My Challenges in Verbal and Non-Verbal Intercultural Communication

My Challenges in Verbal and Non-verbal Intercultural Communication
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My Challenges in Verbal and Non-verbal Intercultural Communication
Communication is integral in our daily lives as it allows us to express our ideas, emotions, and feelings. It is through communication, both verbal and non-verbal that we also get to understand and relate well with other people. Given the significance of communication in helping us get around our daily routines, as inability to understand others and not being able to be understood by others can be exasperating. We experience significant challenges when communicating with individuals from a different culture and they can be a source of despair, particularly when there is nothing you can do about at that moment. The significant challenges I have experienced in verbal and non-verbal intercultural communication relate to styles of communicating, approaches to completing tasks, tendency to evaluate, and fear of losing identity, which makes it hard interact and relates well with others.
Different styles of communication are one of the major challenges I have experienced in intercultural communication. While people may have different communication styles that affect communication with one another, the problem is worse when the parties come from completely different cultural backgrounds, say China and the USA. According to DuPraw and Axner (1997), there is a great variation in the way people communicate within and between cultures. The way words and phrases are used within a culture can be completely different from the way they are used in another. In an article by Singh and Rampersad (2010), they note that gestures, customs, body language, signs, and language vary across different cultures. In the past, Ihad found it hard to understand the sarcasm, humor, and slang as used by Americans. When you learn the English language, you do not get to examine in detail these important aspects that characterize language use. The use of language by different people involves different levels of assertiveness and aggressiveness, which vary across cultures. It can be problematic when the communication style of a person you are interacting with is different from yours. The gap in communication style is widerif the person hails from a different cultural background. Therefore, different styles of communication are a key challenge I face in intercultural communication.
Another major challenge I experience relates to approaches to task completion. People handle and complete tasks differently across cultures. Some of the reasons for this according to DuPraw and Axner (1997) include different perceptions of building relationships, different concept of time, and diverging opinion of rewards for completion of assignments. Of these reasons, I relate most with varying ideas about relationship building. In my culture, relationship building is valued,and it characterizes most aspects of life, one of them being meetings. This is consistent with the article by DuPraw and Axner (1997), where the authors note that Hispanic and Asian cultures tend to place value on developing relationships at the onset of a shared project. The same cannot be said of Americans as they focus on tasks from the onsets. In her article, Jenny (2012) gives an example of a Western intern who got an internship position at a Chinese company. He is not assigned tasks straight away as he is told to familiarize with colleagues first. He starts complaining to his friends that he has nothing to do after just two weeks. This example captures well the different ways to tasks completion across cultures. This can be problematic when working in groups comprising of people from different cultures.
Another significant challenge I face while trying to communicate with individuals from another culture other than mine is that I am inclined to evaluate their actions and statements. According to Barna (1976), the inclination to evaluate what individuals from a different culture are saying rather than trying to understand the message hinders communication. As informed by Dumessa & Godesso (2014), this limits the open-mindedness required to examine the behavioral patterns and attitudes from other people’s perspective. I am a victim of this, and it affects to some extent the way I relate to people I do not share a cultural background with. For example, I may perceive someone’s action as morally wrong without considering their different background from mine. It can be difficult to focus on the feelings and thoughts expressed when you do not share a cultural background with the other party. The tendency to evaluate the statements and actions of other people is thus a key challenge I encounter in intercultural communication.
The final challenge I face about intercultural communication is the fear of identity loss. According to Li (2015) there is conflict between the West and the East in terms of individual and society, ideal and reality, and modern and traditional. I value my culture greatly, and sometimes I feel learning the communication styles of another culture affects my cultural identity. This however, can be explained by ethnocentrism where people tend to cherish their own culture above everything else (Dumessa & Godesso, 2014). The Chinese culture is different from the American culture in many ways. For example, the Chinese value humility and there is a tendency to downplay personal achievements, which is not the case with Americans. By learning the language of the West and consequently their culture, I feel tha...