Cultural Differences In Communication

Culture and situations are made up by what is seen as socially accepted by people in specific areas. Most often, people conform to these social normalcies in order to be accepted. When people disrupt these social normalcies there is confusion and conflicts tend to arise. Because of different social expectations in different cultures, confusion often arises. In order to model what occurs in a situation when someone does something socially unaccepted; I purposely broke two social normalcies. Through this research I discovered several important factors that are necessary in order to have effective communication. The first social norm that I broke was in my jewelry class. I was nervous to do this because I did not know the person that I was …show more content…
She responded and then asked how I was. I asked her to explain what she meant and after she did, I kept asking her to explain different aspects of her questions. At first, she had a confused tone in her voice and I was asked to clarify what my questions meant. Eventually, the confusion turned into frustration and I stopped. As I was conducting this experiment, and even after I had finished, I felt like I was being annoying. Because I have been trained to believe that when people ask a lot of questions that are explained through commonsense they are being bothersome. I disliked this portion of the experiment. During this conversation, I noticed that there was a low level of engagement and because we only have a basic relationship established. This means that I have not learned how to read her physical communication. Our simple conversation can be explained through the Transaction Model of Communication (pg. 14). The book explains that the content of the message is surface level, but the relationship between the two communicators develops the conversation further, giving it depth. Because the girl in my class and I do not have a deep relationship, the conversation did not become meaningful. Without having a meaningful conversation with a …show more content…
I was concerned about acting like a guest in my home, because my mom has little tolerance when anyone in my family acts immature. When I knocked on the door my mom opened it and asked me what I was doing and I told her I was coming to visit her. I entered the house and stood by the door until she told me to come in. At this point she realized that there was something off, and asked me why I was acting weird. When I told her nothing was wrong, she later told me that she figured that I probably had a school project and she played along with me. Since I have a strong relationship with my family, I felt strange acting as if I was a formal guest. However, for the sake of the assignment I continued with my study. I asked for a glass of water and my mom told me to get my own water. I searched every cupboard in the kitchen before finding where the cups actually belong. During my search, my sister happened to walk in and ask me what I was doing. I asked her where the cups are kept. She gave me a strange look, and then proceeded to walk out of the kitchen. I found the glasses and had a drink of water. At this point, my dad got home from work and sat down to talk to my mom. I asked them to excuse me for interrupting, and then asked if I may use their bathroom. My dad made fun of me for requesting for permission for something that I make fun of my sister for doing. After I came back, he asked me why I was not doing homework because