Multilingual Outreach : An Experiment On Success Essay

ASSIGNMENT: Achieving competence as an interpersonal communicator in a diverse society is necessary to your personal and professional success. One way to enhance our understanding of interpersonal communication as a relationship-building activity is to engage in first hand dialogue with people from cultures other than your own. This assignment gives you the opportunity to engage in the dual perspective – honoring the perspective of the person with whom you are communicating as well as honoring your own perspective. You are also able to contrast your worldview with the perspective of someone with a different life experience than your

Social capital is the is the social connections that allow for social interactions in which an individual has opportunities to build bonds, help others out, and affect change for the better. When the social engagement is reciprocated, it can produce benefits for the multiple individuals engaged in the activity and so further the circumstance of the society.

Social capital is defined as the capacity of social institutions, such as families, churches, schools, or other community organizations to make an investment of attention and advice, support and concerned interest in other community members according to reformer L.J. Hanifan. As a dependent of the community social capital is applied to my everyday life. It helps me to obtain resources for my education such as scholarships, teaches me how to work together with my peers, becoming a positive role model to youth, and build trusting relationships with others in the community. Social capital is seen as a support group from leaders in the community.

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

I would say that Relay For Life is a good example of a social capital institution. Every person that is involved with Relay share's the common goal of raising awareness and money for a common cause. By being a part of an organization where you are surrounded by people with a common interest, not only can you benefit but the other people involved can benefit from it. I think that this is a great way to be engaged in civic life and to be involved with not only other people who participate in Relay, but also with other members of the community who benefit from all of the time and effort put into raising money for the American Cancer Society.

Because communication between two people of different cultures is very challenging, there has been extensive research/studies conducted on this topic. This idea was also very interesting to me because I attended a highly diverse high school, in which we had a Global Studies program where international students were invited to come and learn at our school. The immersion of the different cultures was very difficult to adapt to at first because it was new to a lot of us students who have never attended a school where international students were amongst us in the halls, but as the days went on it became normal to me.

For this reading reflection on Chapter eight from Berkman, was based on social capital, social cohesion, and health. By the introduction of the chapter, it goes over the definition of social capital and its theoretical pathways that links into health. According to the text, social capital is being defined as “resources that are accessed by individuals as a result of their membership of a network or a group” (Berkman 291). For the theoretical pathways of social capital to health, it goes over the three group-level mechanisms merit that is relevant to health outcomes is social contagion, informal social control, and collective efficacy, where they all benefit to their group such as a community (Berkman 293). However, there is a dark side to social

Social Capital is defined as the networks of relationships among people, enabling that society to function effectively. James Coleman’s “Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital” examines the many benefits of social capital in a society. However, most forms of social capital are public goods and do not primarily profit the person who has to bring it about. Therefore, it’s not in his interest to bring it leading to a shortage. Coleman wants to apply economics’s principle of rational action to the social perspective to increase people’s willingness to socialize. On the other hand, Alejandro Portes’s “The Two Meanings of Social Capital” challenges Coleman’s concept by arguing that people shouldn’t

Bourdieu states that the capital comes in various forms, not only in the cultural one. The author writes about economic capital and social capital. On the one hand, describing economic capital as financial goods that can be bought with money, e.g. technology. This form of capital differs from the other forms of capital to its ability of being trades and having a physical presence in society. Economic capital gives immediate access to certain goods and services, whereas social capital refers to all those things individuals cannot buy with money, e.g. love, happiness, social acceptance, memories, experience, etc. According to Bourdieu (1997), social capital focuses on trusting relationships and how people use those relationships and social connections

Martin, J. N., & Nakayama, T. K. (2011). Experiencing intercultural communication. (4th ed., pp. 226-227). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

Social capital, according to Bourdieu is a combination of real resources which are associated to the possession of dependable network of more or less institutionalized link of collective associates

Intercultural communication is commonly explained as an interaction between people of 'different cultures whether defined in terms of racial, ethnic or socioeconomic differences.' Human communication consists of verbal and nonverbal messages (language and gestures) which are shaped by gender, social class or culture. Thus, what perimeters define the intercultural exchange and what primary messages do we need or try to convey?

According to French sociologist Emile Durkheim in “The Division of Labor in Society” (1893), social cohesion is challenging to define or measure. Nonetheless, he came up with two significant factors to social cohesion, which are shared loyalties and solidarity (Fenger, 2012). He deduced that solidarity in society comes in two forms – mechanical solidarity which is the traditional regularity of combined values and beliefs and organic solidarity which is the outcome of relationships between individuals who can work together while developing an independent and even critical character with respect to tradition. Bollen and Hoyle (1990) states that the concept of perceived cohesion is essential to the theoretical understanding of social cohesion.

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

Community development (CD) has been playing an important role within the society as it is a critical practice that identifies and attempts to address unequal relations of power (Forde & Lynch, 2015). In CD, social capital is an important term as it refers to the networks and norms that enable collective action. In general, social capital is the level of trust between members within the community. Social workers need to understand and empower the social capital to strengthen the community through collective action based on the existing resources.