Activity 12

After taking this course I have come to realize how clueless I was about different cultures and how we communicate with them. It is absolutely ridiculous how much lack of knowledge I posses about my own culture and what my culture is all about.

It is extremely important to have a general knowledge about other cultures and other types of people in your every day life. I am so used to only knowing and surrounding myself with people of similar races and cultures as my own. But after taking this class I have found that there are many different and interesting people out there with different cultures and backgrounds that I could learn from.

In jobs and daily life it is important to know what types of behaviors should be avoided when communicating with different people from different cultures. If you incompetent to this fact you may run into some issues in your career or in your daily life.

I have taken so much out of this class the activities that we took part in for this class have really opened up my mind to so many different ideas that I have never thought of before. Learning about different cultures and their differences, the conflicts that can occur, and relationships with cultures will be extremely beneficial information to keep with me throughout my entire life.

I think that sometimes we overlook the importance of knowing these types of things because our lives are so busy and bombarded with various knowledge for school and work and our social lives that we sometimes take advantage of the many tools of intercultural communication that will benefit us in the end when communicating with those who are different from us.

question: What have you learned from this class that you will take with you for the rest of your life?

Activity 11

After searching online for articles for this activity and not finding much, it dawned on me. I will be basing this activity off of the show, Weeds. This show is perfect for this activity as it deals with cultural conflict in almost every episode.

To start off with there are far too many cultural conflicts in this show for me to discuss with you all today, but to give you a quick summary. Nancy is a mother of 2 kids and has been fleeing from her house because she is not a normal mom she grows and sells marijuana for a living. She is now in a town in California extremely close to the border in Mexico.

In the time that her family has lived in this new town she has already gotten herself into many conflicts with different cultures. The one conflict I will be focusing on is her new found relationship with the drug lord of Mexico...who is also the mayor of Mexico. She met him in an accidental encounter in the underground drug trafficking tunnel and got into some trouble with him for being down there, but he was smitten with her and eventually they ended up dating. This relationship has not only caused conflict for Nancy but also for Esteban, the Mayor and drug lord, he has gone through a lot of trouble due to the confidentiality of both his jobs and his team is not to fond of Nancy being a part of all this, but he loves her so he is willing to risk it all for their relationship. Eventually Nancy becomes pregnant with Esteban's baby.

The major conflict issues are that the relationship with a drug lord is putting her family and her in danger with a lot of different people. Now she is pregnant with his child and the two very different families must combine.

The conflict styles that I see present here are conflict of interest and value conflict. At first Esteban wanted Nancy to get an abortion, due to the negative effects this child being born would have on his image as the mayor, but Nancy refused. Also Esteban has always been very controlling with Nancy telling her what do do when to do it and how to do it.

The way that they resolve their differences in the show ends up being quite humorous but Nancy refuses to abort the baby and ends up having it and Esteban finally gets excited about it but forces Nancy to be seeing a doctor that is Mexican and does not speak one word of English which Nancy feels very uncomfortable with so she packs up all of her things and runs away to an American doctor to have her baby. Esteban gets very angry with Nancy and forces her to have the baby at his house but yet again she runs back to the American hospital and has the baby. Because of the complications with being the Mayor Esteban's associate will not allow him to put his name on the birth certificate. Nancy ends up putting her closest friend on the birth certificate who turns out to be Jewish. Esteban shows up at Nancy's house where the baby is getting circumcised in Jewish style tradition. Esteban is now very angry. You will have to watch the show to see what happens next

The intercultural conflict in this show is endless and it would take me the entire day to tell you the rest of the conflicts that occur with this situation.

Question: If you were to be in an intercultural conflict with someone what would you do to resolve the conflict.

Activity 10

1. My culture considers family anyone who is close to us that we feel as though is out family, regardless if they are blood related or not. I sometimes feel closer to people that are not in my immediate or extended family than I do with some of my relatives.

2. Some roles and responsibilities of family members include; being there for one another, no matter what. Our parents are responsible for being good role models, teaching us how to be civilized people, and guiding us toward our life away from home.

3. The home is always welcome to family members but it is not required that you stay there after adolescence nor is it required to move out once considered an adult. I feel that your home should always be welcome to you if you run into some sort of issue or problem in life. Home is home, it is wear the heart is. It should not be something that is forbidden after turning a certain age.

4. The cultural norms for dating are very open with my culture. Religion is not a factor, nor is race. It is about the person as a whole. Does this person possess good morals and goals? It is these morals and goals and qualities of a person that matter. Age is also not a factor as long as the person is a overall good person and has good intentions with the other person.

5. Marriage proposals are relatively traditional for the most part. The man asks the woman. My culture does not disagree with anything that may occur out of the ordinary though. If the woman were to ask the man or if it was a mutual discussion that came about, that is fine too nothing is shunned. It does not need to be the typical man ask the women situation, this is a social norm that has just become custom in our culture.

6. A typical wedding consists of white dress, black tux, grooms men, brides maids, ring, flowers, cake, etc. The typical American wedding, except it is not necessary to be wed in a church. I personally would like my wedding to be outside in the middle of a forest, this is not looked down upon either what ever the choice of those to be wed is just fine. People spend so much money on weddings these days, which much of the spending is sort of unnecessary in my eyes.

7. Divorce is an unfortunate occurrence that is not looked highly upon for the families sake but, sometimes people change and relationships don't work out so if the couple gave it their best shot and are doing what's best for their happiness then divorce is what is necessary. I personally think that people rush into marriage most of the time. There is no rush to get married, I feel that people should wait it out until the time is right.

8. Hopefully the ex couple can come to an agreement upon what each person will get.

9. Homosexuality is not a problem at all. What sex people are attracted to is their own business and they cannot change the way they feel. No one should be made fun of or neglected for a part of who they are.

10. I feel the same way as my culture about gender roles. There are certain things women do better than men and certain things men do better than women.

question: Is there something about your culture that you highly disagree with? If so what and why do you disagree with it?

Activity 9

This activity was extremely eye opening for me. I do not watch much television but one show that I have always enjoyed watching is, That 70s Show. I love all the different array of characters in this show they all have extremely different personalities. I thought this activity would be difficult due to this fact but when I thought about the characters as a whole it became more aware to me what the point of this activity was.

To me this show, shows that being American is all about having family, friends, a job. Not all characters in this show are blessed with each of these. For example "Hide" has a mother that doesn't take very good care of him, but eventually he ends up moving in with "Eric's" family and soon becomes part of the family. So even if your birth family isn't part of your life, you are always part of some family, doesn't matter if your blood related or not.

This show is based on the 70's so the characters look like casual Americans, except of course, "Fez" the foreigner of the bunch. He still dresses the same as the others in the group but he doesn't look like everyone else. Besides for Fez almost everyone else featured in this show are Caucasian.

"That 70s Show's" focus is on the kids, these kids mostly sit around in "Eric's" basement, smoke marijuana, and then find different things to do around their town, regardless of the risk of trouble. "Eric's" dad "Red" is a hilarious character spending most of his time being angry at the kids and tormenting them, and calling them dumb asses, and threatening to shove his foot in foreign places.(sorry if inappropriate, but true)

They all live in a suburb in Wisconsin. That is what makes this show so interesting it's based out of the Midwest which all of us can relate to, going to school in Wisconsin or living in Wisconsin.

I am not sure what someone with no experience with the U.S. would think about this show. It may send the wrong message. This is a concept I never have thought of before. What would we think watching a french television show, would it be difficult to understand? I wonder about this but I really can't imagine what That 70s show says to someone not familiar with the U.S.

question: Have you ever seen a television show from another country? If so, how was it different from US shows, was it hard to fallow, do you think you took away a completely different message than what the show was intended for?

Activity 8

I have many different things happen through my life that have some how transitioned me to where I am today. One in particular the I think had the biggest impact on my life was Moving out of my parents house.

When I moved out and attended Mankato State University, I gained a new appreciation for my family. I have always loved my family but I was very bad at showing it through out highschool. i do not know why I was the way I was to them but looking back at it, the way I treated my family at the time was unacceptable.

They were nothing but amazing to me through out my entire life and I never truly appreciated them. I grew up very fast. My relationship with my family has become closer than ever since I was able to reevalute myself and the way I had been treating the people that were most important to me. They have had such an impact on the person that I am today and it was about time that I started treating them that way. My family can not believe what a pleasure I am to be around when they looked back at how I treated them before.

I think I was caught up in my friendships and I stopped caring about what meant most to me. It can make a huge impact on your personality when you surround yourself with people that are not respectful.

Question: Has there been anyone or any group of people that have influenced your attitudes in a negative transition. If so, What did you do to transision yourself in a positive direction.

Activity 7

This experiment was very amusing and exciting. Sometimes you may find yourself or someone else doing these types of things in everyday life with out realizing it. These types of nonverbal communication acts occur everyday and are the cause of many people feeling uncomfortable. If we are aware of what types of behaviors cause what types of reactions we can be much better nonverbal communicators.

The first experiment where I gave complete eye contact through out the entire conversation, ended up turning into a blinking contest. Apparently I was taking the experiment a little to seriously and my friend that I was doing it on realized that I hadn't blinked in a while so she assumed I was trying to start a blinking contest. I won! This was not the reaction I was going for at all.

When I payed no attention to eye contact at all, there was a much better reaction from her. She asked me numerous times if I was even listening to her and I repeated back what she was talking about and told her to continue on. I could just tell by the way she changed her tone of voice and the way she was acting that it made her feel insignificant when I wasn't giving her any eye contact. After debriefing with her that is exactly what she said it made her feel like.

The second experiment turned into a wrestling match. I must not be a very good actor because these experiments just got really fun and humorous instead of getting a negative or positive reaction out of the people I did them on.

I think that there are many people that would feel extremely uncomfortable with some of these nonverbal behaviors if I didn't know the people so well. There are unwritten rules in nonverbal communication. It makes someone feel so much better when you give them eye contact in your conversation to show that you are truly interested in what they have to say. If you do not give someone eye contact while speaking with them it could be seen as very rude and make the other person feel insignificant. Personal space is extremely important to us.

question: How does it make you feel when you can tell that the people you are having a conversation with are not paying attention to you or what you have to say?

Activity 6

After completing the quizzes I realized how easily it is to misinterpret anyone. Not just people from other cultures or countries. Even right here in the United States, we have barriers in our communication due to different accents. That was a fun and interesting way to learn that I am completely unaware of where different accents come from through out the United States, and what people are saying.

On the first quiz I got only 3 places where the accents came from correct. I was super surprised too as I though I could tell the difference between some one from down south and someone from the North, but apparently not. I thought for sure that I would get the british accents correct from England, but even those I got wrong. I suppose it doesn't really matter too much where your from because a lot of times your accent can differ according to who your relatives are and where they are from or what sort of accent your parents have. If your parents were from the south and you were born in the north they may be teaching you how to pronounce words with their southern accents which would rub off on you as a child and most likely carry through to the rest of your life.

I thought I did horrible on the first quiz. I didn't think It could get any worse. Well it did; on the second quiz I only got one right. After taking this quiz I realized how easily it could be to offend someone with words just because they misinterpreted you. The person that was say socks, I thought was saying sex. I found everyone except the one to be extremely difficult to understand. This is an example of how difficult it can be to communicate with others from a different location than you. This could cause problem in many different situations.

Question: What sort of problems could occur when communicating with someone with a different accent than you?

Activity 5

Avowed Identities: female, young, Caucasian, funny, loving, adventurous, spunky, confident, trusting, happy, scatter brained.

Ascribed Identities: female, young, mature, Caucasian, funny, loving, annoying, fun, adventurous, confident, scatter brained, athletic, healthy.

My ascribed identities came forth through numerous different people who have been close to me throughout my life. I never realized that I was a funny person until I started hearing it from my peers, and how others were always grateful to be around someone so positive. I never have tried to be something that I'm not. I was brought up by my parents who praised many of qualities, and they were responsible for these qualities that I inhereted from them. We are very different but my sense of humor comes both from my mom and my dad, my spunkyness comes from my mom and the way she would play with my siblings and I and it rubbed off on all of us in different ways. It is unreal sometimes when I take a step back and look at how much my family's identities are similar between each of us but at the same time we all differ in specific ways.

When I was in junior high and high school my avowed and ascribed identities were a little different depending on who you were talking to. I was almost like two different people. I was very rude and hurtful towards my family when I did not get my way. I was more focused on my friends and trying to be a legitimate part of this group that I longed to be in. So I started treating my family disrespectfully, and if you had not known me you would say that I was not any of the avowed and ascribed identities that I listed above. Fortunately, I matured very quickly and after a few life changing experiences, I began to realize how much my family meant to me and how I should show them this more often and let them know how much I appreciate them. By the time I had graduated from high school I had developed these avowed identities above. With time they became ascribed as well as avowed, my parents were so happy with how quickly I changed my ways.

I think that these situations in my past have made me the person I am today and my identities keep growing and improving. I can honestly say that it takes rough times for people to really realize what they have in front of them and it should be treated with nothing but the best care, love, and respect. I have become a large hearted, person caring so much for others and sometimes not enough for myself in the process of change. This is one thing that I have been working on changing in my life. My happiness should never depend on others I must create my own happiness and have my own identities while continuing to treat the relationships in my life the way I do, I just need to do this mutually with myself as well.

Question: Were there specific life experiences that you can recall that have shaped who you are today and what avowed and ascribed identities that you posses?