Interculture communications (class I'm taking)

The anthropologist, Clifford Geertz, defines culture as a “historically transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in symbols…by means of which men can communicate, perpetuate and develop their own knowledge about and attitudes towards life.” All of us here in America have thousands of things that we can take for granted, that we have learned since we were so young that these things seem ‘natural’ even though they are in fact patterns of learned behavior. Examples include things like the ‘natural’ way to eat (using a fork and knife), to sleep (in a bed), the appropriate distance to stand from someone when talking to them, and so on, and so on. In fact, only eating is natural – eating with a fork and knife, or with chopsticks, is cultural. Sleeping is natural, but sleeping on a bed is cultural. Belching is natural, yet in American culture we unnaturally restrain ourselves from doing so because it is impolite. That which is cultural is completely taken for granted within a given culture, so much so that it appears natural; and this is why, when we meet someone from another culture, we often immediately perceive them as ‘impolite’ or perhaps ‘too polite’, as a bit strange, and perhaps as not too bright, since they don’t know they should be standing further away from you when they talk to you! But when the shoe is on the other foot, and an American is the ‘odd man out’ when visiting another culture, then she or he will undergo culture shock, the terrifying realization that millions of people in another country can live perfectly happily without being familiar with, much less taking for granted, the values, traditions, customs and beliefs that you hold dear.

Geert Hofstede calls culture the ‘software of the mind’ (see his excellent book on this subject, Cultures and Organizations, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1997). In other words, while human beings all have the same ‘hardware’, the human brain, our ‘software’ or ‘programming’ is rather different. You might say that some of us are running Windows XP, some are running Windows NT, and some are running Linux. A computer running one operating system or the other will (for the most part) work fine in and of itself (OK, this doesn’t quite correspond with reality, but allow me the illustration anyway please!). But when you put software designed to run on one operating system onto a computer running a different one, and suddenly you will get error messages – something does not compute! It is the same experience when you interact with someone from a different culture – their words, assumptions, gestures, values, and other aspects of their culture will not make sense when transferred to your frame of reference.


This well-known illustration can be found, among other places, on p.6 of Hofstede’s book Cultures & Organizations.



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