Intercultural communication.doc

40904012
Class1 Grade 3
马冬冬
Intercultural Communication
Traditions and Customs---when in Roman, do as the Romans do.
The current focus of IC is on how people handle differences in linguistic behavior and the various effects. The analyses result in descriptions of culturally specific ways of expressing and interpreting the situated linguistic action of co-participants. With the globalization, various people around the world meet together. They travel together, do business even fall in love. That’s come to the question: how could they get on well with each other under such complex environment?
“With Americans, anything goes.” It seems that Americans are quite casual and don’t care much about their behaviors. Most American attitudes about good manners relate to showing respect and consideration for others. They believe that all people are entitled to equal opportunity and respect. That is, no one is privileged, and no one is worthless. A person who acts in a humble and timid way will make his/her friends feel quite uncomfortable. On the other hand, an aggressive and dominating person will have trouble keeping American friends. Most of them dislike coming into physical contact because staring is considered an invasion of privacy. When meeting people you know, you are expected to greet them briefly and informally by saying “Hi,” “hello,” and even “How are you.” Actually if a person says “How are you” to you, he doesn’t want to know about your physical condition, but only want to show his politeness. This is quite similar to what we Chinese traditionally mean when one is asked “have you eaten yet?” All these inflect the American values, such as individualism, which is the most basic and dominant one, competition, efficiency. “How old are you?” “Where are you going?” “How much do you earn?” “How old are you?” all these questions sound rationally to Chinese, it seems that we care about people, so we ask such questions. But for foreigners, these questions seem to be rude to them. Unlike Chinese, they avoid talking about privacy, such as incomes, age and marriage. A man’s home is his castle, namely, his privacy can’t be impinged. To the elder person, do not say they are old, old means useless in their culture, even though we mean it friendly. By the way, they don’t like 13 and Friday for Christ reasons, but we avoid 4 and appreciate 6 and 8 very much. Apart from this, we share something together, for example, when greet with others, smile is considered to be the best tool. If you want to make friends with American and British, these suggestions maybe helpful: 1) don’t be nosy. People everywhere like to talk about themselves, American are not exception. They enjoy talking about themselves very much. 2) Punctuality. Being on time is very important especially in the work place. Being late means you do not value others’ time, you should apologize if you are late with a valid reason, such as traffic, bad whether and family emergency. 3) Don’ smoke without permission, in America, many places are divided into smoking and non-smoking areas. Actually, most people don’t smoking, especially to the women and children. 4) Don’t make ethic errors, don’t make any negative comments on any ethnic group.5) Always say thank you, these words are used in almost every social exchange no matter what relationship is between two people.
Culture is not innate, but learned. As animals, all of us must eat, drink, sleep, find shelter, give and receive affection, and meet all of the other biologic requirements that flesh is heir to. But what we eat when we eat and how we eat are all behaviors we have learned from the groups in which we have grown up. Not only the language we speak and the way we think, but even what we see, hear, taste, touch, and smell are conditioned by the culture in which we have been raised.
As speak to eat, let’s come to the custom of table manners in both Americans and British. Actually, they are quite the same. American and British use cutlery to eat most of the food. Some food which does not require the use of knife and fork and spoon includes sandwich, crisps and corn ton the cob and fruits. The British people eat in the continental style, with fork in the left hand and knife in the right hand all the time. There are a number of other Dos and Don’ts to keep in mind.
Do not put one’s elbow onto the dinner table while eating;
Do not eat while others have not been saved. Everyone should begin to eat at the same time.
Do not hold your bowl closer to your mouth.
Do not talk with your mouth full.
Do not lean down on your plate; just bring the food up to your mouth.
Do not use fingernails as toothpicks to pick food out of your mouth. But Americans seldom use toothpicks at the table.
Do not use your fork with the prongs pointed while holding a knife in another hand. A fork with prongs pointed up indicates the ending of eating.
When you have finished your meal, place your knife and fork side by side on the plate, with the fork’s prongs up.
These may be useful to you if you were invited to a dinner.
As for Chinese, it’s our tradition to use chopsticks, always in right hand, few uses left hand, and however, it can be accepted. But the followings can’t be admitted: use chopsticks knock bowls and plates; use your chopsticks pick in a plate; put the chopsticks straight in the bowl full of rice. Some of the behaviors are not polite, others are intolerant by people. As for the Reform and Opening policy in our country, we bring a lot of traditions and customs from foreigners, especially from Americans and British. We began to have Western food and Western tableware and we really do a good job to flourish their table culture, other customs, for example, the Christmas festival. You can see Santa Claus in every market, hotel, even people’s house, our young generations have completely accepted it as our own tradition. On the other hand, our New Year is also popular in other countries. The intercultural communication strengthens the combination and collaboration among counties, which brings disadvantages as well as advantages to all of the counties. The key point is that how can we take full use of these opportunities.
Fast food is the most “meaningful” invention to the working class. Hamburgers, a sandwich consists a piece of good cooked ground meat, usually beef, placed between pieces of bread and toast, which is the most favorable food to the white-collar workers, not only tasty but also convenient. It was invented in America, but flourished around the world, let alone China. Besides, you can see all most all of kinds of dishes in any tourist attraction around the world, Sichuan dishes, India dishes, Japan dishes and so on. Here we know the cross-culture giving us so much that help us have a perfect life. The other one is coffee which we are so familiar with, a good exhilarant for the tired people, these are all coming from cross-culture.
Another example: Jerry is an American. In 1993, she went to Japan with her children, where she was doing business for a joint venture in Tokyo. Having lived there for one year, she wanted her son, Toby, 10 years old, to attend a Japanese elementary school. When she indicated her wish to her landlord, he sent his English-speaking daughter to act as a go-between. The boy was duly enrolled and began school. Toby had to take lunch everyday and he took a regular American meal of sandwich, chips, cookies and drink. But Toby’s teacher subsequently contact the go-between to have her talk with the boy’s parents about the inappropriateness of the lunch and request the parents to provide a more Japanese-style food instead of pure American food. Jerry was a bit surprised, not knowing what was inappropriate and why the schoolteacher would ask them to make the changes. Why the Japan schools show disagreement to the American lunch? Is it breach the tradition of the local region or other reasons? We know that Japanese pay more attention to the conformity of people’s life, the same as the so-called do-not-be-special. The conformity becomes the character of the Japan social culture. In other counties, we find that Japan students always combined, no matter attending what kind of activities, they seem to wear the same trousers, seldom be particular. In this cultural atmosphere, the American student’s habit--- always bring American-style food---- which will have bad effect to him, what’s worse, other Japan students may be blackball him. Most of the time, people are very strict to the social principals, even respect the principals. They believe they are indispensable to make the society on the rails. In such countries, children’s socialization is controlled and bound seriously. Any social principals, tradition values and common images, once if there is any departure, they will be attacked and suffered from repulsion. Although foreigners’ behavior will have some certain impinge on the local society, people still can understand and respect their customs. However, sometimes if the life style of foreigners has a collision with the local customs, just as the above example, the former is doomed to be exclusion. For the people live abroad, it is essential to do as the same, that is to say, when live in Roman, do as the Romans do. Do not destroy the social customs and the values just in order to show your own personality and parade yourself. It is necessary to understand other social customs and culture, because only in this way can we learn how to communicate with others politely.
Different countries have different cultures and different cultures have different ways to demonstrate it. In China, we sometimes count on each other so much. Xiao Li and Xiao Wang is good friend, they always give hand to each other if one is in trouble. But their American friend John who couldn’t understand it, because he thought Xiao Li borrowed money from Xiao Wang again and again and he thought Xiao Li asked too much, but we thought it’s common. Why John was so surprised? It is because their individualism. In America, they accentuate individualism very much. It can be found everywhere, without individualism, there will be no well-behavior. Take their children as an example, Americans take care of their children when they are teenagers, give them money and other things that they need. Once they become adult, it means they have finished their responsibility and children should leave as soon as they become adult. They distinguish the relationship between people and money strictly. So they admire business is business. For Americans, they support and help their relatives and friends, but it limits in the dimension of one good turn deserves another.
Under the intercultural communication, one can influence the other easily and surely we benefit a lot from the globalization, our culture, economy, politics, thought even our behaviors. We try to be gentle and friendly to others, we take part in the international matters and manage to have a peaceful world, all of these we did, other countries do the same. From this we can see the big world like a big family more and more, and through cross-culture communication we know more about each other, we learn how to live with others harmoniously. In the intercultural communication, it’s vital to understand other countries’ traditions and customs, how does it represent. At the same time, it’s necessary to show your respect to the traditions and customs. It would be better if we can use the universal customs to communicate with people from other countries. With the globalization and internationalization, people around the world become more and more intimate, intercultural communication is inevitable. So a glimpse of knowing other countries’ tradition and custom can help us have a good understanding on them. As the saying goes: when in Roman, do as the Romans do.”