Professional Documents
Culture Documents
The reason I chose to include this particular artifact in my portfolio is that it demonstrates
how communication is interpreted antithetically among various cultures. This artifact was written
my freshman year of college and the focus was aimed at the definition of culture. The students
were instructed to reflect upon a time during the class in which their initial perception of culture
had been challenged. In this instance, a class trip to the Milwaukee Public Museum seemed to
have the greatest impact on how I perceived the idea of culture and what theories in the
subsequent years of my education would help educate me to be more receptive toward other
cultures.
The reflection of the Museum illustrates how the depictions of certain cultures, and the
artifacts associated with them, are indicative of how their societal norms, beliefs, and values
were all relatively different and similar in regards to the United States as a whole. Although
some museum representations of cultures are deceitful, the overall experience and feeling of
Correlated, this idea of ethnocentrism, or that ones own culture is superior over another,
is one that ties into the Expectancy Violations theory as defined by Judee Burgoon in the mid-
1970s. The Expectancy Violation theory suggests that people react in different ways to the
abrupt violations of a specific cultures social norms and expectations. For example, in the
United States, people often greet each other with such actions as a hand-shake, a wave, or maybe
even a hug in some instances. However, if a person from the United States were visiting the
island country of Japan and was unsure of how to greet people, individuals from either culture
might experience aspects of the Expectancy Violation theory when the American reaches out to
shake hands and the Japanese person bows ( a mistake even some world leaders have made).
differences, which can ultimately lead to cognitive dissonance, or the psychological discomfort
experienced when two or more people possess conflicting beliefs or values, as proposed by
Over the course of history, there have been instances of some societies trying to instill a
sense that they are superior to another based upon assumed privilege or material possession. The
connotation of the word culture is often misconstrued with ideals of superiority in motion. The
reality is, culture is not definitive, nor absolute. Culture is interpreted through the core beliefs,
In time, that preliminary idea of culture has evolved into communication across cultures.
From the communication perspective, messages, styles, and symbols are influenced by societal
norms, beliefs, and values. It is essential that communication, like culture, is being studied and
adapting in respect to the rapidly globalizing world. Communication has always been a barrier
between cultures, and many languages have since faded away or become intertwined with others
has had tremendous impacts on breaking communication barriers and indicates how
theories like Expectancy Violation and Cognitive Dissonance, is directly correlated with
perception. Communication exemplifies how cultures can either adapt, evolve, or fade if they do
not acclimate to the ever-changing and globalized societal norms and expectations.