Adapting to New Cultures

Adapting to new cultures is vague area. There are many different cultures that you could adapt too. For example; a baby boomer adapting to the social networking sites. Another example is someone moving from the U.S. to Asia. Nonetheless, adapting to cultures is stressful. A number of factors go into adapting to the culture. One of the things that are most important is cultural distance. Cultural distance is “the extent to which two cultures differ, affects ease of communication.” Two other main concepts are personal predispositions and communication bonds. Personal predispositions is having an open mind. It’s also about having training in regards to adapting to be more prepared. Communication bond is a mix of topics between acculturation-become part of a new culture-and host social communication. Host social communication is about relationships with members from the home culture. Nonetheless, developing an open mind and communication bonds are essential in adapting to a new culture.

Self Premise

Communication experts argue that there are three “beliefs about human nature.” The three beliefs are rationality, perfectibility and mutability premise. Rational premises is best defined that “people are capable of discovering truth through logical analysis.’ Perfectibility is based on the idea that humans are born into sin but they have the capabilities of achieving righteousness through “effort and control.” The last of the beliefs is mutability which declares humans are defined by the environment and that if you improve the environment you can change humans.

Personally, I can’t believe that all humans have theses three characteristics. Maybe humans have one or two premises but to make a definitive statement that “humans are perfectible” isn’t talking about one premise. From my chair, I’ve seen news broadcasts, and read newspaper articles’ that has made me believe if people were perfectible then we wouldn’t need jails or a justice system. Because we could send all the non-conforming people to schools to learn how to logically analyze. Then we could send Ted Bundy to Church because that institution can help his perfectibility premise. And lastly we can send everyone that lives in south central Los Angeles to a home where they can receive mental help.

What’s most interesting to me is the underlining belief that “an education follows from” the assumption of these premises. Well, if that’s the case, then in California, we’ve really messed up. Not only do we not have money for schools but are finding ways to cut after school programs and send kids back to the environment that they wake up in. So please experts save me the time and don’t put this section in a communication text books.

Ruth Benedict

Ruth Benedict made contributions to the fields of folklore, anthropology and sociology. Benedict was one of the first people to emphasize that our culture, as opposed to genetics, was a great influence on the formation of people’s personalities. In addition, Benedict had a theory that society was responsible for labeling what was considered “normal” and “abnormal” as opposed to biology. Ruth also expressed her concern about negative effects that the labels of “normal” and “abnormal” could have on people. Ruth Benedict was an advocate against anti-Semitism and race.
Ruth Benedict made contributions to the field of folklore and psychology. In psychology Ruth inspired extensive testing of hypotheses instead of the creation of new hypotheses. Ruth Benedict observed that culture is a learning process. I do agree with the anthropologist Ruth Benedict's belief that we are "creatures of our culture" and that our habits, beliefs, and impossibilities are shaped by our culture. Culture is socially constructed and our society shapes how we see the world, what is socially acceptable and what is okay to believe. Our society which creates our culture tells us what behaviors are acceptable, what type of people can succeed in certain roles and which people can not. We can break through the limits of our culture by exploring other ideas, investigating other ways how people view the world.

Kinesic Code II

I was walking through San Jose Bar and Grill, a popular hangout for college student on Thursday night, and was told I had really kind eyes. I talked to this person for hours and realized that facial expressions are something that influence the way character is shown. Looking over my communication book I realized, Kinesic code 2 is an area that evaluates this topic.

Kinesic Code 2 discovers facial expression and eye behavior. The face is an area that “most people” look to for information. Facial expressions can be intensified or deintensified. Intensifying emotions can be showing happiness when your friend got into Harvard and you didn’t. However, there are a number of other display rules such as professional, personal and cultural that dictates the way we’re supposed to be perceived.

Eye behavior can show many different things. For example Eye behavior can indicate “both positive and negative emotions.” It can also show, “willingness to relate to one another.” However what people don’t know is that “eye behavior serves to maintain social position.” For example, Barrack Obama making a speech in regards to his healthcare bill and commanding respect as he address the U.S. Commanding that respect is the enhancement in social position.

Examples of Nonverbal Meanings

Some examples of non-verbal displays that take different meanings in other countries are; the peace sign in England, it’s the same as flipping someone off. Another example is, in Costa Rica it’s rude to make a thumbs up. It’s also rude to fidget your hands and feet. Slurping is appreciated in Japan. Actually being as loud at the dinner table as possible is appreciated.

I’ve never had the opportunity to move around the country. All of the non verbal displays I listed were things that my roommates had told me about from their travels.

I have encountered local regional differences in nonverbal meaning. One of the differences I encountered was slurping. I’ve sat in many Japanese restaurants and have sat near people that slurp their food and make (in my opinion) obscene noises. Come to find out, it’s appreciated. Of course I didn’t find out it’s appreciated until I actually started in on the idea of meanings behind nonverbal messages.

Interpreting nonverbal messages

Yes, I’ve been wrong about the meaning of someones nonverbal messages. Whether it’s socializing or just hanging out with friends, I’ve misinterpreted non-verbal messages on many occasions. I have a tendency to talk a lot and I’ve tried to be more conscious of being verbose. One of the things I do is repeat my point in different ways. During a presentation in fall semester of 2009, I felt the class was bored and had lost engagement in my presentation. At this point, I had explained all my main points and I was slipping into my routine of repeating myself. Reading the class’s body language, I realized that I was being too talkative and smoothly ended my presentation. After the presentation my teacher gave me a few comments, one of them being, ‘why did it seem like you suddenly ended your presentation?’ I explained my bad habit to the teacher at which point he replied and said, ‘it’s a persuasive argument, you’re supposed to go over your main points so your audience remembers.” I believe people can increase the accuracy with which they interpret non-verbal messages by looking for “regulators.” Regulators are a tool that can be used as “traffic signals” during interaction. By being aware of regulators we can further increase our accuracy in interpreting nonverbal messages.

Designing Messages

Designing messages that are easy to understand and listen too can augment persuasive communication by capturing perceptive and remembrance. There are four elements that further evaluate this. The four elements are; capturing attention, ensuring acceptance, enhancing storage and retrieval/guiding interpretation. To increase acceptance you have to give your audience something to listen to and create compelling messages by using imagery. Ensuring acceptance is showing your audience something new. Offering “incentive,” can also help ensure acceptance. To enhance storage and retrieval of messages you have to continually use ‘repetition” within the message and build rapport by personalizing the message. Guiding interpretation is difficult. But by creating metaphors and patterns, you can guide the audience. Also the use of feedback is a good tool to offer more or unique information. Nonetheless, most of these elements seem to tie in with being a good persuasive speaker. However, designing messages can also make sure your audience is not confused and that they clearly understand your message.

Gender and Communication

This post might be longer than most. Yes. I believe men and women use language a lot differently. I believe women are more intuitive and can read non-verbal communication a lot differently. How am I going to support my personal belief? Well, when boys and girls grow up they learn “expectations’ that run parallel with their gender. Women tend to use language inclusively. Examples of inclusivity works from small signs. I believe small signs are things such as body language. Of course men, who are structured to draw from more exclusivity don’t use inclusivity. So we believe the small things don’t matter as much. Which means, even though men don’t realize what they’re doing, they might be sending the wrong signals to women. Going back to my man point, women are more intuitive and read non-verbal communication by looking at body language, or non-verbal indicators to communicate with other people based on inclusiveness behavior research.

Judging Information

When critically listening to information, it’s easy to make judgments. Being suspicious of new information is taking a look at the source. The sources beliefs, attitudes and values play an important role in the information that’s being discussed. With that being said, I don’t think it’s possible to not judge or categorize people. We are continually try to be suspicious of new information and are therefore evaluating the credibility and trustworthiness of the person who is telling us information. We can make judgments fair by trying to interpret what’s personal and what’s factual in the information being transmitted. Although it’s difficult to be subjective you can still cross-reference information through trustworthy sources. By cross referencing, you can take; beliefs, attitudes and values out of the information and make the overall content more objective. In this case, critical listening becomes a memory process so you can reference data and make sure it’s accurate.