Facing culture differences is inevitable when a person as an international student from another culture lives and studies in the United States. Taka, a senior physics major student who came from Japan and has lived in Santa Barbara for almost four years, shared some of his stories with me. After finishing this culture interview, I not only knew more about my friend Taka but also had a deeper understanding of Japanese culture and the differences between Japanese and American culture.
It is a valuable experience that I could apply theories from lectures to Taka’s real life-scenarios. More importantly, during the interview, I realized that the misunderstanding he faced and difficulties he encountered during studying in the United States could be explained by three cultures concepts, which are high and low context culture, power distance, and pragmatics.
The first concept that could be applied to Taka’s story is the high and low context culture differences between Japan and America. High context cultures imply meaning without a clear message but rely on nonverbal codes and indirect messages, while the information delivered in low-context cultures is vested in the explicit code (Lustig and Koester, 2017).
127 our experts are availableright now
Taka states that the most challenging thing for him to deal with is sending the email or message to classmates and professors. He said that he was afraid to read the email because he cannot receive any nonverbal cues only based on the content, and he also feels difficult in rejecting others through email. He cannot directly say no to others because it is disrespectful and impolite in Japanese culture, but the indirect will cause misunderstanding.
During his studying abroad experiences, Taka once frustrated when his classmate sent a message and said if he could help her to finish a task on Sunday. However, he had already scheduled to go to the concert at that time, so he stated that he wants to help her if she likes, and he could even reschedule his concert, but it will cost a lot of effort for him. He thought that his classmate would understand his unwillingness, but she replied to him as ‘thank you so much! I appreciate your help.’ The misunderstanding happened because of the differences in high and low context between Japan and America.
In Japan, as one of the high context culture, people will not express the direct message, especially when rejecting others to save others’ face. People will usually choose indirect sentences to convey meanings. When Taka showed that it would cost a lot of efforts to reschedule the concert, in Japanese culture, it has the inexplicit meaning that he does not want to help his classmate on Sunday, because people in Japan will afraid to bother others.
If he talks with his Japanese friend, they will understand and stop asking him for help, but in American with low context culture, people did not share the same norms when stating the rejection as people in Japanese culture did. Taka’s American classmate might believe that he would help her because he did not directly say no to reject her, and if Taka explicitly says no, she will understand. The preferences of Taka communicating with others are also connected with differences in high and low context culture.
Rice and D’Ambra (1998) tested the influence of cultural values on the media using and found that people from high context culture prefer face-to-face communication more than people from low context culture did. Taka, who comes from Japan indeed believe that he prefers face-to-face than sending the email. The richness of receiving and presenting the nonverbal codes during the communication will help Taka, who from the high context culture, to understand and express the meaning with others. For him, being direct and rely only on the verbal codes needs time to adjust. In this way, the misunderstanding between Taka and his classmate is caused by the high and low context differences between Japan and America.
The other differences that Taka encountered can be explained by the discrepancy of power distances between Japanese and American culture. According to Lustig and Koester (2017), power distances refer to the degree to ‘which the culture believe that institutional and organizational power should be distributed unequally and the decision of the power holder should be challenged or accept’ (p, 106). In other words, cultures preferring the low power distances value equality so that they will try to minimize the inequality by reducing the hierarchical organizational structure and challenging the authority figures.
However, high power distance culture accepts the social order and hierarchy in organizations and believe that the authority should not be questioned. Taka told me a misunderstanding between his writing professor and him that made him disappointed. When he was a freshman, he was asked to take the writing class. During the lecture, he realized that it is a challenge for him because there are distinctive teaching style between American and Japanese. He needed to learn how to do presentation and group discussion that he had never experienced before. He tried his best to take this course, but at the end, his class participation grade was not satisfied.
Taka went to ask his professor why he got very low grade since he believed that he performed very well in the lecture. He was listening to the teacher carefully, writing down everything that the professor mentioned, and all he did indicated that he is an excellent learner of this class. However, his processor indeed agrees with him that he is an excellent student in learning knowledge during the lecture, but lack of engagement. His professor told him that his grade is low because he seldom speaked up and expressed his personal thought during the classes.
Taka’s experience can be illustrated through the differences between high and low power distance. In America, a small power distance culture country, people value equality through challenging the authority to minimize the organization hierarchy. In this way, Taka’s professor expected students to participate in the lecture by expressing their own interpretation, thinking independently, and solving problem creatively. Conversely, in Japan, people are in the high power distance culture, which means that an individual accepts inequality and hierarchy in the organization. For Taka, he believes that good students need to comply with the requests of their teachers and being conformity, which can be represented by carefully listening to the lecture and finishing homework.
In Japanese culture, he was not expected to speak during the lecture to express their own idea or even ask questions to challenge his professor, because, in Japanese’s value, these behaviors are disrespectful and not accepted. Because of the cultural differences between power distance in Japan and America, Taka and his professor had a different expectation of students participating in the lecture and different value on being good students; therefore, a misunderstanding happened, and Taka’s grade was also affected.
Even though there are many differences Taka encountered in both his academic and personal life, he is actively changing himself and let himself adjust the new culture in America. When facing the culture differences during communicating with others, he will always firstly smiled to show the respect and attentively accommodate to others. With the time he stayed in the United States passed by, he gradually understood the differences in high and low context culture and power distance between Japan and America.
Then now, he can successfully chat with his friends by message and sending emails. He is familiar with the direct and explicit verbal codes in communication. Also, in the lecture, he will express his idea independently. However, he told me that there is one thing he still finds the most difficult to adjust now. Taka states that he used to be a very outgoing person in Japan and he usually likes to tell jokes with his Japanese friends, but now, even though his English is good enough, he still felt hard to tell jokes to his American friend or understand a joke that his friend told him. Therefore, people regard him as a serious person, but he did not and would not like to be.
The challenge that Taka faced in telling jokes can be illustrated by one of the components in creating the verbal codes during intercultural communication: Pragmatics. Pragmatics is an essential part of making up words or sentences, and it focused on how the language actually used in communication. According to Lustig and Koester (2017), Pragmatics is the “effect of language on human perceptions and behavior” (p. 158). It determined how a particular language user can understand the meaning of the utterance under a specific context.
The rules that an individual governs the pragmatics of a language can be influenced by his or her culture background. For example, Taka, when he talked to his friends, will tend to be more indirect. Also, when he tells a joke with someone, it will be less intense and more implicit. However, his American friends can hardly understand. According to Lee (1994), the differences in the pragmatics of languages will make people hard to understand a joke or tell a joke in the second language. Taka, because he has a different cultural background with his American friend, his values, norms, beliefs, and social practices will be also different from his friends.
Therefore, he will choose to use language to tell the joke based on his Japanese cultural background. In this way, even though his friend understands each word he said, his joke can still be hard to comprehend. Another difference Taka noticed when he first came to the United States, is that there is a different understanding between his American friends and him to the sentence ‘How are you.’ Whenever his friend asks him, ‘how are you,’ he will honestly say his feeling and talk about his day. His friends looked awkward but said nothing.
Finally, he understands that for American people, the question ‘how are you’ is only a greeting sentence. For the rule of pragmatics that American use of ‘how are you’ is intended as a polite and pleasant greeting ritual, and it is not expected as the real question inquiring other’s well-being (Lustig and Koester, 2017). In this way, differences in pragmatics using between people in Japan and America can explain why Taka felt difficult in understanding and telling the joke.
All in all, by interviewing Taka, I have a deeper understanding of what difficulties that international students countered when facing the culture differences, and how they adjust. More importantly, I could apply the three concepts, high and low context culture, power distance, and pragmatics of languages to explain the misunderstanding and difficulties that Taka faced during his studying abroad experiences.
Reference
- Lustig, M. W., & Koester, J. (2017). Intercultural competence interpersonal communication
- across cultures. NY, NY: Pearson.
- Rice, R. E., D’Ambra, J., & More, E. (1998). Cross-cultural comparison of organizational media evaluation andchoice.Journal of communication,48, 3–26.
- Wen Shu Lee (1994) On not missing the boat: A processual method for inter/cultural understanding of idioms and lifeworld, Journal of Applied Communication Research, 22:2, 141-161, DOI: 10.1080/00909889409365394
