Intercultural communication has been studied since after the World WarⅡ and its study is continue today. The interesting about intercultural communication is there are no right answers. How people communicate is depends on one’s culture, gender, age, religion, race, and other various elements. Also, intercultural communication is entangled with histories and knowing histories helps our intercultural communication. Intercultural communication is obstructed by stereotypes, prejudice and racism. Minority group members tend to build up one’s racial/ ethnical identity than majority group members because minorities have chance to face different cultures and have needs to ride on mainstream culture. Without understanding characteristics of Whiteness, we cannot understand intercultural communication in the U.S. because Whiteness is often less talked than blacks, Latinos, and Asians. A key point here is “privilege” and “White” is not synonymous because not every Whites have power. In addition, some Whites consider themselves as minorities or being White is a handicap to communicate with minorities because sometimes minorities also judge Whites by prejudice and their stereotyped images such as Whites are racists or despise minorities. When we do intercultural communication, language is very important. Especially, in the United States, people are low context style of communication and they prefer the direct way of speaking. We need to aware the different styles of communication such as high context otherwise it might lead misunderstanding each other. When we communicate with others, we also use nonverbal codes with verbal codes. Nonverbal behaviors are different culture by culture and it could change or emphasize the verbal messages. Verbal and nonverbal communication have important role in our intercultural communication. However, even if we can speak same language, intercultural communication never be easy because even if people speak same language, they might have different beliefs and values. When we face to other cultures, finding similarities are difficult especially at the very beginning and it becomes cause of building stereotyped images and prejudice, and it could be cause of conflicts, which could be both individual and cultural. Moreover, economic problems born many conflicts and underline cultural differences and blaming. To manage conflicts, we have to recognize different point of views, step back when we need, and being flexible to new ideas.
I have experiences of met people from various countries and they had different cultures, religions, races, genders, and languages from mine. I met with culture shocks many times, but at the same time, I was enjoying them. Also, I do not think I am a person who evaluates others by stereotyped image or prejudice. However, more or less, I still judge people who have different cultures or backgrounds by my values. I do not say I have a high intercultural communication skill, but at least, I know every people have different beliefs and values. To develop my intercultural communication skill, I can open my mind. For example, talk to various people. No one has the same background and it might be a chance to break wrong or bad images. Also, I can let them know about my culture. Most of the times, intercultural communication starts from less similarities and it might make hard to communicate each other. However, less similarity means you can learn many new ideas.
Through this course, we learned a lot about intercultural communication. Does this course change your ideas for other cultures?
yes I think that it opened my eye to not only different cultures but also opened up my eyes to my own culture too. I learned a lot from reading your blogs and learning about a culture that I didn't know very much about.
返信削除Yes. This course taught me the importance of learning about other cultures in order to communicate well with them. Before this class, I thought that to communicate with someone from another culture, you simply needed to be open-minded and patient. I've learned that it is important to learn about other cultures-their history, their communication styles, etc-to be an effective communicator.
返信削除I had fun meeting you through this class, and I really enjoyed learning about your culture. Good luck in school!
Hmm, doesn't change my ideas for other cultures just widened my eyes in regards to what constitutes a culture. I know now there is a lot more to culture than ethnicity!
返信削除I am not sure it has changed my ideas for other cultures because I have always known that cultures are different and there are obstacles in communicating with other cultures. I think this class has showed me how to deal with those obstacles in a way that doesn't make me look like a stereotypical American. This class has sparked more interest in learning about other cultures by either traveling there or just picking up a book and learning on my own time. I really enjoyed hearing what all of you had to say about other cultures as well, and getting to know more about the Japanese culture.
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