Let me illustrate an intercultural situation here:
This scenario happened during my involvement in an overseas expedition project. Our team consists of 18 Chinese and 1 Korean student. All of us speak a common language- English. However, during some of our group discussions and team bonding sessions, I noticed that many of the Chinese students tended to unintentionally switch to mandarin all over the place in their conversations. I suppose that is the usual and comfortable ‘Singaporean’ way of conversing with friends. Unfamiliar lingos used by us would often return a blank face from the Korean girl. Unfortunately, the feelings of this Korean student were inadequately taken into consideration because she could not understand mandarin and hence was able to grasp the full meaning if we spoke in that unique manner.
Although I tried prompting the rest to speak in English several times, I realised on many occasions that the Korean girl would start to look away and appear uninterested in the topic or start to use her handphone. There were times when she just walked off to the restroom in the midst of casual chats among team mates. On other ocassions she would join in the conversation of another group who were speaking in English instead.
I felt guilty about the team not being culturally sensitive enough to someone from a different culture speaking a different language. Being afraid of upsetting the Korean girl, I very much wanted to tell off some individuals for not putting in the effort to respect other’s existence by speaking in English and not to be ambiguous in describing ideas. However, I chose to hint them instead because I believe many of them are used to speaking in a mixed variety of languages and even dialects in one sentence.
For the Korean girl, I guess she felt irritated, helpless and isolated every time we do this unintentionally but was being polite not to ask us to translate everything in English again. There could easily be misunderstandings of us trying to ignore her existence or dismiss her off as unimportant member. In addition, the lack of response from the Korean girl may incorrectly come across to us as being uninterested in our topic of discussion when in fact she could not understand what we are saying in the first place.
In a nutshell, I think that in intercultural communications, we have to be self-aware and also mindful of the differences in norms, values and languages. Perhaps the Korean girl was kind enough to pretend that she was not neglected and still keep a smiling face but we have to constantly remind ourselves that it is rude and disrespectful to behave in the way we did although unintentionally. This would then create a warm and supportive environment for all, where effective communications would definitely result!
As you said if there are people from different cultures then first we should acknowledge the presence of cultural differences. In your situation, the Korean girl was left out because the other people in the team spoke in Mandarin. Even I have experienced this situation a lot of times when I was in hall of residence. Because of this I couldn’t mingle with people in my hall. When there are people from some other country with us we should try to engage them also in our conversation. We should not insult them by speaking a language they that won’t understand in front of them. It is like offending them. If I was in the Korean girl situation I would have opened my mouth and asked the Chinese girls to speak in English. I wouldn’t have kept quiet like her. Because those girls should understand that we are feeling offended by them. If we keep quiet it means that we are still fine with what they are doing. They would also think that we are not interested in their conversation and they might continue speaking in Chinese. So it is better to point out their mistakes rather than just keeping quiet.
ReplyDeleteYour start in the blog is good. But here and there, I could see some grammatical mistakes. Try using correct tense forms. Use simple sentences so that you can avoid such mistakes.
Hi Yazhini,
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing your experiences in hall of residence. For our case we did not actually speak entirely in Mandarin. I guess it was an unintentional addition of chinese words and phrases here and there while we were engaged in our conversation. Hence, I suppose she somewhat get the meaning but not the full meaning.
Yes, we definitely need to be more culturally sensitive and be self-aware as well!
Hello Lucinda!
ReplyDeleteI know how it feels like to be in that situation- to be in your shoes as well as the korean girl's. In my secondary school , most of my classmates were chinese except for a couple of students who were of other races. In class, we tend to communicate in both English and Chinese (unknowingly) at the same time. I think everyone who lives in Singapore can relate to this. Say, if you're in a project team made up of mainly malay students,there would definitely be some point in time in which the malays will unknowingly speak in Malay during discussions. Although such actions may seem unintentional and committed unknowingly most of the times, we should make the extra effort to recognise the cultural, language and racial differences in order to communicate effectively. Like what you said,we should try to be more aware of their prescence and be accomodative. This can be done by a constant reminder to the group to speak English when they stray away. This does not take much effort and would make the korean girl in your case, feel accepted.
The senario you gave is pretty enlightening as many of us tend to not notice such minor details whilst communicating. The emotions of both parties (the korean girl and you) were well conveyed through this post. Good job(:
Hi Lucinda,
ReplyDeleteI like your blog post, as I can totally relate to it.
A lot of people have the habit of conversing in their native languages when they hang out with people belonging to the same cultural background. Although this seems acceptable under normal situations, one must not do so in the company of others who are alien to their language.
Not only amongst the Chineese and Malay, but funnily, I have also faced the above mentioned intercultural conflict while mingling with fellow Indians.
As you might be aware, India is a vast country with about 26 official languages and other dialects. The Indians in NUS are mostly categorized into the Hindi speaking group and the Tamil speaking group. Since I speak neither of these languages, I used to find it awkward amongst their presence too, despite them being fellow Indians. All this is because of intercultural barriers. But luckily for me, I have found a whole group of friends from different nationalities who have different cultural backgrounds here in Singapore. This is because we all converse in English.
All of the mentioned is due to inter-cultural barriers. If we fail to open up, and be receptive to different cultures around us, we cant expect to mingle with others. The world is big place, with a lot of things to learn and a lot of interesting people to meet. Hence, I feel staying in our shell is not the right methodology.
Will look out for your next post. :)
Hi Joanna!
ReplyDeleteThank you for commenting on my blogpost. Your experience with such intercultural behaviours further illustrated the point on unconscious switch to conversing in native language among groups of people belonging to the same cultural background. I believe that recognising this situation by being more self-aware and people-centred, would easily alleviate this intercultural communication barrier! (:
Hi Shruti!
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing your personal experiences on intercultural behaviours. I like that way you counter these intercultural communication barriers by being open and receptive to the vast numbers of different cultures around the world. Making an effort to speak in a common language- English, is crucial in relating to people from other cultural background and hence establishing good relationships with them. I totally share the same view with you on that. (: