Crash Intercultural Communication

Cultural conflict and popular culture are two experiences in life that assist in defining intercultural communication and how its influence affects our daily intercommunication. Cultural conflict is inevitable as we live out our daily lives in the identities we have selected for ourselves, the identities relating to our ethnicity and in those identities others have selected for us. These identities are bound to conflict with another individual’s identities which is why there is a need for understanding what intercultural communication is and how it can be enhanced becomes vital to peaceful living around the world.

The harmony of the existing cultures is crucial for the survival and success of any communication and ignoring these aspects may challenge the communication. For example, speaking to employees in Middle East is quite different from Switzerland; talking about personal things is acceptable by Swiss. Individuals who move to other countries unprepared for cultural differences may face unpleasant frustration when communicating. However, those who try to learn other cultures are likely to avoid individual tragedies. For example, Americans doing business in Mexico need to learn the local language to enhance interactions with the locals.

There are different cultures, religious, and languages that form diversity within America. Having a variety of diversity brings colors into our community, but it also creates conflict within different groups. In Grace Hsiang’s essay “‘FOBs’ VS. ‘TWINKIES’: The New Discrimination Is Interracial”, the author discusses about the cultural conflict within the same ethnicity, and she points out people can avoid internal discrimination by recognizing there are two cultures, “True Asians” and “ True Americans”. In Hailey Yook’s essay “Positive Sterotypes Are Hurtful, Too”, the author writes about the harmfulness of judging others based on their ethnic stereotype. Two essays argue people should not discriminate against other cultures and people should not have a preconceived notion on other cultures respectively, and they share a similar point that diversity makes our society better.

Being able to understand how people from different cultures and religions communicate, interact, and perceive the environment around them allows for the formation of important guidelines and practices which help combat and avoid anxiety and uncertainty in government, business, and personal intercultural relationships for the purpose of efficient negotiations and merges different cultures into more tolerant cohesive existence.

People have communicated from different cultures, carefully thinking about the assumptions they made. Some negative consequences could happen from keeping the old stereotype from one’s first language and culture. Thus, we need to learn how to discard stereotype and effective communicator. Based on human perceptions, people make assumptions about the other. They choose the appropriate communicative style to reduce confusion and avoid miscommunications.

During the movie Crash, some of the characters in the movie started with a negative ethnocentrism, or a negative look on another culture and believe your culture is greater. They do not believe in equality and have a high disparagement which means they engage in little behavior with other cultures. They also do not know that culture is more than just the skin color or where they are from it is more of believes and values. Three characters, Jean, Officer Ryan, and Anthony, start off with a negative ethnocentric attitude but by the end their actions ‘Crash’ down and they start to rebuild themselves into something

Nowadays, people are exposed to more cultures that they are not accustomed to than in the past. As the years go by, more interracial marriages are being accepted exposing future generations to multi-cultures. I am an American teenager with an Hispanic background. My parents, born and raised in Guatemala immigrated to the United States a few years before my birth. Since my birth, I have been exposed to two very different types of cultures. I have lived in the United States all my life while I have visited Guatemala a couple of times for a few weeks each. Being more accustomed to life in the United States, life in Guatemala is very distinctive. Communicating with family in Guatemala was definitely more challenging than communicating with the family back home in the United States. These types of situations have led to “complexities” in communication, a topic that LaRay M. Barna analyzes thoroughly in her article “Intercultural Communication Stumbling Blocks.” The “complexities” in communication that Barna addresses are spread into five stumbling blocks: language, nonverbal signs and symbols, preconceptions and stereotypes, tendency to evaluate, and high anxiety. These five stumbling blocks can occur in any shape or form in communication between two cultures. Language, nonverbal signs and symbols, as well as preconceptions and stereotypes are the stumbling blocks that occurred most when communicating with my family that reside in Guatemala.

Diversity exists all across the United States. It is defined as the state of having people who are different races or who have different cultures in a group or organization, according to Merriam-Webster dictionary. Along with the ever-growing diversity in America, brings along intercultural communication. Intercultural communication can be defined as a situated communication between individuals or groups of different linguistic and cultural origins. Due to the limitless amounts of diversity and intercultural communication across the United States, misunderstandings and clashes between cultures are bound to occur. These clashes have been as extreme to be used to explain violence and crime not only in the United States, but also throughout our entire nation. On the other end, these cultural clashes can be so personal in our everyday lives because of our expectations of a certain behavior coming from our own cultural backgrounds, as many others have very different cultural backgrounds and expectations of us.

Nowadays, we are living in the community that we are interacting with people who have different cultural background. When we interact with others who do not share the same values as us, numerous intercultural issues are going to emerge, such as language difference, nonverbal misinterpretation, preconceptions and stereotypes, and etc. Spanglish by James L. Brooks explores the difference between the North American and Mexican American culture by describing how Flor is an illegal immigrant from Mexico who does not speak any English and tries to integrate to an American family. Although cross-cultural can be a challenge or an obstacle to interact with others, we just need to put more effort by fostering more respect and acceptance against their culture. This is because it is a great opportunity for us to learn from others in order to enrich our knowledge and widen our vision toward the world.

The main problem with communication between people of different cultures is the representation of the ‘Others’ as different from us. When we speak of others different from us we are in general referring to all who are

The ability to grow and be successful in any society depends on its ability to transcend limitations of intercultural communication. The chief aim of social groupings is to harness the capacity of the human mind. The ability to channel this process information during communication impacts our social connections to one another, especially in intercultural communication.

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 United States is known throughout the world as the “melting pot of cultures.” This is evident through the daily social and cultural interactions of diversified population of New Yorkers. For instance, Queens County is one of the most diverse counties in the world, versus just the United States. Accordingly, since I began attending Vaughn College, I have been fortunate to have the opportunity to be exposed to a variety of cultures from friends and classmates.

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.

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.