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Challenges of effective intercultural communication
Intercultural communication introduction
Intercultural communication introduction
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Communication is the key to understanding and navigating the world in which we live. It is a fundamental tool used to convey specific meaning, ideas and identity mostly to those of correlating social, economic and cultural backgrounds. Communicating beyond these boundaries may become difficult due to contextual barriers, thus developing unconscious biases and prejudices against those who live outside of society’s norms. The two communicative texts chosen for this paper are examples of people who vocalise the social and racial stereotypes associated with their group in hopes to enlighten new perspectives on issues. The messages conveyed by Ernestine Johnson and Yassmin Abdel-Magied articulate the importance to practice intercultural communication in order to understand the context of messages and how they are interpreted to convey meaning to different cultural and social backgrounds.
It is very often that people draw their own conclusions to things they do not fully understand in order to filter what
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Qualities of ‘Whiteness’ are deemed as ‘right’ and ‘ideal’ and it is what measures a person’s potential and capabilities. Johnson addresses that she is not seen as an average black girl because she ‘talks white’ and is superior to the girls of her race who are “ popping their gums and shaking their necks. Because those girls get like no respect.”(Johnson, E. 2014, 1:58) She informs that society does not deem her as the average black girl because of her lighter pigmented skin, but because she is well mannered, speaks with class and is educated. It is seen here that whiteness is not just about “bodies and skin colour”, it is, in fact, a superior characteristic that has elevated her ‘blackness’ by adopting white practices (Moreton-Robinson, A.
We’ve all done it: walking down a hallway, judging someone or thinking someone is less than what we perceive ourselves to be based on the color of their skin or how they are dressed, or even their physical features. The author of The Language of Prejudice, Gordon Allport, shares how we live in a society where we are ridiculed for being less than a culture who labels themselves as dominant. This essay reveals the classifications made to the American morale. Allport analyzes in many ways how language can stimulate prejudice and the connection between language and prejudice.
On Being Young-A Woman-and Colored an essay by Marita Bonner addresses what it means to be black women in a world of white privilege. Bonner reflects about a time when she was younger, how simple her life was, but as she grows older she is forced to work hard to live a life better than those around her. Ultimately, she is a woman living with the roles that women of all colors have been constrained to. Critics, within the last 20 years, believe that Marita Bonners’ essay primarily focuses on the double consciousness ; while others believe that she is focusing on gender , class , “economic hardships, and discrimination” . I argue that Bonner is writing her essay about the historical context of oppression forcing women into intersectional oppression by explaining the naturality of racial discrimination between black and white, how time and money equate to the American Dream, and lastly how gender discrimination silences women, specifically black women.
Dr. Peggy McIntosh looks at white privilege, by “Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.” She describes white privilege as almost a special check or coin that she gets to cash in on. Dr. McIntosh tells that white privilege has been a taboo and repressed subject – and that many white people are taught not to see or recognize it. However, she is granted privileges (McIntosh 30). Dr. McIntosh goes on to describe twenty-six ways in which her skin-color grants her certain privileges. In example twenty, she describes how she can buy “…posters, postcards, picture books…” and other items that “…feature people of my race” (32). Additionally, in her first example, she talks about being able to be in the “company of people of my race most of the time” (McIntosh 31). Instances in which a privilege person would not even recognize unless they were looking, show evidence for white privilege. People take these advantages for granted because they simply expect them. Due to the lack of melatonin in her skin, she was granted privileges and her skin served as an asset to her. Dr. McIntosh conveys how her privilege is not only a “favored state,” but also a power over other
In the novel, the author proposes that the African American female slave’s need to overcome three obstacles was what unavoidably separated her from the rest of society; she was black, female, and a slave, in a white male dominating society. The novel “locates black women at the intersection of racial and sexual ideologies and politics (12).” White begins by illustrating the Europeans’ two major stereotypes o...
The Author of this book (On our own terms: race, class, and gender in the lives of African American Women) Leith Mullings seeks to explore the modern and historical lives of African American women on the issues of race, class and gender. Mullings does this in a very analytical way using a collection of essays written and collected over a twenty five year period. The author’s systematic format best explains her point of view. The book explores issues such as family, work and health comparing and contrasting between white and black women as well as between men and women of both races.
Martin, Judith N., and Thomas K. Nakayama. Intercultural Communication in Contexts. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2013. Print.
I was late for school, and my father had to walk me in to class so that my teacher would know the reason for my tardiness. My dad opened the door to my classroom, and there was a hush of silence. Everyone's eyes were fixed on my father and me. He told the teacher why I was late, gave me a kiss goodbye and left for work. As I sat down at my seat, all of my so-called friends called me names and teased me. The students teased me not because I was late, but because my father was black. They were too young to understand. All of this time, they thought that I was white, because I had fare skin like them, therefore I had to be white. Growing up having a white mother and a black father was tough. To some people, being black and white is a contradiction in itself. People thought that I had to be one or the other, but not both. I thought that I was fine the way I was. But like myself, Shelby Steele was stuck in between two opposite forces of his double bind. He was black and middle class, both having significant roles in his life. "Race, he insisted, blurred class distinctions among blacks. If you were black, you were just black and that was that" (Steele 211).
Assata’s childhood was filled with contradictions. Despite affirming that her family instilled in her “a sense of personal dignity” (Assata 19), she notes that, for them, “pride and dignity were hooked up to things like position and money” (20). In this way, her “awareness of class differences in the Black community came at an early age” (20-21). Her grandparents associated being good enough with having the same things white people had. Although she was raised to believe she was good enough, this was not the message that the environment constantly communicated to her. She attended segregated schools and grew up amidst an unconscious rhetoric of self-hatred fostered by beauty stereotypes that included skin bleaching, hair straightening, and the rejection of numerous body parts: thick lips, wide nose, kinky hair. All of these distorted beauty expectations disrupted her identity as a black girl. If she was expected to behave as whites did, why didn’t she have the same things as they? she wondered. This caused a great amount of resentment toward her mother, for example, for not having “freshly baked cookies” (37) upon her arrival from school —like white kids in commercials did—, and resentment towards having to do chores, which white kids did not have to do. The anger continues to build up and appears to reach its childhood peak when she tells the story of a white boy she attacked in the sixth grade because he accused her of stealing his pen. Assata states: “I was usually very quiet and well behaved. [The professors] acted like i had jumped on that boy for nothing, and they couldn’t understand why i was so angry. As a matter of fact, even i didn’t understand. Then” (42). This episode exemplifies the outbursts of rage that daily encounters with racism can lead to. Her incapacity to articulate the reasons for the anger show her inability to assimilate the condition of
In many circles of the world, various groups of people distinguish themselves from one another through religion, language, culture, and sometimes gender. People also develop stereotypes about a particular group of people in order to identify them. However, most of the time, these stereotypes hold true for only some members of a group. Sometimes, these stereotypes are just plain misconceptions that do not even apply to the group it claims to. Stereotypes are placed on people because it is a way to easily identify what type of person or ethnicity an individual is. At one point in time, these stereotypes may have been true; however, in today’s modern society, most of these stereotypes are outdated and false, which leads them to turn into misconceptions. Usually, stereotypes are utilized to humiliate and degrade the person or group; they also do not provide any beneficial outcomes. Stereotypes focus on how a particular group acts because of the radical ideas and actions of the few, how a particular group looks, or how that group is physically lacking in some way. These stereotypes often lead to conflicts because the group does not appreciate the way it is being perceived. Seldom are the stereotypes placed on a group of people truthful and accurate. Some hardly even apply to the particular group people it claims to. It is true that how people are perceived has a big impact on how other individuals interact with them; however, people are not perceiving these groups correctly.
Martin, J. N., & Nakayama, T. K. (2013). Intercultural Communication in Contexts (6th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.
In our global economy requiring functional and respectful relationships between nations, prejudice and stereotypes can be a destructive force both in the world and in individual societies, especially in diverse ones.
Ann Perkins, Jones’ character, is supposed to be an ethnically ambiguous person and in reality, Rashida is biracial (Glamour). Leslie Knope, the white protagonist of the series, frequently uses words like ‘exotic’, ‘tropical’, and ‘ethnically ambiguous’ when complimenting Ann. The ‘compliments’ also act as the only instances where race is spoken about in reference to Ann’s character. One would believe that Leslie’s constant complimenting of Ann is beneficial to viewers with a biracial identity, but there are some serious problems with Leslie’s behavior. There has been an historical and recent fascination with ‘mixed’ children. This fascination has crossed over into fetishizatoin of biracial or mixed children and people. Biracial people are seen less as people and more as a kind of spice that bell hooks mentions in her work “Eating the Other: Desire and Resistance” (21). They are something that helps liven up the blandness of the pervasive white culture. Another harmful aspect of Ann’s depiction relates to her class. In Edison’s work, she notes that “biracial individuals living in a middle- and upper-class environments are more likely to be perceived as biracial (rather than black) than those living in working- and lower-class environments” and that “‘color blind’ portrayals of middle- and upper-class Black and biracial characters support the notion that race no longer matters (at least for middle- and upper-class people)” (Edison, 302; 304). Ann’s character is a successful college-educated nurse which is not problematic until one realizes that her race is never truly discussed. This feeds into the stereotype that race does not matter and that all people in the U.S. have the same opportunities. Again, the lack of racial representation leaves one character the duty of depicting a whole group of
After watching that clip, I felt like they all were right. They all have different perspective, and they were saying that with that perspective. I felt like that clip has to do nothing with race. It was all about religion and culture. And the question the will rise again depends on who said that and in what situations. This phrase means different things to different people. As we saw in video both girls were telling what they feel like based on their perspective, and there perspective was very different. It basically mean that south will not remain a defeated, rejected realm of misery and despair, instead it will become a significant influence on the culture and economy of the entire nation. People are taking this phrase way too loosely without understanding the meaning behind it. They think that it is some sort of way of saying that where
Communications is the exchange of information which depends on how individuals perceives, interpret and analyse a person's behaviour (Adair, 2003). Communication is affected by various aspects of human behaviour and languages which can be sent consciously or unconsciously. () Consequently, messages sent and received between the individuals do not always correspond with each other which can easily result to misunderstandings. Intercultural communication is the increasingly complex interaction between two parties with different cultural background. Individuals working in an international business are instantly encountered with challenges such as doubts, pressures and have the tendency to stereotypes others from different backgrounds (EU SME, 2013). Specifically, the challenges that surround intercultural communication include language differences, cultural differences and legal and ...
Humans have been communicating since four million years. On the other hand, the birth of culture is estimated to have taken place about 35,000 years ago. Today, both culture and communication have evolved considerably and have become interdependent of one another, to the point that communication is considered to be a product of culture. Thus, our own culture has a deep impact on our thoughts and behaviors. Since each culture has its distinct aspects, intercultural communication can be the cause of conflict and disorder. There are three main issues which are at the root of the problem of intercultural miscommunication : language as a barrier, cultural diversity and ethnocentrism. I will analyze these three notions in situations in which intercultural communication is frequent such as : the workplace, the classroom and vacation trips.