My Essay

Hey!

just finished my essay for my Intercultural Communication class. If you have time it might me a fun thing for you to look at. Below is a shortened and edited version for you reading enjoyment. If you really don't have much time, just read #4. My answer to 4 will give you some insight into how I am feeling these days.

Love,
meg

1. What is the connection between communication and culture? And

2. How does culture influence how people interact with each other?

Communication and culture are like twin sisters born two minutes apart. They have grown up together, changed together, learned from and taught each other, they have both hurt and helped each other. They depend on each other. They wear similar clothes and have corresponding jobs. People get them confused if they do not know them well enough. Even though Communication and culture are different ‘people’, they are twin sisters; one is not the same without the other.

Communication is defined as a “symbolic process whereby reality is produced, maintained, repaired and transformed.” (Carey) Culture is a specific people group’s reality, simply put. One does not work without the other because they have too much influence over each other. Within a culture are cultural values, or beliefs and values held by a people group that tell the members what the group should and should not be. These set of values determine how people from different cultures communicate about different topics. Some Native American people groups believe that there is a specific harmony that exists between humans and nature. This cultural value will affect their intercultural communication in many different ways. For example, if I go visit this people group and use the word, “life”, I would probably be referring to my own life at home or the biological life within me, maybe even my 100 years. They may interpret that word to mean the world of “life” around me, including the trees, bodies of water, wildlife, and other things. Without clearly defining what I mean when I say “life,” we may find a serious miscommunication caused by different cultural values.

B.J., my fiancé, and I have different cultures. He is a man and I am a woman. (Although some may not see these as different cultures, just simply biological differences, I recognize them as different cultures because they can create a different set of cultural values.) In the beginning of our relationship on a drive from Austin to College Station our conversation landed on the topic of trust. I clearly told him that I did not “trust” him because I did not “trust” anybody. He immediately pulled the car over and told me that if I did not trust him, we would have to break up. Trust to him meant a basic understanding that he is dependable and that I can count on him to keep his word. B.J. is a man whose cultural values tell him that if he is not trusted, especially by his potential spouse, then he is not a man. To me, trust meant an absolute belief in that person, that they would never let me down. Having been let down so many times in the past, my trust is not easily given. B.J. and I reached a standstill that night. As we sat in the parking lot of a grocery store both frustrated and upset we tried to come to a conclusion about when one should trust someone. Thankfully after about 2 hours, he asked me, “What do you mean by trust?” (Obviously, we worked it out and now I can say without any reservation that I do trust him completely.) Culture hugely affects communication

Communication very strongly affects culture. Besides providing a common culture with a unified set of words (language) and a common way to interpret those words on the most basic level, communication is the key factory in shaping culture over time. Gerry Philipsen wrote that “culture is a socially constructed and historically transmitted pattern of symbols, meaning, premises, and rules…” I agree. Whether it is telling stories, teaching recipes, or sensitizing the younger generation to certain words, culture is passed down from generation to generation through communication. History, events, style… all of these things affect the way generations pass down culture. Culture changes with communication. (If you don’t believe me, just play a game of telephone.)

3. How can we think about identity and culture, analyze your own identity and how culture has shaped it.

I tend to lean toward understanding identity through both a communicative and a social scientific perspective. One’s perceived self Identity is an understanding of who one is based on culture, community, experiences, events, personality, and of course communication. Much of our identity comes from the groups that we belong to (that is easy to see later when I talk about which groups I belong to.) Yet still a large part comes from our interactions in this world. I like to think of identity as a block of wood set upon this earth. Each person has one. Say someone is born in Africa, they get certain notches cut out of their block. If they are born somewhere else, they have other notches cut. That same person may be born into a wealthy African family so they get some more notches cut. Basically each person starts with the same block of wood but they get different automatic notches cut out depending on the things that they cannot control, like place of birth, family traits, looks, class they are born into… As they grow and join groups or interact with different people, as they get hurt or learn things, as they change and grow different notches are cut creating an actual shape in the wood. When they are done with life and can change no more (life is over when you can no longer change) their carving is complete and so is their identity. None are the same. One’s identity is never formed until they stop changing, growing, believing, and interacting.

4. What are the differences between China and US that you have noticed so far? Focus on worldviews, culture, rituals, ways of life, public space, etc.

There are an endless number of examples that I could detail in the next few paragraphs because of the large number of differences in communication and culture between the United States and China. I will briefly discuss two of them, first, the way the different cultures treat engagement, and the way the two use Chinese and English names.

I am getting married on August 30, 2008. That is 68 days from today. Of all of the things I have experienced in China in my at three trips, “not feeling engaged” has been the hardest. I have been talking to Tory at great lengths about the non excitement over my engagement among my Chinese friends both here and in Inner Mongolia. If I were in the United States, women would be constantly throwing me parties, gawking at my ring, asking wedding question, etc. Here, when I tell women I am engaged, they simply ask me about B.J., if they say anything at all. I have told a few girls who know me at least on an acquaintance level (which constitutes at least some squealing in my culture,) like Sophia, Xing Lau Shi, and Xu Lau Shi They have mostly responded with a smile or a courtesy question. (Sophia told me I was too young.) I have also told women who know nothing about me, like store clerks when I was shopping for some unnamed scandalous items. They don’t really seem to understand what the big deal is even when they do understand English. Most surprising is the closer friends that I have told. I was able to tell my closest Chinese friend named Cissy. She is friends with both B.J. and I. We met her and helped her with her English when we were In China together in December of 2006. Although it was over email, I was very disappointed with her lack of excitement at my announcement of her two friends getting married. I know it is a cultural difference. Maybe they view marriage differently; maybe the engagement process is just not a big deal here. I do not know. In the states, anyone I told, whether they knew me or not would automatically get very excited and ask tons of questions. All of the women would immediately grab my hand and inspect my ring. Some of that would get annoying, but I never imagined how “unengaged” I would feel here. (Cissy will be coming to visit me in a couple of weeks and I am very excited to ask her some more questions about this topic.)

The second difference that intrigues me is the way that Chinese people will take an English name when Westerners come to visit them here in China. When foreigners come to American, rarely do we take a second name to accommodate them. I do not really have too much to say about this, it is just something I have noticed.

(This morning I told Jackie, our group’s music teacher who is a man, that I am getting married. Again he responded with, “You’re so young, I cannot believe that you are getting married.” I wanted to include this, but it happened this morning and he is a guy and I have limited my discussion to women’s reactions….) (This is a picture of Jackie and Tori and I.)