Let's Take a Look: Intercultural Marriage

Communication is not only symbolic, it is a process. A process has no beginning or end. It is continuous. All the communicating you have done affects the communication we are engage in right now. Even if we have never met prior to the beginning of this course, all previous communication with other instructors effects our communication method. Communication involves perceptions between parties.

Ethnography is a qualitative research method often used in the social sciences, particularly in anthropology and in sociology. It is often employed for gathering empirical data on human societies/cultures. In this research, Kamariah Sullivan Kadari, a typical village lady who married an American and been living in America for nearly 25 years was choose to be a respondent. Data collection is often done through participant observation, interviews, questionnaires, etc. Here, data are collected through observation. Ethnography aims to describe the nature of those who are studied (i.e. to describe a people, an ethnos) through writing. In the biological sciences, this type of study might be called a "field study" or a "case report," both of which are used as common synonyms for "ethnography"

All cultural patterns have basic components ie beliefs, values and norms. Beliefs are ideas about the world that people assume are true. Values are things that we hold- guide human behavior towards others. Problems occur when we judge others by using our personal set of values as a standard. The term ethnocentrism means believing our way of doing things and of believing is best. Everyone is ethnocentric to some degree, since our culture teaches us what the worlds is really like, we believe that the value of our culture are the best. Thus, we may consider people from other cultures who do things differently is wrong or strange.,

Cultural sensitivity begins with a recognition that there are differences between cultures. In this story between U.S and Malaysia culture, a lot of differences recognized in many aspects. These differences are reflected in the ways that different groups communicate and relate to one another, and they carry over into interactions with health care providers. Cultural sensitivity does not mean, however, that a person need only be aware of the differences to interact effectively with people from other cultures. If health care providers and their patients are to interact effectively, they must move beyond both cultural sensitivity and cultural biases that create barriers. Developing this kind of culturally competent attitude is an ongoing process.

Apprehension is awareness or understanding by something in the mind. In getting a message from source, a receiver will encode a message into his / her mind. Aunt Kamariah practices U.S culture which people express their emotions so diarectly. She believes that it is her responsibility to ‘make people understand’, sometimes pompous when explain and repeat things when in an effort to try to help the listeners. To decode verbal and nonverbal messages, she asks questions, get more information and analyze the situation. Compare to Asian culture, we usually will not express our lack of understanding because in our culture, we won’t let other people to know that we are lack of the information or we don’t want the understanding known to others.

Collectivism is a term used to describe any moral, political, or social outlook, that emphasizes the interdependence of every human in some collective group and the priority of group goals over individual goals. Collectivists focus on community and society, and seek to give priority to group rights over individual rights. In this situation, my point is, Aunt Kamariah view in political is very liberal. They is no any specific party that she vote for. According to her, every leader in every party have their own way of lead the country. Nobody of them is perfect to be a leader. Thus, they all need each other and they have to joined each other all the time to conduct the country. This is how she answered when I asked why she never vote in every election held.

Idioms are groups of words that, joined together, differ in meaning from the literal meaning of each separate word. They express subtle meaning in ways not possible through formal language. Idioms sometimes originate from slang, the informal phrases and newly coined words that are not accepted English usage. Slang that "works" for people may eventually become idioms, and may even be incorporated into standard English. After been staying for nearly 25 years in America, idioms that Aunt Kamariah uses that I realized is the words ‘come on beb’ that she really likes to uses in her daily conversations. She uses it often in all situations. This is one of the pure example that she brings from America, the idioms that we in Malaysia are very rarely use the words, especially in her age of fifty over.  

Cultural norms are rules that are socially enforced. In short, norms are a form of conduct. They define what is appropriate in a given culture. Norms are the outward manifestations of beliefs and values. Like values, norms can vary within a culture in terms of their importance and intensity. Here, for example, for Aunt Kamariah, when she says “twelve o’clock sharp”, the key is not to be on time, but in time. That means, punctuality is very important for her. For people in Western Europe descent, time is oriented more towards being ‘on time’ than ‘in time’.

            
Kinesics is study of body language that includes such cues as gestures, head movements, facial expressions, and eye contact. Each culture has its own interpretations of various kinesics behaviors. The body language that she uses is different compare to the typical Malay in Malaysia. A smile in Western culture generally means happiness. Aunt Kamariah always smile to show her happiness, instead of normal Malay that laugh to express the happiness in communication. Gestures signify different meanings in different cultures. The simple gesture of nodding ‘yes’ differ across cultures. Aunt Kamariah’s  head nod for ‘yes’- a ordinary Western style, similar with us.

            
Culture divided into two dimensions by Edward Hall which are low-context culture and high-context culture. In low-context communication, the listeners know very little and must be told practically everything. In high-context communication, the listener is already ‘contexted’ and does not need to be given much background information. For Aunt Kamariah, much of the information are implicit and covert. For instance, she prefer to say “I bet you can feel how cold it is to be in a winter season if you come to my house ‘, rather than use certain words to invite us to come to her house like “ Come to my house this winter, so that you can feel the cold weather”, like most of us prefer. For us, sometimes we feel Aunt Kamariah high-context communication style often appear unexpressive or even dishonest..

            
Different cultures view touching behavior in different ways. In Southeast Asia, people engage in very little touching behavior. We do not ordinarily touch during a conversation especially one between opposite sexes, because many Asian cultures adhere to to norms that forbid public displays of affection and intimacy. Here, I can see Aunt Kamariah’s style in conversation. As stated, the way she brings herself during conversation is different with us. She could easily touch men during conversation without feeling awkward. Cultures vary in terms of their rules as to who touches whom, as well as the settings or occasions in which touch is acceptable.

            
Power distance is the degree to which a culture tolerates inequality in power distribution. In relationships and organizations. High-power distance cultures tend to be authoritarian, with a hierarchical or vertical structure of social relationship. Low power distance cultures are characterized by an emphasize horizontal relationships rather than vertical ones. Differences in age, sex, generations, status, roles are minimizes.

            
Stereotypes influences the way we process information on how we think. A stereotype is a generalization about a group of people and can be positive or negative. When we stereotype, we make assertion about the characteristics of all people who belong to a particular category, without realize that  members of a social group never share a particular characteristic. In this story of Aunt Kamariah, one value that I found stereotype with her, same with other Malay is the use of finger while eating rice. Although been staying for 25 years in America, Aunt kamariah still use finger while eating- one of the most popular habit among all Malay. She told me once that she’s like other Malay that like to use finger instead of spoon and fork.

            
Paralanguage consists of how something is said, not what is said. It included vocal qualifiers (volume, tone), vocal segregates (uhh, umm, shh), and and vocal characteristics ( sobbing, laughing, whispering). Cultural differences exist in each of this. Vocal characteristics and their meaning also differ across culture. For us in Malaysia, saying ‘ya’ means ‘yes’ while other people speaking is common to show agreement to something. But, for Aunt Kamariah, she would wait till the second party finish talking before give any response, because she seeing it rude, as violation of turn-taking cues.

            
As a conclusion, intercultural communication, like all communication, is contextual. A context is a combination of factors- situation, setting, circumstances, the people involved, the relationship of those people, and so on. In short, context is the overall framework within which communication takes place. Everybody become who we are because of stories we listen to with our eyes, ears, and heart. This is true whether we find ourselves in our own culture or one quite different with our own.