Culture consists of thousands of pieces of information

I really enjoyed the class this week (Lecture 6) on the macro-approaches to cross-cultural communication. The video shown at the beginning of the class compared the macro socio-psychological values and characteristics of different cultures. Through this video, I realized that knowing and understanding the cultural traits of different national groups and how they affect their communicational and behavior patterns are helpful in helping one to cope with people from different cultures. In fact, there were instances during the video where I could identify with the issue as it happened to me before. Let me share with you some experiences I had.((:

I have group mate who is from Thailand and my group met her mum one day during a group meeting when she came to visit Singapore. My Thai friend introduced her mum to us and we shook hands and did the usual way of greeting a friend’s mum in Singapore, which is to say something like “Hello Aunty, nice to meet you! Welcome to Singapore, I’m Hannah!” and give a nice smile. When my group sat down with my friend later, we asked her if that was the correct way of greeting her mum and she replied that calling her mum “aunty” was considered to be rude in the Thai culture. However, her mum would not be offended as she is widely traveled and would understand. When asked about the proper way to make a greeting, my Thai friend had difficultly finding the correct phrase/ word to use in English, as it depended on the relationship to the friend. For example, in Thailand, if you met your best friend’s mum, you would greet her the same way as you greet your own mum. We were shocked and apologetic after this incident!

I happened to be on exchange to UNC-Chapel Hill in the USA on Ben n Jerry’s free cone day. Some of my American friends and I arranged to have free ice-cream at the store that afternoon. As usual, the lines to free stuff will be very long but surprisingly, the line moved very fast that day. I arrived at the place earlier and my friends were not there yet so I decided to get in line first and was really excited to get free ice-cream! When my friends reached the place, they called me on my mobile to ask me where I was and I told them I was already queuing up for the ice-cream. They did not seem to understand what I was saying and kept asking me where I was so they could find me, and I kept repeating the same phrase. I only realized why after I hung up. There was some sort of miscommunication as my American friends did not understand the meaning of “queuing up”. Instead, they used the phrase “in line”. I should have told them that “I’m in line”, and they would have understood where I was instantly. In fact there are a number of common word(s) which have the same meanings that Americans use which we Singaporeans do not usually do so. To name a few, such word(s) are:
American: restroom Singaporean: toilet
American: elevator Singaporean: lift

The above are just two interesting experiences I had which made me more aware when interacting with people from different cultures. When put into the same situation again, I would now know how to react. Have you had such experiences too you would like to share?((: