Interpersonal Encounter Assignment: Cross Cultural Interview

Introduction2

Discussion3

Interview & conceptual analysis3

Kerry's family gatherings3

Her Values & family relationships4

Suggestions by Kerry6

An example of high context communication6

Kerry's understanding of culture7

Goals of the assignment8

Achieved\Unachieved Goals9

Feedback about the activity9

Conclusion10

Cross Cultural Interview

Introduction

Human race has diversity in terms of region, ethnicity, religion, physic, values and culture. We have come to learn about various cultures and societies with the rapid globalization. We live in an era of globalization. Globalization means integration of societies, political bodies and economies of various regions. We come across people from different cultural values every day in our schools, colleges, offices and neighborhood. It is essential to recognize and value the differences. We define the term multiculturalists to represent the group of people, who engage with people from distinct cultural norms. It is necessary to develop a clear insight of various cultures and their respective values as culture has a huge influence on communication. This helps in organizing our thoughts while communicating with a person, who comes from a different background.

People of different religion and region have their own ways to bring up a conversation. Some gatherings are full of hysterical jokes while some have the elements of sarcasm. The variety of cultural norms suggests that a bad word in a culture can be a casual joke in another culture. A prohibited action in one community can be taken as a normal practice in another community. For example, Muslims community strictly prohibits alcohol while it is quiet acceptable in European region. It is important to understand different values and acquire a flexible approach to them.

Cross cultural interviews provide a deep insight. This paper describes a real life interview of my friend, Kerry. The paper discusses the content of an interview. It also draws out meaningful information using the communication concepts. The interview helps build and organize various practices of every day communication.

Discussion

Interview & conceptual analysis

Kerry was born in Anaheim, CA. She spent five years of her childhood over there. The first five years of life are very important. A child learns most in those years. One could see a spark in her eyes as she talked about her childhood. Her family moved to Fresno, CA after five years. “My neighborhood friend would often ride my tricycle, and I would wait for him to leave it by the fence”, she said. She explained that childhood is the most amazing part of life. She is right, when we're small our biggest worry is to fix our toy cars and dress up our dolls. Parents can determine some of the major characteristics of a child, at an early age based on the child's behavior. However, societies influence a person to adopt various behavior and characteristics as time passes.



Kerry's family gatherings

Kerry does not have any brother, but she has an elder sister. She comes from a Buddhist family. I requested Kerry to describe her family gatherings. That was an open end question. “Lots of alcohol and insults”, she replied with a ...