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 As we are winding down on this quarter, we can reflect back on all of the different aspects of culture and Intercultural Communication we have learned about. At the very beginning of the quarter, we talked about how culture is the sum total ways of living, including behavioral norms, linguistic expression, styles of communication, patterns of thinking, and beliefs and values of a group large enough to be self-sustaining and transmitted over the course of generations (Jandt, 2017). In short, culture influences everything we think, we do, we believe, whether we are aware of it or not. Now think about everything you would need to know about cultural practices and norms as to not stand out as a stranger. There are big things, like speaking the native language, and there are a million little things that we may not even think about on a day to day basis. Things like not only the language, but also how that language is spoken. One of the easiest ways to tell if someone “is not from around here” is whether or not they have an accent (in comparison to the accent that you have been taught). There are also things like how you dress, what utensils you use to eat, what hand you eat with. The clothing you wear, the things you believe. If we stay in our cultural bubbles, since everyone around us is acting, thinking, and/or doing things in roughly the same way we do them, it can feel like there is almost an absence of culture. This is because we have an emic perspective on that cultural group. Emic means to have learned about or have knowledge from within. For me, I have an emic knowledge of American culture. I understand the language, I am comfortable with the foods, I dress “appropriately” within the cultural expectations, and I understand the laws and regulations of the land—even if I don’t agree and/or practice them. Now imagine that you have to move away from home. For many of you this might already be a reality, whether you are an immigrant, a refugee, or an international student. Whether you have experienced this or not, when you visit and/or move to a new cultural group, you will initially have an etic knowledge of this group. Etic means that you have an outside knowledge of the culture. I like to think of emic and etic like this: if you are looking to buy a house, you can drive by it and see if from the outside. There are some things you will learn about it: how many stories, does it have a garage, how many windows it has, what kind of yard, etc. You might even get a little enterprising and walk around the outside, peering in windows, where you can start to get the gist of the house. This is having an etic knowledge of the house. If you book an appointment or go to an open house to tour the home, you can walk through the interior, open cabinets, look in closets, explore and really get the feel of the place. The more time you spend in it, the more you learn about it. If you buy it, you will get a very intimate knowledge of that house. This would be you having an emic knowledge of that house. Understanding cultural groups works the same way. As we do in the classroom, we learn etically about many different cultures: we poke around the outside and describe what’s on the inside, but we are not necessarily immersed in all of the cultures we explore. The way that we get from etic to emic knowledge about a culture is through being directly exposed to or immersed in it. That is when we learn all of the nooks and crannies of a culture, the same way we get to know all the nooks and crannies of a house. In order to have that emic knowledge, we have to learn the way people within that culture talk, act, think, relate, eat, dress, worship, believe, and communicate with one another to name a few. When we don’t have that information, or even parts of that information, we will then experience culture shock. Culture shock is “…the anxiety and discomfort we feel when moving from a familiar environment to an unfamiliar one” (Grothe, 2020, 6.1.1). Our cultural groups teach us the multitude of ways that we interact and communicate with one another. When those cues are gone, we will experience anxiety and discomfort. The level of anxiety and discomfort we feel is determined by a number of factors. These include the similarity between the new culture and our home culture, the familiarity with the new culture, and our own intercultural communication competence. For example, if you are from the Seattle area and you move to Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, the culture shock you experience might be mild because the two cultures have a lot of similarities, including similar languages (American English and Canadian English are similar enough to one another to be understood by each members of each culture), the same climate, etc. There will be differences that might create anxiety and discomfort, but your ability to live and adapt to that culture will be relatively easy. Now compare that to an experience of moving from the Seattle area to Mozambique. Mozambique is located on the east coast of Africa and was colonized by the Portuguese. Their primary language is Portuguese but there is also the influence of Bantu as well. It is a tropical climate with two seasons: the rainy season and the dry season. A staple of the Mozambique diet is cassava, a starchy root that was brought to the country by the Portuguese colonizers. In addition, Mozambique is one of the poorest countries in the world, where the minimum wage is about $USD60 a month. There is a very good chance that if you do not already have family or familiarity with the culture of Mozambique, you will most likely experience a lot more discomfort and anxiety within that culture than you would if you were visiting our neighbors across the Canadian border. No matter how similar or different the cultures are from your own, if they are indeed different, the possibility of culture shock is present. And culture shock does not happen when you move from one country to another. You can experience culture shock in your own country. If you were to move from Washington state right now to Alabama, you are most likely going to experience culture shock until you fully acclimate to the new culture. Even if you move to a different part of your own state, you might experience some mild culture shock. When my wife and I took our year long road trip around the United States, once we crossed over the Rocky Mountains heading east, we were perpetually in a state of mild to moderate culture shock. Beyond having the giant white RV van with Washington license plates, how we dressed, spoke, and interacted with people let them know that “we weren’t from around there.” The most culture shock I have experienced in my life was when I went to Japan for two weeks in the summer of 2019. I could not read the language, about the only thing I could say with confidence was “arigato gozaimasu” (which means “thank you very much”), and while I love the food, a lot of it was intimidating. I was always afraid of getting lost using public transit, I wasn’t sure if there was anyone who would speak English if I needed help, and I was very aware of my white Americanness. I could only imagine how hard that transition would have been if I had been moving there instead of just visiting (American friends living in Japan) for two weeks. If you have ever travelled outside of the state, there is a good chance that you have experienced culture shock. Up until they changed their laws recently, I was always a little taken aback in Oregon when someone else was required to pump my gas. I am still getting used to the way y’all say “bag” and “pillow” up here in the Pacific Northwest. The more that I learn about places, both here in the states and abroad, the easier it becomes to deal with culture shock. In other words, the more competent we become as intercultural communicators, the easier it becomes to handle the stages of culture shock. Prompt For this week’s discussion, I want you to reflect on a time where you have experienced culture shock. This could be from visiting a completely different country, or it can be from being immersed in a completely different culture right here in your own backyard. What culture were you immersed in where you felt culture shock? What were some of the differences you remember that caused you discomfort and anxiety? Looking back on this experience with your knowledge about culture, what are some concepts from you have learned from Intercultural Communication that would explain some of the differences that you experienced? For example, one of the things that stands out to me about my visit to Japan was exactly what it means to be in a high context culture. One big difference that I remember was that generally speaking, when Japanese people are on public transit, they tend to stay silent, or if they do talk to one another, they are very quiet. In addition, especially on subways and busses, nobody eats or drinks. Speaking, eating, drinking on public transit was considered rude to the people around you. Never once was I admonished for this behavior, because, as a high context culture, that would have been inappropriate. We did get a lot of pointed looks when we became the noisy Americans talking, or were drinking a beverage while underway. I had known going into the trip that these behaviors were taboo on light rails, subways, and busses, but I was surprised at the non-verbal judgment that we did actually get. In addition, I also got a lot of pointed stares from people, especially when I was in the Japanese countryside, for my visible tattoos (and I didn’t even have the half sleeve on my right arm yet), because for many in Japan, especially rural Japan, tattoos are a taboo, especially visible ones. Even though these were sort of the least of my worries (not speaking, reading, or understanding Japanese was a much bigger concern), it was still something that added to my anxiety and discomfort of being a stranger in an unfamiliar land. For the discussion, please post the following: 1. Talk about a time where you have experienced culture shock. 2. What was the culture you were visiting/immersed in when you experienced culture shock? 3. What were some experiences or issues that created the anxiety and/or discomfort? 4. How was this different from the experiences within your own home culture? 5. From an Intercultural Communication perspective, what could account for these differences? (Think about any terms or concepts you’ve learned from this class to help explain this. 6. Both your initial post and reply are due by Thursday.