/. Kidshealth.org. (2011). Culture Shock. Retrieved from http://kidshealth.org/teen/your_mind/emotions/culture_shock.html. Kwintessential. (n.d.). The Stages of Culture Shock. Retrieved from http://www.kwintessential.co.uk/cultural-services/articles/cultureshock-stages.html. Piet-Pelon, N. J., and Hornby, B. (1985). In another dimension: a guide for women who live overseas. Intercultural Press. Schineller, P. (1991, June 29). Culture Shock on Returning to America. Retrieved from http://www.americamagazine.org/content/article.cfm?article_id=10606. Spitzberg, B. H., & Cupach, W. R. (1984). Interpersonal communication competence. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. The World Bank. (n.d.). Intercultural Communication. Retrieved from http://siteresources.worldbank.org/EXTGOVACC/Resources/InterculturalCommweb.pdf. Read More