When I learn about intercultural communication in class, it seems that it is always being taught as something good and positive and people from different cultural backgrounds can communicate well with each other to form a global village. I agree with that at first. However, when I had a chance to talk with an American that I don’t know online, things started to go wrong.
At that time, I was asked to do an interview about foreign cultural issues. So I found an American on MSN and then I asked him if he could do an interview with me for educational purpose. And then he said yes and asked me what kind of cultural issues I would like to ask him about. I was not so sure what to ask so I asked him if he had any suggestions for me.
Me: I am not sure what to ask at the moment. I don’t know much about American culture. Do you think having an interview about fast food is a good idea?
Him: What?! All you know about American culture is fast food?
Me: No, I didn’t mean that. I was just asking you if it’s a good idea.
I forgot what actually he said afterwards. He argued with me that fast food was not first appeared in America and people in other countries eat far more fast food than American, etc etc. I thought that was very rude and unreasonable for him to be so angry. American is well known for its fast food culture. That’s a truth. What wrong with him getting so angry with that.
I gave up talking to him finally. Intercultural communication doesn’t work every time.
Maybe he is not that angry, I think that the settings of online communication are somehow quite hard for us to communicate effectively, as we can't see the facial expressions when we communicate. The emoticons are not really showing how we feel actually.
ReplyDeleteAgnes mentions a very good point about the setting of online communication, which we may ignore when we communicate but actually it plays an important role in our communication.
ReplyDeletei Maggie, I don’t agree with you that all the things being taught in intercultural communication are positive and good. The course taught us a lot of different elements of culture and how people from different cultures see different things differently. I think the course allows us to explore different aspects of different cultures and have clearer concepts that how people act differently, but not necessarily define if that’s right or wrong. The course reminds us not to accept every difference but we should respect the cultural differences.
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