Q Purpose: The purpose of this assignment is for you to critically think about different terms and concepts from each week and to engage in discussion with your peers on an online platform. Knowledge: This assignment is designed to provide for you a better "real world" understanding of the terms, concepts, and theories you will learn about each week. The discussion boards give you space to connect specific terms, concepts, and theories to your experience of the world and engage with others on an online platform. Task: To successfully complete this assignment, you will: 1. Follow the prompt that will be given by Monday of each new week. 2. Respond to the prompt using specific examples from the text, lecture, films, etc. Your responses need to be thought-out and detailed. An ideal response will be 10-15 sentences long. 3. RESPOND to another classmate's post for that week. Your response should also be well thought-out and detailed, a minimum of four sentences long. Replying with comments like "I agree with u," or "thanks for sharing" will not be accepted. 4. Complete both your original post and reply to student by Thursday at Midnight. Criteria for Success: You will be graded using the following criteria: 1. Posts are on time. 2. Your original post is detailed and is using specific examples from the course content, and is a minimum of 10 sentences in length. 3. You provide a detailed reply to another classmate's post. A quality comment that engages the other person and furthers the discussion is required. Background Ahhh, conflict. Conflict in our lives is unavoidable. Conflict is “…an expressed struggle between at least two interdependent parties who perceive incompatible goals, scare resources, and interference from others in achieving their goals” (Wilmot & Hocker, as cited in Grothe, 2020, p. 8.1.1). If we break this definition down, we can see there are specific elements that lead individuals to be in conflict: Conflict is an expressed struggle Conflict is a process of communication. The way that we express conflict is through verbal and non-verbal communication. Before conflict is externalized, we might experience internal, or intrapersonal, conflict, but communication is what conveys conflict to others. For example, if the behavior of someone offends you, but you do not say anything, that person may never realize that you had a problem with what they said. The reason for this is that: Conflict requires interdependency To be interdependent upon someone means that you rely upon them for mutual assistance, support, cooperation, or interaction. This means that the level of conflict we experience with someone is dependent upon the level of interdependency you have with that person. For example, if someone cheats on their spouse in a television show, you will probably feel no personal conflict or the need to express conflict toward the person who is cheating on their significant other. This is because you don’t know them, nor do you have an interdependent relationship with them. If, however, it was your significant other who came home and told you they were cheating on you, that is very likely going to cause an externalized expression of conflict. Our interdependency with one another goes beyond interpersonal relationships, as we can see conflict within and between cultures because of differences in perception and disagreements when it comes to goals, resources, and behaviors. Clashes in perception, goals, resources, and behaviors When we look at conflict through the lens of Intercultural Communication, we can see that conflict often arises from differences in perception. How we perceive any given situation and/or communication transaction is influenced by factors like “…culture, race & ethnicity, gender & sexuality, knowledge, impressions of the messenger, and previous experience” (Grothe, 2020, p. 8.1.1). For example, making eye contact in the United States has been traditionally seen as a sign of respect, especially when someone is talking to you. Conversely, in Japanese culture, making eye contact with someone is dependent upon each person’s status in relation to one another, so if someone with a lower status maintains contact with a person of higher status, that is seen as being rude and disrespectful. If someone from each culture is in conversation and unaware of each other’s cultural norms, both could come out of the interaction offended. Conflict can also be caused by differences in goals, in the sharing of resources, and the expectations of behaviors. For example, there has been a huge conflict between the Democratic and Republican parties here in the United States about how to combat climate change. This one topic alone has caused conflict because there is a difference in goals, which contributes to how resources should be used, and how that would translate to an expectation of the behaviors we should all do. For most Democrats, they feel that climate change is real and its effects on the planet will be devastating. As such, a goal for the Democrats is to move toward renewable resources and zero carbon emissions. To do this, we will have to shift how resources are used in this country, like phasing out coal and oil while focusing on wind and solar powers. This would mean that individuals in the country would also have to change their behaviors. People would have to eventually buy new cars as gas cars are faded out. On the other hand, many Republicans feel that the effects of climate change have been exaggerated, and that it would be detrimental to our country and economy to change major industries like oil, coal, and automobiles to the “unproven” resources like solar, wind, and electric cars. As a result, the use of the current resources should be maintained, and by extension, our own behaviors should not change. This is obviously a very large example, but the same concepts apply to all conflicts—anyone who’s had a fight about whether pineapple belongs on pizza can tell you this. (It’s delicious, btw). _____ In breaking down this definition of conflict, we can see how cultural differences can lead to misunderstandings and disagreements. Adding to the complicated nature of intercultural conflict is that different cultures express conflict differently. There can be direct approaches, indirect approaches, and it conflict can be emotionally expressive or emotionally restrained. Some cultures think that you should approach a person directly and work through conflict as it will ultimately strengthen the relationship (a direct approach). Other cultures feel that conflict is best resolved through the use of intermediaries, or “the middle man,” because direct expressions of conflict is seen as rude and challenging (an indirect approach). In addition, some cultures feel that conflict should be expressed through outward displays of emotion, so if the conflict is causing you emotional pain, crying would be expected and important (emotionally expressive). On the other hand, some cultures feel that conflict should involve minimal external expression of emotion as it is important to maintain the face of the other person (emotionally restrained). To add one more layer to complicate this discussion about Intercultural Conflict, we can also add Martin and Nakayama’s Dialectical Perspective framework to our understanding of conflict. In other words, there is also the tension between cultural expectations of how we handle conflict and our own personal dispositions toward handling conflict. If you are someone who is emotionally expressive but have social expectations to be emotionally reserved, that can also in itself become an element of conflict. To summarize: conflict, especially intercultural conflict, can be very complicated and messy. But conflict isn’t always bad. Conflict can be productive and create progress within and between cultures. Understanding our own personal expressions of conflict, the expected expressions of conflict from our various cultural identities, and how our cultural expressions of conflict are different from one another is an important aspect of Intercultural Communication Competence. Prompt The purpose of this discussion is to critically examine our own personal expressions of conflict as compared to cultural expectations of the expression of conflict. For this week’s prompt, please reflect upon your own personal conflict style. Make sure that you are using the direct/indirect, expressive/restrained terminology explained above. Here are just a few questions to get you thinking about your own approaches to conflict. Are you someone who is comfortable directly approaching someone when you have a problem with them? Are you someone who is uncomfortable with people who yell and cry when they are upset? Then, think about one of your salient cultural groups and what their expectations are of expressing conflict. Is your conflict style and your cultural group’s conflict style complimentary or contradictory? Finally, talk about how your cultural expectations of conflict are different from how you’ve seen another culture handle conflict. For example, I personally am very awkward with direct conflict. I am extremely adverse to confrontation, no matter how little or well I know the person or persons I am in conflict with. In addition, I am very uncomfortable with outward expressions of emotions, especially in situations of conflict. Based upon this, it could be said that my own personal conflict style would be indirect and emotionally restrained. One cultural group that also has a huge influence on my perception of effective conflict management is my gender. As a cisgender woman, there is a lot of pressure to be gentle and direct in our conflict management, while also being emotionally expressive. Because I don’t “emote and express conflict like a woman” my communication can often be misunderstood. In relation to other cultures, my expression of conflict can be very confusing. It is often assumed (correctly) that I am a woman, so there is the assumption that I will handle conflict like a woman. This can create conflict within itself because there is not only my own personal style of communicating conflict, but also the influences of all the other cultural groups I belong to (caucasian, American, gay, etc.). To try to reduce any aspect of my identity to the expectations of the groups I belong to would be reductive, and well, stereotypical. And as we all know, stereotyping is harmful to Intercultural Communication competence. For the discussion post, please post the following: 1. Talk about your own personally preferred expression of conflict. 2. Talk about the preferred expression of conflict for one of your salient cultural groups. 3. Talk about the differences between the expression of conflict between your above mentioned cultural group and some other cultural group that you do not belong to. 4. Both your initial post and your reply are due Thursday by midnight.