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Cultural Differences Paper

Decent Essays

Cultural Differences Paper
Jessica Fuentes
COM 360
September 10, 2014
Mary Wardlaw

There are cultural differences within all the communities that make up the world, we are constantly surrounded and reminded of these other cultures. In this paper cultural differences will be discussed from the film “Why Did I Get Married?” which is an African-American movie about the hardships one goes through in marriage, friendships, and trust. This paper is going to give specific examples of Hall’s perspective of culture on the screen and Hofstede’s five dimensions that are reflected in a particular pattern. Examples of both verbal and non verbal intercultural communication and how they relate to particular intercultural …show more content…

This movie is targeted for African-American culture, so a lot of the language, slang, and stereotypes were evident in this film and so there wasn’t much explanation, it is simply something that is just known as it unfolds in the movie. If someone is watching this movie and they are Asian they might not understand much of what goes on in the movie, especially if they are unaware of the African-American culture. An example would be when the girls of the group go shopping and they are in a store looking at lingerie and shawls made for winter weather, the shopkeeper came up to them and simply said “we don’t keep cash in the store” now of course one of the ladies went a little crazy because she realized that she had said that because of their skin color. Hofstede’s five dimensions of culture are power distance, individualism v collectivism, masculinity v femininity, uncertainty avoidance, and long-term v short-term time orientation. In the film the five dimensions are present, in the dimension of power distance it clear with the powerful positions that all the characters have within their professional lives. The way they live and own lavish houses leads to believe that they don’t believe they are equals to everyone else because of their status. Most of the couples demand respect and expect not to be question in their motives, which is a higher power context. Next is individualism versus collectivism, in

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