Russell Friedman
Ling 12
11/28/12

Religion

Communication is kind of a funny thing, its something that we all share. It’s a process where we use shared meaning to convey our feelings and ideas. Thought not only are our ideas and feelings are being shared but our culture is also. And when your culture comes through when you communicate with some one of a different culture it creates a situation called intercultural communication. Now lets take a deeper look at culture, communication, and intercultural communication. First off what exactly is culture? Well it’s a set of ideas and beliefs shared by a common collection of people. Although that may sound very simple, everyone’s culture is complex and different. What makes culture so complex are all the little building blocks leading up to the final product. One of your cultures building blocks is that it is learned, we can experience the culture of others and mimic it to our own. Culture also involves perception, values, and feelings; these three ideas also help mold culture. Culture can be expressed as a behavior, it is dynamic, and heterogeneous. All of these pieces make up ones culture and on a day-to-day basis we communicate with each other and our cultures are what shines through. While culture I a huge part to intercultural communication so is communication and we should dig deeper in to that. Communication’s meaning is the process where words and gesture with shared meanings are exchanged. Also communication is dynamic, meaning that it isn’t a single event but an ongoing one. It also does not need to be intentional and it’s receiver-orientated, these last two are what causes conflict between to different cultures. Understanding ones culture can help lead to less arguments and fights with some simple understanding. And the final make idea is the combination of culture and communication is intercultural communication. We have intercultural encounters everyday, and all of us have a different culture this could cause problems between each other. We could have different value sets as well. All of these ideas combined make out our daily encounters. After identifying what culture is I should take a look at my own. The pivotal life long question we all ask our selves; who am I? I would have to start with that I am a white American male with ancestry from many parts of Europe. I have lived in SoCal for my entire life. But more importantly I have chosen to be a nonreligious person. I don’t feel the need to look towards god for every step in my life. I feel that religion in a crutch that I don’t need, I feel strong enough to walk this world with some one watching over me. This out look on life gives me a different set of values then others. What are my values that set me a part? To start off I have a low power distance and I respect my elders but I don’t feel like they are above me in any way, and I don’t believe that god is above me in any way. I feel like I have a mixture between masculinity and femininity, because I don’t always think gender rules should apply and that people should act a certain way because of the way they were born. I also have low uncertainty avoidance because I don’t always like rules that keep to much structure limiting the creativity of a situation. My time orientation is short term because I feel like living in the moment never really planning for anything; I prefer to live my life rather then planning for it. With all of these different values I have a certain communication style. I am a low context style, and I never really liked silence in my conversations its just awkward. I find eye contact very important; it’s a sign of mutual respect that is need in any conversation. My importance for eye contact is directly related to my low power distance belief. I always like to speak strong and confidently with a close proximity to one another, not directly on top one another but close; this space is also due to my low power distance value.