Culture’s Instilled Perspectives A combination of customs, attitudes, and beliefs that distinguishes a group of people from other entireties is known as culture. In three texts, culture is most evident as it exhibits the diversity in established ideas, difficulties induced by discrete societies, and differences in lifestyles. One being an excerpt by Dave Barry from, “Dave Barry Goes to Japan,” about an American man visiting Japan who encounters copious dissimilarities between his culture and Japan while trying to comprehend Japan’s language and dialect. Furthermore, an article by Miguel Helft, “Matrimony with a Proper Stranger,” discusses the pros to arranged marriages in Indian culture, relating stories of happy matrimonies, and also the
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This was definitely the case for Dave Barry, author of “Dave Barry Goes to Japan”, when he went to Tokyo with his family. In the excerpt, he discussed that the Japanese are not direct, because it is considered rude in their culture. This gave Dave and his family some complications in communicating, especially his wife during a call with a Japanese travel agent. The agent would ask indirect questions like, “I see, you want to take a plane” (Barry 5), after the wife had directly told him that she would like to take a plane. The questions were redundant, and Beth became upset. The author even described her as a “raging mad woman” (Barry 5). She then proceeded to yell, “What is the PROBLEM??. . . Why can’t these people COMMUNICATE???” (Barry 5), which displays the struggle in communication due to different dialect. Beth felt that the Japanese could not communicate simply due to the fact of different dialect and mannerisms. In the American culture, most people are direct and get straight to the point— varying on who the person is, but in one form or another they are not tip toeing around the subject to avoid any disrespect. This is because in the American culture it is not considered rude, thus causing a barrier in the language between Americans and the Japanese. To be quite frank, this means the Japanese may think we are a rude and disrespectful. Conclusively, due to American and Japanese’s differentiating ways of speaking, it creates different views on how to go about things because of separate
This was definitely the case for Dave Barry, author of “Dave Barry Goes to Japan”, when he went to Tokyo with his family. In the excerpt, he discussed that the Japanese are not direct, because it is considered rude in their culture. This gave Dave and his family some complications in communicating, especially his wife during a call with a Japanese travel agent. The agent would ask indirect questions like, “I see, you want to take a plane” (Barry 5), after the wife had directly told him that she would like to take a plane. The questions were redundant, and Beth became upset. The author even described her as a “raging mad woman” (Barry 5). She then proceeded to yell, “What is the PROBLEM??. . . Why can’t these people COMMUNICATE???” (Barry 5), which displays the struggle in communication due to different dialect. Beth felt that the Japanese could not communicate simply due to the fact of different dialect and mannerisms. In the American culture, most people are direct and get straight to the point— varying on who the person is, but in one form or another they are not tip toeing around the subject to avoid any disrespect. This is because in the American culture it is not considered rude, thus causing a barrier in the language between Americans and the Japanese. To be quite frank, this means the Japanese may think we are a rude and disrespectful. Conclusively, due to American and Japanese’s differentiating ways of speaking, it creates different views on how to go about things because of separate