Films are considered to be a very valuable tool when examining intercultural communications, because they depict the way people and cultures communicate their identities. In The Woman In Gold, Maria Altmann, a Jewish refugee teams up with a young but determined lawyer, Randy Schoenberg (Reynolds), to reclaim the painting of her aunt, and with it, a part of her heritage. The painting, completed by the very famous Gustav Klimt, was stolen from her home during World War II. It was then displayed at the Belvedere, becoming what the movie refers to as the “Mona Lisa of Austria.” Due to its immense importance to the Austrian society and the personal connection to Mrs. Altmann, the battle for the masterpiece is both an intercultural and an interpersonal conflict for the characters. In many ways, The Woman In Gold, serves as a good example for the theories and concepts of intercultural communication. The Martin and Nakayama text defines political history as history that focuses on political events. But in the case with Maria Altmann, the holocaust was more than just ‘political history.’ It was also a religious and ethnic history, in that it affected all of the Jewish communities and shaped Jewish history in general. It even served as a cultural and a diasporic history, after it changed Europe and provoked a massive migration of refugees. In short, the war was not just an independent political event that “just happened”, but an event that shaped Mrs. Altmann’s idea of self. The war
Beginning in the introduction, Waxman argues that the Holocaust was not just one event, but various events that were witnessed by many different people over an expansive time frame and a large geographical area. Therefore, there cannot be one universal testament to the events and it is imperative that all testimonies are examined excluding all biases. In the five chapters of the book, Waxman looks at the testament of “first chronicler,
Teaching the Holocaust to high school students can be tricky at times. Choosing the right sources, whether primary or secondary, can be a daunting task. Students may connect to certain sources on an individual level, but other sources may make it hard to understand the “people” of the Holocaust. Susan Morger’s, Teaching the Diary of Anne Frank: An In-depth Resource for Learning about the Holocaust through the Writings of Anne Frank, offers high school teachers a very useful resource for teaching the Holocaust. Morger seeks to explain to students why the Holocaust occurred, by answering, “Why were Anne and her family, along with millions of others, stigmatized, deprived of their possessions, forced into hiding, hunted down, and killed.” She does this by providing a rubric for instruction that includes: teaching resources, a general history of World War II, a detailed look at antisemtism, prejudice, and scapegoating. Morger pains herself to remind the instructor to individualize the Holocaust as a tool for understanding.
Many, many people suffered during the Holocaust war. The Jews in particular were in grave danger. The drama ‘Anne Frank’ outlines so many ways that this historical event caused a shift in the mood of the characters and their relationships. Before the Holocaust, Anne Frank was just an ordinary Jewish girl living in Germany. A German leader named Adolf Hitler developed a plan to destroy the Jews and to rule over the specific places where they lived. What Hitler did to these poor Jews, and the sheer terror they endured at the hands of this Nazi leader is purely unfathomable.
In public discourse surrounding an event like the Holocaust, it is not uncommon for one to want to summarize the event in some abstract concept, be it positive or negative. This type of thinking is especially prevalent in the conclusions drawn by those reading literary works relating to the Holocaust, in which the stories are so entrenched with stereotypes of suffering and the equivocal life-lessons that they lead to a rather shallow understanding of an emotive and difficult subject. This is not to say that drawing these types of conclusions is wrong or especially invalid, but rather the process of projecting these lessons onto the story without developing their further implications speaks to a superficial longing of externalizing the
The Holocaust, one of humanities most horrendous acts and a large topic in the history of World War II. Led by the German National Socialists, the Holocaust was an attack on innocent people for reasons of race, sexuality, nationality, and religion with their main target being the millions of European Jews who they saw as an ‘inferior race’. Hitler and his higher up stripped Jews of everything. He took their money, their homes, their jobs, their nationality, their dignity, and eventually he took their lives. In Peter Longerich’s Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews, Longerich takes an in depth look at Nazi politics and how it eventually led to their Final Solution of the Jewish Question. His research that began in the late 1990s, when he questioned both schools of Holocaust studies, the Intentionalists and the Structuralists. His studies in Europe led to a novel that that outlines the entire history of the Holocaust, the ideas of Judenfrage, and the implementation of Judenpolitik on the Jews of Europe from 1933 to 1945.
Since the holocaust entered the popular culture in countries such as the USA and Ireland, it was mere public ignorance that led to a variety of representations of the tragedy that was the holocaust. One piece of literature that has impacted many peoples’ opinion on the holocaust comes from the diary of Anne Frank, an adolescent girl who was trapped in hiding during the Nazi occupation of her country. The worldwide popularity of the novel led to over 30 million copies being sold and Andrea Pitzer believes ‘came to represent the American interpretation of the holocaust’. The book offers a unique representation of the holocaust in the sense that we do not hear any information from her journey after she is sent to a concentration camp and do not hear any details of her death. The power and effectiveness of the diary however comes from the historical events that surrounded her account. Kee Ribbon’s believes that Anne Franks diary is ‘sequential art’ and has been used worldwide to help people ‘get a grip on the transnational representation of the historical conflict(WW2) beyond the battlefield’. The personal narrative that she provides in her diary also reaches out to that emotional appeal that hooks the audience in the sense that her in-depth personal experiences interests the readers like that of the work of speigleman.
Today, we live in a culturally diverse society due to globalization. As our world grows, expands and become increasingly more interconnected, the need for effective interpersonal communication among differing cultures has become apparent. When people from different cultures interact with one another there is intercultural communication because different cultures create different interpretation and expectations about what is seen as competent behaviors that will enable the construction of shared meanings.
Intercultural communication: A discourse approach attempts to explain the discourse approach and points to the authors ' distinction between cross-cultural communication and intercultural communication. The chapter underlines the authors ' approach and theory to intercultural communication. It covers several explanations and the distinction between cross-cultural communication and intercultural communication. The chapter discusses the many varieties of culture that exist. It also clarifies that intercultural communication can occur in conversations not necessarily when two people are from different countries.
This text is a good reference point. This text is used to understanding communication within culture. This source also gave a better understanding
Intercultural communication competence refers to the ability of an individual to adapt and communicate appropriately and effectively across a wide array of cultural contexts. That is to say, for an individual to be considered an intercultural communicator they must understand other’s cultures as well as they understand their own, and apply this understanding to communication (Chen 1-2). With the increasing diversity at the workplace, school and other social settings, it has become increasingly important to learn how to communicate with people from a diverse array of cultures. More importantly, adapting to a more effective intercultural communication competence model provides us with learning opportunities occasioned by the interaction with people from other backgrounds. The intercultural communication competence model comes with some key components including tolerance for uncertainty, self-knowledge, and motivation. The greatest and most important of these aspects is motivation. An individual must be willing to foster relationships with people from a different cultural background. If an individual lacks the willingness to promote intercultural relationships, then other aspects of the intercultural communication model become moot.
Many of us individuals face conflicts almost everyday in our lives. People of all culture have challenging in their lives that they come across a certain incident and get confused in what decision to be made. These conflicts could be a conflict between oneself and another person, an inner-conflict, a conflict between oneself and nature, one and society, or oneself and God. There are positive and negative intercultural conflicts that occurs every day. An example of a positive conflict could be two different cultures compliment one another on the way they dress or how good their food is in the way they prepare it in their culture, or just communicating and respecting one another with the issue that needs to be addressed openly. A negative conflict is when someone has a lack of communication and unwilling to compromise. According to lecture 6, “intercultural conflict occurs when differences in goals, expectations, and values stem from broader cultural differences” (COM-263 Lecture 6, 2017). This paper will describe an incident that happened in France with a Muslim women on how the conflict arose, the best way to handle the conflict, and one recommendation that comes from a Christian Worldview.
Humans have been communicating since four million years. On the other hand, the birth of culture is estimated to have taken place about 35,000 years ago. Today, both culture and communication have evolved considerably and have become interdependent of one another, to the point that communication is considered to be a product of culture. Thus, our own culture has a deep impact on our thoughts and behaviors. Since each culture has its distinct aspects, intercultural communication can be the cause of conflict and disorder. There are three main issues which are at the root of the problem of intercultural miscommunication : language as a barrier, cultural diversity and ethnocentrism. I will analyze
Previous researchers have found that for a person to achieve better and more effective communication competence, it is necessary to develop skills that allow an appropriate participation in specific situations. The ability to listen, ask questions, and express concepts or ideas effectively is an important part of communication competence. Intercultural communication presents an unexplored and challenging field that needs to be understood for a better development in communication. (Dillon and McKenzie, 1998). The variables of listening depend on the different perceptions that a person obtains through their cultural background. Furthermore, culture often affects the structure of consciousness in the act of listening. When a person seeks to
You know that feeling of home whether it’s with family members or even your loved ones? I don’t think that home is something that is automatically there, I believe that it is something that’s created. I learned that lesson through the eyes of one of my older friends who came from India with his brother when he was 16 in order to make a living. My friend Vikas, told me everything he had to do and the struggles he conquered in order to make his own successful business here in the U.S. Some things he told be reminded me of interpersonal communication, intercultural communication, and intracultural communication. He had to have a lot of communication with his friend who also happened to be from India and some new friends and colleagues he met through his journey. Of course there was homesickness and the occasional depression, but that didn’t stop him from creating his now successful business.
Intercultural communication is commonly explained as an interaction between people of 'different cultures whether defined in terms of racial, ethnic or socioeconomic differences.' Human communication consists of verbal and nonverbal messages (language and gestures) which are shaped by gender, social class or culture. Thus, what perimeters define the intercultural exchange and what primary messages do we need or try to convey?