Response to 9/25 Class

After the discussion of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, I am still trying to figure out whether I lean more towards the relativist position or the nominalist position regarding the impact of language on our perception of reality. It is frustrating to think about the idea of different realities and if the language we speak can change how we perceive "reality." I think there has to be a middle ground in this instance-I don't think that language can completely change how we perceive certain things because all human beings are inherently the same and I think we all see the world the same way, it is just that certain things have greater meaning in other languages, so they may be more important in one culture than in another based competely upon the language spoken. For example, the Inuit people have many words for snow because it is more important in their culture than it is in other cultures, but that does not mean that it is percieved differently.

Language- Sept 25 class

It is really difficult for me to wrap my head around the idea that language shapes thought. While Lera Boroditsky does address the impact that culture has on the way we think, I remain unconvinced that it doesn't play a larger role in the language argument. Teaching people new languages does not change their cultural background and the way that they have grown up thinking. By teaching the greek usage of metaphors to english speakers might broaden their horizons and help them have another outlook on time, I do not believe that it changes the way they think about time overall. I wonder if the change would be the same or different if they were simply taught about these alternative views without bringing language into the lesson. To me, learning another language is also learning another culture. They really go hand in hand. So, it is hard for me to take them as completely separate entities.

As the United States has grown, our language has changed and so has our culture. Who is to say which one caused the other? We have become more casual people wearing t-shirts and jeans as has our language with our use of contractions and slang. Furthermore, the technological age with our use of shorthand through text messaging and email. In this case, the culture has changed the language. We have become a faster paced society because we overextend ourselves which has lead to shorthand, u in place of you and btw instead of by the way. The author has some valid points but I am just unsure that language and culture can be separated so easily.

Response to 10/25 Class

The main debate that we had in class today was whether or not you could "brand" a nation. Ultimately it depends on the overall power and influence of the nation that is branding itself. A country like the United States is simply too active in the international community that its actions will send much more of a message than any ad campaign. But a country like Thailand can put out an active advertisement machine showing the country as a great tropical vacation spot and be very successful. Of course, the country is a mess with its domestic politics, which has deterred tourism there. With today's media, nation branding is going to be a lot more difficult. Certainly in the past, where America had the classic image of the land of opportunity, it had a brand as a ideal place for immigrants. But now, anyone can see everything that America does. America could but any amount of money into an ad campaign to get more immigrants into the country, but if someone is able to read or see an event where Americans treated immigrants negatively or see a contradictory government policy, then they would be quickly turned off and would no longer want to come to America. In the past, an immigrant simply didn't have the outlet to find out that America isn't exactly a paradise or that it would not be welcoming as they expected. Therefore, in these times, America actions will determine what other countries think of them. It is too powerful and influential for anything otherwise.

- Jon Raouf

Response to Sept. 17 Class

The part of our class discussion on Thursday that I thought brought up an important question was the idea of whether we can truly create our own identity or if our identity is always somewhat shaped by our culture.
I think that no matter what we do, culture is always tied to identity is some form. Those who proudly accept the culture that they were born into often interweave their individual identity with their cultural roots. On the other hand, even those who may not identify as strongly with the culture of their heritage cannot ever really escape the identity that comes with their ethnicity or race. Even if they personally do not identify with the culture that they or their family comes from, that does not stop others from adopting preconcieved ideas of their identity. A common example of this that is discussed in the book is the idea of minority identity vs majority identity. There are more stereotypes and judgements that come from being in a minority group.
A personal example is that my grandmother is a hispanic woman who immigrated to the United States from Mexico. She was not accepted and was looked down upon when she immigrated to California as a young girl, and eventually she abandoned much of her previous cultural identity. She never taught my mom or any of her other children to speak Spanish, and integrated herself into the white majority culture. Looking back now she regrets not passing on her cultural heritage to her children, but at the time it was to her the only way to be accepted.

Health Care Reform Analysis Question

When speaking about healthcare reform, I do not believe that identity causes any extra concern. There are always going to be radical arguments that people do not want to associate with. Every issue, no matter what it is, is going to have some people completely opposed, some people in the middle and some people who want to go even further with the decision. A lot of what your identity is made of is formed within your own head. If you think something is an issue, it will be an issue and if not, it won't be. You might identify with a certain group of people but that does not necessarily have to impact your opinions. Also, if your opinions differ from what you identify yourself as, that does not necessarily mean that there has to be an internal identity crisis.

Sept. 17 Class

One of the points that really interested in me in our last class was about being taken seriously in the work place. I typically enjoy being the young and vivacious intern or employee, but sometimes it does not work for my benefit. First, I used to work at the Gap. My manager was a grumpy woman who clearly had to put on a face to help customers. Sometimes, I felt she resented me because I was always so happy to be there and usually seemed like I was having more fun at work than I was supposed to. Therefore, my manager and I continuously had conflicts and she didn't take me seriously even though I was a great salesperson (if I might say so myself).

Secondly, the issue that I will simply have to get used to, is being a young (and social) female in the world of Information Technology. The last two summers I have had internships with a company called VHA and Fidelity Investments in the IT departments. Fidelity was where being a young female really posed a few problems in the workplace. I have come to find out that I am a completely different breed of person than almost all IT people. When I went into the interview, there were four men interviewing me and the look on their faces was priceless. After making them laugh for the entire interview by telling them that my hobbies were riding my purple bike with my best friend, driving my big red pickup with black rims and a flow master, and playing volleyball, I was instantly hired due to my ability to stand out in IT. In this case, my identity helped me to get a well paid internship. However, as the summer went on, my chipper attitude and young face made things complicated. I worked on a team of thirteen guys (all of whom were married). One of my coworkers (age 49, married with 2 girls MY AGE) would actually suggest to me that I shouldn't wear tank tops underneath my low cut shirts and ask me why I wasn't cold when it was cold in the building. While luckily, I am able to ignore the passes, it did make it difficult to be taken seriously.

Throughout the summer, my boss and I became friends and eventually told me that he would probably never have another female intern, not because I didn't do a good job, but because I caused him to worry about his employees getting in trouble. If I wasn't as laid back as I was, some of my coworkers would definitely have gotten in trouble and their jobs would be jeopardized. In the future, I am definitely going to have to really manage my identity so that I can have some legitimacy in my job. Although Fidelity went smoothly, it could have gone very wrong. That means that I can't be completely myself in the workplace, I have to be careful and really manage the way I come across to other people.

Response to Sept 17 Class

I truly enjoyed the reading assigned for this class and the investigation as to how identity affects communication and how communication can reinforce identity. It was fascinating to examine how many different identities can coexist and form one identity in an individual, or how an individual can grasp to one specific identity and "interpellate" his self to manage that identity. Although I found the readings to be fascinating and quite interesting, especially the ethnography, and useful for evaluating intercultural communication, I did disagree with a number of points made in the text book.

Largely, I am concerned with the minority/majority identity development "stages." This is not to say I do not see the value in attempting to scientifically denote different phases a person may go through when her identity/identities are challenged. I simply want to narrow my criticism to specific elements in each model. Regarding the minority identity development stage number four, it seems a little too hopeful and idealistic that the resistance/separatism feelings would not linger into the achieved identity. If these feelings of separatism lingered, I doubt the individual, for most of the time, would seek social justice and redirect their anger. The individual's education, economic status, and personal life experiences could drastically alter the phases she is supposed to go through. I feel this development model is insufficient in explaining the complex facets of human behavior, and like much of the other reading in the textbook, overgeneralizes to truly be worthy of use.

Another problem I have with the reading concerns the majority identity development model. Frankly, I do not wish to be considered a conscious or unconscious follower of racist ideology, which stage two supposes I am. I understand the message that is trying to be conveyed in this portion of the model, but I believe the term racist is uncalled for and unfairly and automatically associates a highly controversial term with the majority race. From this same section of reading, I am also led to believe that a belief in the equality of all is also racist. Additionally, further comments on affirmative action as reverse discrimination, assimilation, and "folk" versus "classical" works highly offend me. The authors automatically assume any "majority" opinion on these points is incorrect because they are either racially insensitive or are a result from a lack of misunderstanding of other cultures and races. Again, sweeping generalizations and assumptions are made by the authors that I find contestable.

I stress my interest and fascination with this concept of different identities and how one views oneself and how others view the same individual. It is all very interesting, but there are major disagreements I have with these minority/majority development models and the assumptions/generalizations that are made along with them. In my opinion, if they are going to be useful in explaining the growth of identity, they need a serious overhaul with respect to acknowledging the vastly different variables that factor into an individual's life.

-David Lindgren

Week 3 Analysis

In the debate over health care, one identity conflict that I have witnessed is political identity. Health care is a very divisive issue, I witnessed the 9/12 anti-health care rally on the National Mall and noticed that people were very angry. One can look at the signs saying "Obama is Hitler" or "Obama is Stalin" and notice the strong backlash among the right-wing. Having talked to some of the people there, however, some of them weren't all that radical. Many weren't concerned with the healthcare bill on the "socialist" aspect but simply they questioned whether we could afford reforming the system at this time, others wanted to implement reforms at a slower pace. The identity crisis comes at the individual's attitude vs the group one. As we can see, the overall group mentality among conservatives is moving more extremely to the right. The crisis occurs when the group's views move out of the range of some members, and the conflict is whether they stay in the group or not. For example, a conservative may be opposed to healthcare on fiscal grounds and is angry enough to go to protests, but is offended upon seeing increasing numbers of "Obama is Hitler" signs. The crisis is whether to remain with this group, form a more moderate group and risk splitting the opposition, or giving up because the other people in the group are too crazy. Identity plays a role in the sense of people protesting the issue because of the groupthink mentality, ex: "I'm a Republican and other Republicans are protesting this issue so I should too". But I don't think an identity issues created the debate.

Response to 9/17/09 Class

The most interesting part of the debate we had in class today was about how due to technology the nature of "identity" is changing very much. While one can argue about Facebook shows that people are willing giving up their privacy and personal information for others to harvest, I see it more as a way for people to try and advertise themselves and get attention. I remember reading once about kids using Facebook who would put up statuses about how they were "getting drunk" or "getting high" when the actual case turns that during the times they put those status they were out with their families and lying about their statuses just to look cool. Of course, there are lots of people that actually do those things and put up their statuses about it, but for the same reason. Use of the internet can make it a lot easier to lie about yourself and create a false identity than ever before, as opposed to when you talk to someone in real life, Facebook isn't as fast-paced, Facebook Chat notwithstanding, you can plan out what you say to other people or put as your status in order to put yourself in the light you want. You can re-word what you right so that i makes you seem "happy" or "edgy", or put up a particularly picture of yourself where you're dressed a certain way or with dark lighting. As we discussed in class, the counting up of friends makes them more trivial like you're constantly battling others for the most. Facebook isn't necessarily bad, I think it's a product of the direction that our culture has been taking as opposed to something that is "corrupting" our culture. Ultimately, Facebook has the benefit of being able to keep in touch with people who move away, something I've been very glad to have as it lets me keep in touch with old friends. But real-life encounters are the way to go if you really want to talk to people and make friends.

-Jon Raouf

Response

In continuation on Jon's point, I have always found that history in America has been shaped more by the people who write it than the events that took place. A good example of this is the Vietnam war. Go to any american library and try to find a book on the Vietnam war that was written from the perspective of a vietnamese soldier. You can't. How is it reasonable to believe that we are learning an accurate history of the war when we only have literature from one side of the war. That's like asking a rapist if the sex was consensual without asking the victim. It was only recently that I learned that the Vietnam war is referred to as the American War in Vietnam and i've learned about it several times throughout my academic career. Unfortunately I only learned about it from american text. Another obvious example, which is finally beginning to right itself, is the perpetration of slavery. FIlm was a major industry after the civil war and during the Jim Crow laws and film even more than literature can at times be confused for reality. One of the first and more famous silent films was called "The Birth of a Nation" in 1915. It was famous for its innovative camera techniques and also its controversial promotion of white supremacists and the Ku Klux Klan. The movie was a hit in the box office as well as a portrayal for many already racist americans of history in the eyes of the Klan. On the reverse side in 1977 the controversial and graphic depiction of the slave trade, "Roots" played eight episodes on ABC and stunned the nation with the realistic and malicious debotury that took place on the journey slaves took from Africa to America. It is almost impossible to expect someone to be passionate and intelligent enough about a subject to write about it without being bias, but that doesn't excuse the one sided history lessons that are the pillar of american education and film. For a country with a melting pot of cultures we certainly lack a sense of equality or variety in our history. Or was history just that one sided?

Response

In response to the last class discussion, I found it very interesting that there are so many different perspectives of what defines culture, and how there are so many different forms of communication. Examining in particular the relationship between culture and communication, I think that culture influences the way that we communicate more significantly than communication influences culture.
As we talked about in class, the different values established within seperate cultures are the basis for what people view as acceptable forms of communication. The textbook points out the different values regarding human relationships and how this influences how people in different cultures communicate with others. For instance, in some societies more emphasis is put on the importance of the individual and in other cultures the collective group is more important.
In the U.S we tend to be more individualistic, and that has a great influence on our communication with more collectivistic societies. Some of these collectivistic societies value the group so much more than individuals that it is difficult for us to communicate due to the difference in our values. The individualistic societies tend to be more straightforward and low context while the collectivistic societies tend to be more high context. One example of this that we discussed in class was with the Japanese businessmen and the American businessmen-the Japanese come from a more group-oriented culture, and therefore do not have the same straightforward communication style that we have in the U.S. and what one culture group percieved as the outcome of the meeting was vastly different from what the other group believed was the outcome.
This just shows how important it is to understand the connection between culture and communication. Especially when dealing with issues regarding international business and international conficts, these kind of cultural backgrounds should be studied in depth so as to avoid mistakes such as the ones we read about/discussed in class.

Response to Sept 10 Class

In response to the topics discussed in class, I would like to discuss the notion of history and its relationship to culture. I find this topic extremely interesting because I love studying history and observing the progression of mankind. I believe history is essential in understanding culture because, as mentioned class, history serves as a tool for describing how a culture arrived at its current state, while its also provides culture with a reminder, or reinforcement, of what it was and what it was not. Through "memorialization" and other reminders of the past a culture can see how far along it has come from its past success and past tragedies.

Contrary to the authors of this book, I still believe there is a grand narrative of humankind. The authors may seek to throw "monkey wrenches" into the notion of the grand narrative, but there is no denying the fact that humanity, along with the differences amongst it, has steadily progressed in many regards to emancipation, human rights, etc. The authors seem to take a "zero sum" view of history, arguing that since many different histories exist there is no observable grand history. I heartily contest this view. These different histories simply wouldn't exist if they existed in and of themselves. The authors seem to be taking these histories and viewing them alone, without assessing the impact other histories have had upon them. It is important to recognize history, or histories, does not occur in a bubble and to acknowledge everything can be attributed to something else. Therefore, my view is the grand narrative is a woven fabric of many different histories that still provide proof of a natural and evident progression of mankind. Without acknowledging the leaps and bounds made in science, mathematics, social science, and the general enlightenment of man, I believe the authors are erroneously casting aside an important concept and observable trend.

-David Lindgren

Response to 9/10/09 Class

The most interesting thing about the debate we had today in class was the view about how certain societies had different orientations toward history and how hard it is for us as Americans to understand why they have such strong feelings about their history. What I have noticed is that cultures that have very strong roots and that have had a strong historical emphasis on education seem to be more past-oriented. For example, the Jewish and Chinese culture groups; during WW2 both were persecuted and victims in the Holocaust and the Sino-Japanese war respectively. Both cultures feel very strongly about these events and put a lot of effort into making sure that stories and information about these events are spread. When someone publicly denies the Holocaust or the Nanjing Massacre, their is a very vocal response by people of these cultures, not to say that everyone in each culture is like this, but it is clear. Meanwhile, after having talked about these things with some European-American peers, they don't seem to understand why people are so oriented in the past. Americans are a future-oriented people, which makes sense considering our recent origins as a people, with only about 300 years of history, and the settling of immigrants who had a "can-do" attitude. I once talked to a person that stated something similar to: "well, these things happened 60 years ago, can't they get over it already?" Some of us just can't seem to understand why people have these strong opinions on the past or what it means to them due to our different cultural histories. Perhaps this orientation will shift over the coming centuries as our society and history evolves, or maybe we will always remain a future oriented society. I sort of rambled here, but I hope my point is clear.

-Jon Raouf

Response to Sept 3 Class

Since this is the first post on this blog, I guess I will be setting the tone and discourse for this week's responses. I was truly intrigued concerning the relativity vs. universality debate we had in class. Although I enjoyed the discussion, it was largely "academic" and I think many of those who participated did not understand the "real world" implications of the side they were advocating. I suppose I can ascribe my preference to universality to what I believe to be common sense and my instincts.

Whenever I enter any discussion with the terms "relativist" or "relativity" I tend to shy away from that side of the discussion because I believe anything truly relative would lack a baseline for determining right and wrong, etc. Yes, relativity, in the sense in which we discussed the term, does possess merit in understanding behavior and actions with reference to the cultural context. But, I believe relativity can be taken too far. I mentioned earlier in the same class the instances of domestic violence in certain European Muslim communities and how police in those countries were hesitant to act to prevent such crimes. I said, "the police were concerned about sensitivity," when Prof. Hayden argued there is a difference between sensitivity and concessions. This, I believe, is the crux of the debate. At what point must relativity be defined as concessions? Would a true relativist view anything as "concessions" so long as behavior was viewed through cultural context? Again, I refer to the "real world" implications of this debate. Concessions from one culture toward another must be faced, and appear to be politically insurmountable. There must be a point at which a line can be drawn to say "enough is enough."

I'm not saying where the line should be drawn, how it should be drawn, or when it should be drawn and against whom. I simply want to take this debate to a level where not only are the academic aspects understood to promote world peace, etc etc etc, but to a level where the implications behind each side are fleshed out. I'm not a strict universalist and, as I said, relativity does have its merits. We simply need to understand what we are saying and how our positions we take in debates do have consequences outside of the classroom. I would appreciate any other thoughts on this topic and would like to engage you in a more in-depth discussion.

-David Lindgren

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