Cultural Analysis / International Interviews

Culture is the overall moral belief, customs, language, and attitudes a person is brought and raised into. Daily, we are exposed to diverse and different cultures everyday which allow us to learn the different values and traditions each culture possess. The importance of observing and learning different customs is beneficial because it can help us better adapt and prevent misunderstandings when we communicate and interact with others. Hispanics and Americans are two huge cultures that have been sharing the same living space for years but are an example of two different civilizations. While both, Hispanics and Americans, share many similarities they both differ in recognition of religion, language,

Culture is universal and inescapable. Its expressed through different beliefs and ideas. It follows someone through their ethnicity and communities. The cultural impact is inevitable and permanent. Someone’s culture has a significant impact on the way they view the world and others. This influence is communicated through the individual's upbringing, their culture, as well as their current environment. Situations are perceived differently by those with different values. The fairly full extent of one’s cultural impact is clear.

In school, I had to understand differences and prevent misunderstanding in order to work with others effectively. “Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner’s Seven dimension of Culture” helps me to relate and explore my own situation. From my experience, I have realized that people differ from one another in specific ways; this is all due to the fact that we have our own beliefs and values due to different factors. When trying to distinguish people from different cultures, I automatically consider the seven

Having been experiencing a huge number of major historical incidents affecting various aspects of their lives, the people belonging to different corners of a country gradually establish their unique culture distinguishing them and their nation among all other nations in the world. Most importantly, the culture of people of different countries has been affected dramatically by revolutions during the history, especially religious ones, through which the lifestyle of those people had been completely reformed. The Islamic revolution, the most recent revolution in my country, in particular, had a plenty of serious effects on our people's way of living.

When considering the connotative meaning of culture, often known as an identifying factor in a family, organization, or society, it can be rather simple to experience disconnect with rationalism. The concept of culture – complex and subjective – has been a paramount topic throughout history due to the curiosity, growth, and sprawl of populations. In modern era, an important idea to note resides in the fact that culture is not a term which is locked-in by political borders. Rather, culture exists as the embodiment of a group’s beliefs, experiences, and behavior; as well as the contrast apparent in

According to Hofstede definition, it is possible to develop the idea of national culture as a culture for a particular group of humans that includes systems of values and is passed down between generations by learning. (Hofstede G. H., 1980, p. 21)

The world is getting smaller. It is essential for people to have cultural awareness and understand cultural diversity. Culture awareness is the foundation of communication throughout our world today. Therefore, a person is culturally aware when he or she stands back from oneself and becomes aware of the culture, beliefs, and perceptions of others. Culture is the complex whole of a society, which gains its identity by its spoken languages, beliefs, values, customs, laws, cuisine, and geography. No matter where each culture is located, it shares at least five basic characteristics, learned, shared, based on symbols, integrated, and dynamic. Each country has its own colorfully rich culture and can be conceptualized as everything that an

When I began this assignment, I knew I wanted to try out a culture I know practically nothing about. I love Chinese and Japanese food, so I decided to turn in the direction of sitting at a restaurant with Chinese/Asian cuisine. This was a simple sit-down dinner that did not occur on any special day like holidays. The setting that I chose was a Cantonese restaurant located in Elmwood Park called “New Star Restaurant”. While I walked in, I noticed a variety of gift items such as porcelain turtles, buddhas, Maneki Neko (welcoming cat), pandas, etc. There was a lot of red and gold decor in the interior of the restaurant. The people of this culture are very strong believers in good fortune, good health, and family. The red means success in relationships

Cultural conflict, as defined by different researchers, can refers to different forms of situation that the way people’s live. Cultural conflict can lead to misunderstandings, and it based on the differences in behaviors, beliefs, and the ways of life. For example, moving into a new environment is one of the reason to lead of cultural conflict. When people move from one region to another, such as from one country to another, they may experience cultural conflict based on the differences in culture between the two regions as well as the ways of lives within the two regions. The differences in culture may lead to conflict and misunderstandings between the residents and the visitors. The same case applies to the families represented in the book

Culture, according to Hofstede (1982), is a “collective programming of the mind which distinguish the members of one category from another”. The term “category of people” can be a nation, a region, a work organization, or even a family.

This portion will compare two cultures from an emic perspective. I will examine similarities and differences within the two cultures as an insider, solely based on my personal experiences and scholarly research. I will express cultural relativism throughout this portion of the paper and will refrain from using opinionated or judgmental language. Prior to learning about these cultures I had preconceived thoughts about these cultures with little to no knowledge, not only from an etic perspective, but also from not being an insider. It took first hand experience for me to understand practices and rituals of their culture and reasoning’s behind them. Having an open mind and not passing judgment on another social group are two things that enabled me to have a sense of understanding when learning about different societies and cultures.

It is not easy to define culture because culture is too broad a concept, can be both abstract and specific. However, what is agreed is culture covers all faces of our life as well as direct the way we behave, interact and communicate. (Liu et al., 2011). One popular definition is that “Culture is the total way of life of a group of people, comprising of the deposit of knowledge, experience, belief, values, traditions, religion, and notion of time, roles, spatial relations, worldviews, material objects and geographic territory”. (Liu et al., 2011, p.57). In this essay, I will analyse components and characteristics of culture, and based on that grounds, I will reflect on my own culture-being a Vietnamese. Dodd (1998) considered that culture is made up by three layers which consist of the core layer, the intermediate layer and the outer layer. I will examine what values and beliefs are considered important in my culture. Those are components of the inner core. Then, I will take some examples of the intermediate layer (expression of cultural activities by manifestation) such as communication patterns, customs and festivals.

The objective of this paper is to examine and appreciate the ways in which culture shape the way in terms of how we view the world and form relationship. As part of this exercise, I would be interviewing someone from the cultural group outside mine to acknowledge their culture in the area of language, dress, norms roles and traditions. This paper or project is aim to assist me to put into practice what I have learnt from the course concept of Understanding Diversity. Culture is that which define us; it molds our identity and has a great influence on our behavior.

The concept of culture is something that defines many aspects of one’s life. From physical objects to different ways of thinking, culture adds significance to human life and makes groups of people distinct from one another. Culture is essentially a group of people who come together with similar interests and points of view. According to the Center for Advanced Language Acquisition of the University of Minnesota, “culture is defined as the shared patterns of behaviors and interactions, cognitive constructs, and affective understanding that are learned through a process of socialization.” From a more sociological perspective, culture is a way in which people come together in order to fulfill their needs. These shared patterns and ideas identify the members of a culture group while also distinguishing those of another group.” Culture is one of the things that sets the United States apart from the rest of the world. Not that the rest of the world is not cultural, but the circumstance here is different. Many people of different cultural backroads come to this country in search of a better life. As a consequence, the United States has become a place where many cultures merge together like a colossal pot soup.

As a Chinese international student studying in America, I have experienced two different cultures. I have seen Chinese practicing Chinese cultures in America, and it makes Americans think that Chinese are strange and Americans do not understand Chinese behaviors. These lead to questions of what the cultural barrier can cause and how the cultural barrier affects the life of people who have different cultural backgrounds. In Gary Althen’s article, “American Values and Assumptions,” Althen argues each group has its own culture, and he points out different American cultural values. Another article written by Yaping Tang, “Polite but Thirsty,” Tang is a Chinese international student who comes to study in America, and he discusses the difference between Chinese cultures and American cultures by mentioning different behavioral practices. Every culture is unique; however, having cultural diversity in today’s society may cause cultural conflict within the community since other people may have different viewpoints on your cultural practice and they may misunderstand your behavior. Therefore, it is important for people to understand and respect other cultural practices, and it is a good idea to adapt and learn other cultural values when people are in a new place. Overall, culture value is a collection of value that is practiced by a group of people in a country, and every group has its own cultural value to practice. Although each cultural value may not be shared or may not be agreed