Kelsey Simpson
Myles Hill
CMN 103
October 10, 2012
The Impact of Intercultural Communication within My World
The concept of Intercultural Communication has been a part of everyone regardless of whether they realize it or not. Every day we make choices and learn things that improve how we interact with people from similar and different backgrounds from our own. Through one aspect or another, learning about and interacting with people from all walks of life and cultures has been a part of my life since I was very young. Intercultural Communication has helped me to positively experience other people and other ways of life. Originally, because of the way my parents were both brought up, I was brought up in a very sheltered and one-sided mindset. I had heard about other ways of thinking and other ideas, but it was almost as if they were like fairy tales that people knew about but never really believed. If someone didn’t share your particular thoughts, you weren’t rude to them, but you didn’t spend much time with them either. I have since learned that this is not at all how to successfully function in today’s world. If given the opportunity, we all can show each other that, though we may be separated by tiny differences, we are all the same.
I was born and raised in Nashville, TN, and had very much the Southern Baptist upbringing. I grew up in a Southern Baptist church where we attended three times a week if not more, and in doing so, learned how to live my life showing others how to do the same. Within the church, we are taught the basics – God loves everyone, and those who accept him can and will be saved for eternity. In our church, we had a youth group that everyone joins upon entering the seventh grade and in this group, we had many opportunities to go on trips and to serve and minister to others throughout the country and the other parts of the world. Before departing on one of these trips, we would have to go through a training, or briefing process that could take as little as an afternoon, or up to a few months of our time. It was during this time that we would learn as much as we could about wherever we were heading to next. The shorter briefs were always ones for local places nearby and the longer trainings were for those trips to other countries or the more lengthy trips. No trip was ever more or less important than another, as we always had one goal in mind, and that was to spread the love of Christ to anyone and everyone we could while we were away. Going on these trips, I was able to see an entirely different world than just what I was growing up around, but it never really swayed my thoughts or opinions from what we were there to do – which was to share our knowledge of our beliefs. I had always encountered many different people and cultures, but had never really allowed myself to absorb all that these different people had to offer. See, while we were there to share our belief about a loving God who accepts everyone, we were still there telling these people how to be and our excuse was that if you weren’t a certain way; if you hadn’t taken the necessary steps in your life, then in the end, you won’t be accepted. I’m not saying that this belief is wrong, because I still hold many of the Christian values that I was taught, but to go around saying that you aren’t allowed to be a certain way goes against what we are taught in Intercultural courses. When I came to this realization, I had a total ‘a-ha’ moment and knew that I had to make some changes in the way I thought about the world and those that lived in it.
On most of the trips that we went on, we had to change something about how we acted or looked be it the words we chose to use or how we dressed. In changing our dress, that was usually a religious aspect with whatever country we were in but sometimes it was for many different reasons. During one of the trips that we took to Canada, we had to alter things even down to our lifestyles. We were asked to only wear clothing without labels or even college names on them as we were in an area where most of the families could not afford to buy their children expensive clothes or did not have the opportunity for an education after high school. We were also told not to bring up any expensive gadgets that we may own or to use any sort of in depth vocabulary as there might be common words that we know and use, but that would be unfamiliar to those who we were ministering to. These steps were taken with the intention that the people we were communicating and working with would feel comfortable enough opening up to us and that they would not feel any sort of intimidation. Looking back, I feel like we were dumbing not only ourselves down, but at the same time, we were insulting the intelligence of those who we were visiting. Upon arriving in the city we were working in, we realized it wasn’t quite as intense as we had been taught and realized that just because someone is from a bad area, or we may have heard things about a city and its people, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they will turn out exactly how we are expecting. The people we encountered were students all around our age who talked excitedly about which colleges they were looking at, and how they looked forward to going to the states to shop in the bigger malls. They were exactly like us in every way, and we realized that while our training is helpful and necessary on these trips, perhaps we would do just fine with being ourselves in these situations. Occurrences such as this is where the basis of Intercultural Communication comes into play, where we learn to not stereotype and to go in maybe with a few expectations but not enough that will skew your perception as you go into a situation.
Before moving to the city, I had no idea what to expect. It wasn’t until I made Chicago my new home that I was able to open my eyes and mind to new ideas and perspectives that I had never held before. Looking back to when I first moved here two years ago, I was a very naïve twenty year-old. While growing up in the church had given me structure and a belief system for which I still continue to live my life by, as it turns out, I had been very sheltered. When I first arrived in the city, there were all of the little obvious things that stuck out to me such as language and the general pace of everyone and everything I was encountering was very different than what I had known for the last twenty years. I would get looks from my friends when I mentioned grabbing a ‘buggy’ at the grocery store instead of a cart, or I would say that he ‘wallered’ around so much he fell off the chair instead of saying squirmed or wiggled, and I’ve always gotten mixed reviews when I use “ya’ll” which I still do very often. Those simple parts of myself I’ve still held onto, but have learned to catch myself before saying something to someone from the north that they might not understand. I have also learned that up here, amongst the most diverse group of people in the country, it’s ok to have an open mind. I thought I was open-minded before I came here, and I may have been by anyone’s stereotypical Southern standards, but once I caught my first glimpse of Boystown, or had three different roommates all at once from different countries in the DePaul dorms, I had never fully grasped how diverse the world, let alone my own country could be. Since arriving here, I have slowly been able to come unwound from my strict background and embrace people and ideas that I never thought that I would before, either because I was taught not to, or even because I didn’t know certain types of people existed.
Intercultural Communication has allowed me to broaden my idea of what is normal or what is accepted within our society today, and it is quite a bit more than I could have ever imagined. I have no idea what sort of future is in store for me, but I would like to think it will be in the Advertising field where I can help companies appeal to and reach larger audiences through having the knowledge of various types of people and cultures. I feel as though my life has changed and will continue to grow for the better with the use and continuously changing concept of Intercultural Communication.
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