Aloha people! (: So today I am supposed to be talking about 'Intercultural Behavior' based on something which I have observed. Coming from Malaysia and living in Singapore which are two melting pots of diversity, it shouldn't be that hard right?
Wrong.
Because I really can't remember anything! I think I am so used to living amongst these Asian cultures till it no longer strikes be as something very different anymore. So I have decided to use some scenarios which I was involved in when I went traveling last December to Taiwan.
When I was in Taiwan, I traveled with my Mexican buddy named A. His first language is Spanish and second was English. My spoken languages included Malay, English and Hokkien. So my buddy and I used English to communicate with each other. However, due to our differing accents and fluency, we found it hard to understand each other. But we got by.
So one day, I was feeling a little bit agitated and thus was replying pretty snarkily and sarcastically as well. All of a sudden, A seemed really offended and said "Why are you angry with me? What did I do?" whereby I proceeded to insist that I was not angry.
No conflict arose from that situation but reflecting upon it, I realized that we miscommunicated because of differing cultural perceptions and small nuances in language. A was unable to understand the subtleties of the language as English was his second language and mistook my sarcasm as anger. Also, I am pretty fierce for a girl by normative Asian standards so when I was sarcastic, my non-verbal expression made me look angry. In addition to that, all the Chinese girls we encountered in Taiwan were extremely sweet, soft-spoken and demure and that formed the basic stereotype of Asian Chinese Girls in A's mind. Thus it led him to mistake my expressions as that of anger.
Going deeper into this, I realized that cross-cultural misunderstanding not only existed between people of vastly different cultures but also within those who are from almost similar cultures. For example, as mentioned earlier, I speak Hokkien. However, Taiwan's main language is Mandarin. Thus, the locals there assumed that ALL Chinese will speak Mandarin and they were extremely shocked that I could not. However, they were also shocked that I spoke Hokkien which is very similar to their local Taiwanese dialect. Because to them, the younger generation who were of my age have lost the ability to converse in this dialect. In Taiwan, it was the language of grandparents.
So how did I survive? Semiotics, that's how. Yes, the language of signs are also culturally based but most (hand) signs/gestures like 'big' and 'good' are pretty universal and it really helped me a lot in bridging the gap in communication.
Yeah, so I guess that is my take on intercultural (as well as intracultural) communication. Till next time! (:
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