Cultural Differences and Interpersonal Interactions: A Personal Reflection

There are several different positive and unique aspects of intercultural relationships. Intercultural relationships allow individuals to understand other people of different cultures, ethnicities, gender and etc. It is interesting understanding other peoples beliefs as well as how they have lived there life’s. A positive aspect of intercultural relationships is the difference between the two people. I think it is interesting learning how other people think and how they were brought up. When you are in an intercultural relationship you get to understand how that person feels about certain situations that they have been through. You get to learn who that person truly is.

Cortez) if she thought he would, because she had also met with the parents before, so she knew of him. Come to find out, Mrs. Cortez was the father’s ESOL teacher years ago at Statesboro High School. She knew him better than I thought. During the process on a one on one interview with Luis Nava, my student’s father, Luis and I sat in my conference room at the school where I teach. He showed very much emotion when telling his story. It was a very humbling experience to here and watch someone tell a story first hand or something that I personally, had ever heard on movies. As he continued to talk, I couldn’t help but think of Nathan, (my student, his son) and how I had treated him as teacher. Had I been as welcoming as I could to my classroom? Had I showed understanding when he didn’t seem to understand? Questions began to overwhelm me as I thought of how I present myself as a teacher, educator, and friend to all of my students that are from a different culture than

To learn from another that is not like you, that is from another country, gives you the opportunity to acquire knowledge that opens your eyes and lets you better understand the world around you. That can definitely be said after conducting my interview for the Cross-Cultural Interaction Report. I had the pleasure of meeting and interviewing Blanchefort Djimsa, a Food Science major, who is from the country of Chad which is located in Central Africa. Blanchefort is from the city of Moundou, the third largest city, which is in the South of Chad. Here on scholarship, he is attending Oklahoma State University to further his education. Blanchefort told me about his country and gave me a different perspective about Chad.

Wal-Mart is one of the largest corporations and private employers in the United States, and one of the most admired companies in America as reported by Fortune Magazine (“Fortune 500”, 2012). Netting billions of dollars in profits each year, there are not many other retailers who can compete with them. They give millions back in donations to non-profit companies around the country each year, yet put mom-and-pop establishments out of business each time they build a new store. They have been recognized for outstanding achievements in employee and community relations, yet have been charged with gender discrimination lawsuits. There is a definite line of ethics and cross

In a career as a psychologist, it is typical to see a range of clients who come from different cultural backgrounds including ethnicity, race, and sexual orientation. To be a proficient psychologist, it is important to be knowledgeable and accepting of different cultural backgrounds. According the American Psychology Association manual and discussed in further depth by Weddings and Corsini (2014) there are guidelines set in place to ensure that a psychologist takes these cultural differences into consideration and they are prepared to handle the differences.

A culture of any region provides a complete framework to its inhabitants to how to organize themselves, their actions and thoughts with respect to their environment. Thus culture is not innate; instead it is learned by the people as they continue to live in that particular region. This culture drives their thinking, actions and basically all kinds of interaction with their surroundings. Thus, it is different for different areas and people from these areas learn different ways to interact by each other(Neuliep, 2015).Moreover, people from different cultures differ from each other because of their context in which they move about. This context plays an important role in providing meaning to their interaction. There are some things that cannot be understood by verbal words alone; they have to be justified by the context in which they exist. This has been argued by Edward Hall, according to whom, “context carries varying proportions of the meaning” (Gamsrieglerm, 2005). Because of these differences in interaction due to differences in the context in which these people exist, culture has been divided into two sub-categories. One is high-context culture and the other is low-context culture. These two terms are used to refer to the differences in culture between different societies because of the difference in context, and have been suggested by a well-known U.S. anthropologist Edward T. Hall (Hofstede, 2011).

The shrinking borders of the international business landscape demand keen interpretation of the unique cultural expectations of organizational partners. Guffey & Loewy (2015) note that there are five distinct dimensions of cultural difference that inhibit effective intercultural communication. Barron (2013) states that it is imperative for North American organizations in particular to actively increase the cultural awareness of employees conducting international business. International negotiators can improve an organization’s rate of success through thoroughly understanding several important cultural differences. First, businesspeople should be aware of the communication idiosyncrasies of high and low-context cultures (Guffey & Loewy, 2015). Secondly, American workers should understand the varied importance of time orientation in foreign organizations (Keating, 2014). Finally, international negotiations will proceed more smoothly if cultural power distances are respected (Rao, 2013).

BP is a global organization that has a multinational presence in the world. A cultural issue that can impact this organization outside of the United States is gender. In the United States and several other countries that BP works in, gender is not an issue as culturally it is acceptable for men and women to be in business together, but in some countries, especially in the Middle East this is tricky cultural difficulty. This can be a serious issue because women should be able to be equals in a corporation, but at the same time, BP has to be able to not offend someone that they are trying to do business with because they are culturally uncomfortable with women in business. This is a delicate

“They only live who dare” (Voltaire). Old stereotypes, and traditions once preserved by culture for thousands of years are under threat to dissolve as time progresses forward. World of today is a smaller place with less prejudice than it was in the past. Many people strive to call themselves citizens of the world, as the result they become more open-minded, and less reserved to engage with unfamiliar experiences, including intercultural relationships. In some particular cases, though need for exploration in that domain is being driven by search of one’s identity. This is where people have to be careful, and mindful of experimenting. Brittany Muddamalle is the mother of three boys. She has been in an intercultural marriage for six years, and shared her experiences, and challenges of intercultural marriage (http://mixedrootsstories.com/tag/ interracial-marriage/). Intercultural relationships are among the most challenging because it might get hard to share cultures with kids, blending cultures perfectly is impossible, and making a decision might involve learning aspects of each culture first.

Cultural differences play an important role in intercultural communication. The statement that effective business depends on knowledge of mentality is broadly discussed not only by sociologists but also by economists and international companies’ managers. Corporate culture became a term widely used to describe the way of particular company employees’ behavior at a workplace. Also, this term is used by human resources managers to name a set of behavior rules, which they hope to introduce to the companies. Promoting a corporate culture is an effective way to create a strong organization. It can be done through enhancing the sense of community within the company. And a sense of community is a sense of shared identity. Therefore, the question of national identity needs a thorough analysis as it is a key issue to gain success in a globalized world.

Different cultural backgrounds can have certain effects on the interpersonal communication between students; and how cultural diversity benefits them socially and academically. Students expand their knowledge about other cultures by interacting with other students of different backgrounds. In doing so, they are growing socially and academically. According to Sarwari (2014), students that cooperate or interact with students from other cultures gain interpersonal communication skills, which are necessary in the workplace. Through interaction they acquire new perspectives and a better academic life (Sarwai 2014, Ibrahim 2014, Aziz 2014). Along the same lines as mentioned by Ramburuth, Welch (2005), classroom diversity is an ideal source that teachers can target to assist students in building their “cross cultural competence” (Ramburuth 2005, Welch 2005). Both, Sarwari and Ramburuth, portray how students can benefit from having different cultures within a classroom because it can give them the upper hand in a workplace environment or a social event due to the experience they get when interacting with individuals from other nationalities. Furthermore, stated by Taras, Rowney (2007), students bring with them a “variety of backgrounds and types of knowledge” which helps them come up with different solutions on how to approach a problem (Taras 2007, Rowney 2007). On the other hand, Ramburuth, Welch (2005) established that through “multicultural group-work” students are

In life, most of people have a variety of intercultural relationships. It has different categories of age, physical ability, gender, ethnicity, class, religion, race, and nationality. This intercultural relationship can get in school and work place. We can meet variant differences with them. But for feel comfortable with the people that differ from us, we need lot of time for socialization. For example, Susie was dating with a guy. Susie had a middle-class Mexican cultural background that was very family-oriented. Her parents always care about decision in life, such as, school and boyfriend. However, Susie's boyfriend rises in a family of an Asian mother and German father who were not intimately involved in his activities. According to this example, Susie and her boyfriend have different of family background. However that can occur in intercultural relationship. Susie can accept that and does tolerance to the unsimilarity.

Culture involves more than the language someone speaks, the food they eat, or the clothes they wear. Different cultural groups can also include nationalities, ethnicities, religions, sexual orientation, and gender. It is through being indifferent that often people with various multicultural differences may begin to experience conflict, as many people continue about their day-to-day activities without regard to the multicultural diversities around them. Intolerance, of course, leads to acts of hate being committed against those who may be seen as “different” or “dissident” towards another’s way of life. There have been many cases of hate crimes being committed and groups that have been established whose sole priority is to preach intolerance and hate to those who are different. Depending on the outcome and how things are “resolved”, multicultural conflict can have a positive or negative effect on interpersonal relations. How does someone resolve multicultural conflict? Through research of various journal articles it has become clear that if multicultural conflict does not get resolved with healthy resolutions, such as education, understanding, and communication it can not only have detrimental effects on a person, but on society as a whole.

This term paper focuses on different types of relationships, be it personal, professional or marital, between people from different cultural backgrounds. The objective of this paper is to list out the ways in which to have a healthy relationship between people who are so different from each other. This has a major significance in today’s world as people are beginning to accept each other on a wider basis across nations and as a result there comes a situation where you have to interact with different kinds of people.

In addition to cultural difference another aspect that should be considered is cross cultural relationships. This may sound like an opportunity to get a date, but it is actually a chance to develop a great relationship with your student in a class setting. Cross cultural relationships change from country to country so you will have to adjust to the culture and explore more option than the one’s provided for you in this section (Axner, 2016).