Reflection Paper 5

Culture is and has been defined by many meanings and definitions, but the meaning of culture must come from ones interpersonal experiences and revelations of life. Culture in my opinion, is a wide variety of people with different backgrounds, traditions, viewpoints, and common ways of life. I believe a set of people who are equal in value, opportunity, and freedom. The way we live our lives on a daily basis and the things that influence our core values and beliefs. How we behave and interact with others make up the recipe of culture, the morals and principles that allows us to conduct ourselves like civilized human beings. It instructs and trains us how to see the world, understand how others feel, and view them as a whole. Sometimes we cannot look beyond a person outward appearance based on our own irrelevant stereotypes and assumptions. Stereotyping enforces what to know and except before interacting with others that are different from us.
Then when we get into intercultural communication, it brings on a whole other way of how we judge. I deem intercultural communication deals with how we converse with one another in our own society and others. When words are verbalized through speech, that’s how we effectively communicate with others and a process of understanding should take place. If we are communicating with another culture, a dialogue is in effect and. If we are speaking to someone from Haiti for instance, our way of speaking may mean something completely opposite of what they perceive it to be. In my personal view point culture and intercultural does not float on the same boat for many reasons. For one, cultures put in picture of how we perform, what and how to do things. On the other hand, intercultural communication goes past that. Communication deals with unknown signals and how we filter information. In certain countries some communication spoken is not direct or straight forwarded meaning to get to a conclusive point words high context communication is used. Overall, I have gained reasonable insight on how to display kindness and care towards others who are not like me. A person who is aware of cultural differences display a good attitude towards others, treat them as they would want to be treated, and pursue gratitude of compassion. A well rounded cultural person acts and behaves accordingly towards people and language they do not understand. In closing, we live in a diverse world and we will never come to the fullness of how to be a multicultural person, but we must take steps in learning how to accept and tolerate.