Cultural Contact Zone

Different social, professional and cultural contexts may affect relationships and the way people communicate due to of a lack of understanding or knowledge of one another’s background and culture. This could be through their race, religion, ethnicity or where they come from. Each one of these can have similar or very different ways to communicate. For example

Different cultures tend to clash when they come in contact because they encompass many different beliefs and expectations. Everyone has a cultural identity and they act accordingly to it. Therefore, when two people with different cultures interact they

Mary Louise Pratt wrote the essay “Arts of the Contact Zone” with the purpose of explaining that society would benefit if people were exposed to and understood the concept of “contact zones”. She refers to contact zones as social spaces where cultures meet and clash with each other, usually with one culture being dominant over the other. A person living in a contact zone is exposed to two different cultures, two different languages, and as a result is presented with a struggle in each culture to maintain themselves. From being surrounded by several different cultures, people begin to integrate the concept of transculturation—a process in which subordinate cultures evolve by taking things from dominant, more advanced cultures, and make it

Mary Louise Pratt defined contact zones as “social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power, such as colonialism, slavery, or their aftermaths as they are lived out in many parts of the world today.” A contact zone is a place where two cultures can mesh together. People from different cultures are able to interact with each other through these contact zones. A contact zone allows people to look into cultures other than their own. They can get new ideas by looking into another culture, as well as their own. Contact zones allow you to look at things in a new way. Pratt talks about contact zones being seen more and more today. People may have to look beyond how

As Mahatma Gandhi said, “No culture can live, if it attempts to be exclusive” (Mahatma). Our culture identifies who we are and how we behave in social environments and provides us with a foundation in which to live our lives and raise our families. Each individual culture has certain customs and courtesies that are important. Exposure to the cultures of others can be intimidating and can leave a person feeling confused and unsure about how they fit in (Schaefer 60). Culture shock can leave a person feeling out of place in an unfamiliar culture (Schaefer 60). Our diverse societies demand understanding and acceptance of other cultures. Learning and understanding these cultures before being

In our world of expanding technology and shrinking geography, people of different cultures have increasing frequency of contact and need for effective communication on a daily basis. Whether through travel, immigration, or international business, having the ability to communicate across many different cultures is an advantage in and of itself. Speaking a different language is an obvious obstacle to intercultural communication, but a greater and more difficult hurdle is to “speak” a different culture. To understand and comprehend and even apply these tiniest

Read carefully the following piece of text. What does it tell us about cross cultural encounters?

The reader is introduced to a term coined and repeated by Pratt throughout the piece, "contact zones." She uses this term "to refer to social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power, such as colonialism, slavery, or their aftermaths as they are lived out in many parts of the world today" (Pratt 584). Contact zones were not necessarily a positive interaction because these social interactions usually came out of ignorance resulting into an obdurate conflict. Dubois The Negro in the United States and Griffith’s The Birth of the Nation, and Pratt’s very own Arts of the Contact Zone correlate through Pratt’s terminology of contact zone, autoethnographic texts,

Today, we live in a culturally diverse society due to globalization. As our world grows, expands and become increasingly more interconnected, the need for effective interpersonal communication among differing cultures has become apparent. When people from different cultures interact with one another there is intercultural communication because different cultures create different interpretation and expectations about what is seen as competent behaviors that will enable the construction of shared meanings.

“The Contact Zone”, is defined by Mary Louis Pratt as “the space in which transculturation takes place – where two different cultures meet and inform each other, often in highly asymmetrical ways.” Pratt describes what she calls ‘contact zones’ and elaborates on the pros and cons of these cultural interactions. She sees the contact zone as a place that allows people to exchange cultural ideas and break down the dividing cultural borders. When a contact zone is started, people are able to interact on new levels gaining a new perspective because they are able to collaborate with people from foreign cultures. If you are always with people of the same culture as you, you become used to hearing everything from the same perspective. With a

Being able to understand how people from different cultures and religions communicate, interact, and perceive the environment around them allows for the formation of important guidelines and practices which help combat and avoid anxiety and uncertainty in government, business, and personal intercultural relationships for the purpose of efficient negotiations and merges different cultures into more tolerant cohesive existence.

In this article called “Globalization and Global Political Theory,” talks about how our culture, economics, political, and respectable relationship with complete strangers from all over the

The world has become hugely interconnected over the last couple of year. With globalization being the preferred mode of operation for many businesses, the world has become borderless. Developments made in the field of information communication technology have also played a key role in helping bridge the gap that exists between people from different regions of the world. Thus, the world has become more interconnected with a lot of intercultural sharing. These developments have made it easier for businesses to penetrate and dominate foreign markets. In their videos on Ted talk, both Peter Alfandary and James Sun argue that there is a need for people to try to learn about other cultures as this enhances relation and understanding among people. The paper presents an analysis of existing research and current trends that reiterate or disapprove the views held by these narrators. It seeks to show that though globalization has taken root in today’s world, there is a need to take an interest in learning other cultures as this will ensure a better understand especially when doing business.

As travel and communication have become faster and easier, interaction between people of different cultures has become more and more common. It was once the case that different cultures remained mostly separate from each other, whether due to war, geographic reasons, or beliefs in keeping ethnic purity. Trade and immigration have brought together people of diverse cultures and backgrounds, making communication between people of different cultures unavoidable.

Cross-cultural communication is the process of exchanging meaningful and unambiguous information across cultural boundaries, in a way that preserves mutual respect and minimizes antagonism, that is, it looks at how people from differing cultural backgrounds endeavour to communicate. The study of cross-cultural communication was originally found within businesses and the government both seeking to expand globally. Communication is interactive, so an important influence on its effectiveness is our relationship with others. All communication is cultural -- it draws on ways we have learned to speak and give nonverbal messages. We do not always