Discussion 2: Cultural Communication Considerations
Part. I
• Watch Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s The Danger of a Single Story and write a one paragraph reflection of how you feel about what she shared in the talk.
• In chapter 2, we discuss how communicating with cultural awareness means paying attention to one’s own cultural values and biases and remembering that others don’t always share them.
A. How do societies use symbols, language, values, and norms to reflect their culture?
B. What are some examples of co-cultures that you participate in?
C. When have you noticed your own cultural awareness being challenged?
Part II. Compare and contrast the United States and a country of your choice with the following cultural dynamics. Consider choosing a country that has opposing experiences to the USA and discuss examples of the benefits and drawbacks of the dynamics represented.
• High power/Low power distance
• High context/Low context
• Monochronic/Polychronic cultures
• Individualistic/Collectivistic cultures
Watch the video to answer questions: https://youtu.be/D9Ihs241zeg
Reply 2 peers post and ask questions to further discussion on the video and questions
Peer1: (Nate Smith)
I feel that she made amazing points and the mere fact that I have experienced this on a second hand basis in terms of my own thoughts towards cultural differences and how we -I- perceive them. I am in compete and utter awe. I have grown as an individual just by watching this ted-talk and will take away from it numerous teachings. Just to touch on a few of these teachings that I will speak on here in this review is, when she is talking about how when she was in school and people just expected her to know how to how to certain things just based on the fact that she was darker colored than the rest of them, is just amazing. With the lack of information they collect, People are so quick to judge and think that they know all of you just by hearing that one story. They justify it to their liking and stick with it. People need to open their minds up to the world and different cultures other than that of how they were brought up.
In the response to part one subsection A,
In terms of what I use in terms of symbols that would widely differ from that what is normal in other parts of the wold would be to the fact that we drive on the right hand side of the road. Whereas in other parts of the world, they drive on the left hand. When we say high, we tend to greet with the customary hello, or how are you doing. In France, for example, they kiss on twice on each cheek in their customary greetings. We view that as odd or showing to much affection towards another human in which we might not know super well. I have noticed a few times in where I have felt my own cultural awareness being challenged would be when I was in a larger city than that of Aspen. People are more outgoing in terms of saying hi to you on the street. So the encounters with random people to me, at first felt very odd and weird. It felt like they had a hidden agenda and needed and or wanted something from me. I have never experienced that before. As that was a while ago, my memory may be a little fuzzy in terms of the detail that were those encounters. However, I feel pretty confident in my recollections.
part two responses:
My brother traveled to Spain recently, He was in Andorea. It is this small city inside another small town in Spain. He noted that the cultural differences to be astounding in terms of everyday life. He noted that people tend to keep to themselves and are very elegant in terms of how they dress. They do not surround themselves with that of strangers and do not organize as a community. So, for the most part people are independent and stay close to the people they let in their lives. Community relations, in Andorea anyway are that of a limited scope and are not frequent.
Peer 2: (Trevor Houze)
All the characters where white with blue eyes, they wrote about snow and things outside of their own world. Which gave them great desires to explore outside their own world. I find it important to learn about the world, but it is also not good for only one story to exist. If one story exist where one group in society is the only group shown inside stories it shuts off many ways of seeing the world from stories. Stories should allow for all parts of the world to be implemented not for a focus on the same thing repeated in different ways to control our books.
A. Societies use norms, language, values, and symbols to reflect their culture in a way that it shows groups of humans have different ways of viewing life and that the norms they use are an identity of what they may believe in.
B. Co-cultures I partake in would be the anime and gaming culture, me and my lover being of different ethnicity backgrounds, and online where many different cultures and norms come together.
C. I have noticed my cultural awareness being challenged when I see something someone is doing and I question them on why they do it that way, sometimes even feeling as if that is the “incorrect” way to do things because I learned differently than them. Which in the end is not true because my morality based off my personality and culture is no more correct than anyone else as all humans are entitled to believe in their own ways.
Part 2. USA vs. Japan
. USA has just as much inequality with the leaders and the followers while in Japan the people with less power expect and accept that power is distributed unequally.
The benefits for Japan is that there would be less conflict if everyone accepts their position, the drawback would be people being used by people in higher positions.
Benefits for USA would be that since everyone follows the same ideals of inequality that means in one way people are perhaps brought together by such agreements between classes (hypothetically). Drawbacks would be that inequality based off factors that are outside of one’s own control is by many views “unjust”.
Japan is considered a high context country while USA is considered low context.
The upsides of a high context culture is everyone understands their role and what they need to do. The downsides of a high context and why low context may be better is that if someone was to attempt to move to Japan they would not know all the context needed in order to live in society “properly” which is why having low context and verbal explanations is good.
USA is monochronic and Japan is polychronic. With this being the case I would say the upsides to Japan is they would likely get things done faster since they would do multiple things at once. The upside to USA is there would be less strain on a single person to have and perform multiple different talents throughout the day.
USA is individualistic while Japan is collectivistic. The drawbacks of USA is that people will worry more about themselves than others, this is also an upside. The opposite could be said for Japan where team effort is good for getting things done at times it is better for one person with a specific talent to do that while another works on something else.
