Culture is the way of thinking of a group of people who share common behaviour traits and background knowledge. Intercultural communication is the complex process of communicating to people through a cultural barrier. Different words can even mean different things to people of different cultures. For example, a Chinese might think of a tower as a pagoda, an American might think of it as a skyscraper and a Frenchman might think of it as the Eiffel tower.Interpersonal communication as it name implies, is simply communication between two or more people. An important factor of interpersonal communication is our emotional quotient (EQ) which influences the way we interact with other people.
I’ve observed that while forming teams, people who do not know each other initially seem to have a natural tendency to stick with people of their own country or race. For example, Indians team up with other Indians and Singaporeans stick to Singaporeans. When members of the team come from the same culture, we feel comfortable as we understand and can relate to the other members better; we are in our “comfort zone”.
I reckon that this is one of the reasons as to why we were randomly grouped with people from various cultures in this course. By forcing us out of our “comfort zones”, we have to interact with people of other cultures, thereby improving our intercultural and interpersonal skills. By improving these skills, we can communicate better and hopefully avoid embarrassing social faux pas in our future careers.
Dear Russell,
ReplyDeleteI agree with you very much on your point about the natural tendency for people to stick with their own cultural and race in a group. This can be observed in our society and it occur even for myself.
Thinking deeply, I think is is important that we try to have as much exposure with other cultures as possible. This way we can learn as much about their way of thinking. This can prevent or at least minimize conflicts should we work with people from their culture in the future.
Sometimes, I hope that we're given more opportunities to socialize with different cultural groups outside class. Perhaps, some cultural zones should be implemented in NUS so we can at least, beforehand understand a few important points when dealing with a foreign culture that we're unsure of.
Regards,
Mohd Ferrino
Hey Russell,
ReplyDeleteYou bring in EQ as an important factor in interpersonal communication, but fail to expound on it. Some detail would have made it complete. You could have included that EQ measures how well we manage our relationships with people, and this affects how effectively we can communicate with them.
We all say that the world is getting ‘Americanised’, or should I say ‘Americanized’. Pop culture sure has a big role in it, but your example on towers led me to think of another possible explanation for it. With so many possible interpretations of a single thing, there arises a need to standardise it. With American culture being the predominant one, everyone starts to follow it to some extent in order to minimise confusion and have a standard for things. For instance, in your tower example, if a Singaporean refers to a tower, he is most likely referring to a tall building. References from famous US TV shows like FRIENDS, How I Met Your Mother are commonplace, especially among the youth.
Overall, I felt that your post is good in content but the structure was quite loose, and difficult to follow. It could have been more coherent by some rearrangement of thoughts and more usage of prepositions.
Cheers,
Anuj
Hey Russell,
ReplyDeleteI like your picture, where did you get it? When I started writing I tried using Google with many key words but could not find any thing for my post.
NUS is a national university but I think it is now a international placed in Singapore since so many students from many countries come here. It is good because it provide us with a international environment. We can interact with many cultures without having to go around the world. But some students seem to not realize it and remain in their "comfort zones".Not only do their knowledge about other cultures are poor but they also miss good opportunities to practice communication. Lack of understanding about other cultures may cause embarrassing situations. For example, in Vietnam, people name begin with their family name and it is uncommon to call someone by his or her family alone. I was once called by my family name by my tutor.In addition he is not Vietnamese so he mispronounced it. As a result, I did not think that he called me and he thought that I was absent that day.
As you point out, EQ is an important factor in interpersonal communication, I think that we should also learn how to improve our EQ. I once read in a book about successful people, and the author gave his conclusion that those who succeed are those who can control their emotion.
regards,
Long
Dear Russell,
ReplyDeleteI like the example you made in the second paragraph, together with the picture. It is true that cultures on earth are so diverse which makes misunderstandings very likely to occur if communicator from either side does not know the other side's culture. But how can we manage to know so many different cultures so well? So it happens that inadequate knowledge of the other culture is usually the case in intercultural communications.
Since it is getting so complicated having so many cultures, how about setting up a standarized culture? It is not easy, either. Cultures are formed because of certain geographical, economic and social conditions and are evolving themselves all the time. Unless all factors that can possibly affect the development of cultures become the same everywhere on earth, imposing a standarized culture will never be possible.
Since it is so, it will always be useful if we keep in mind the principle of seeking common ground while putting aside differences. Like Confucious said we can strive for harmony in diversity.
Regards,
Shiyan
Ferrino:
ReplyDeleteYes, it would be nice to learn more about other cultures outside of class. However, instead of waiting for the university to provide us with materials, why don’t we just do a little research ourselves? After all, all it takes is a few moments to search for information about other cultures on the internet.
Anuj:
Thanks for the great post about EQ. I had initially wanted to post more about it, but sadly was constrained by the word limit. I will work on my loose structure and hope to improve it in my next blog entry.
Dam Long:
I found my image under the image search section in Google, but am unable to remember the keyword. I guess I was just lucky to find a nice image.
I didn’t know that I shouldn’t call a Vietnamese by his family name. Guess it was pure luck that I didn’t commit this mistake. Thanks for the “heads up”.
Shiyan:
You have a good point. There are usually things between cultures that are similar. We could always work from this common ground and hopefully improve communication as we get to know each other better.
Regards,
Russell
Hey Russell,
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that as our society becomes more and more integrated, intercultural skills becomes ever more important to avoid conflicts from arising. But as from what Anuj said, are we simply accommodating the other culture, or are we slowly conforming to a predominant culture? That would certainly be an interesting situation that is bound to happen within our generation.
On my next point, i would like to comment that it is true many people find it hard to step outside their comfort zone, and explore new possibilities. I believe that through this course, it would make us more willing to take the initiative to commnicate, and open up new boundaries, to discover new possibilities.