Corcoran1

Isa Corcoran
3/30/18
COM 366-A
Dr. Mutua
Reflection Paper: Option 2

A Focus on Intercultural Relationships

An integral part of the human experience is forming and maintaining interpersonal

relationships. Whether it’s greeting a stranger on the street or forming a friendship with a peer

involved in similar activity that you are involved in, interpersonal relationships are at the core of

interacting with the world around you. Within the realm of interpersonal relationships fall

romantic relationships and more importantly, intercultural romantic relationships.

Fundamentally, Thomas K. Nakayama and Judith N. Martin describe intercultural relationships

as, “relationships that are formed between individuals from different cultures” (Nakayama 391).

These relationships range from platonic to romantic and in this paper I will be focusing on and

intercultural romantic relationship, my father and mother.

My parents, Philip and Giovanna Corcoran, have enriched my life, not only by bringing

me into this world, but by raising me in a multicultural household. From a very young age, my

parents stressed the importance of embracing my two cultures because of the knowledge the

unique, invaluable elements each of the cultures I was raised in to bring to my life. I am also an

incredibly inquisitive individual so I would always ask my parents about other intercultural

couples like them and I quickly realized that many of their other friends in intercultural

relationships did not have that same willingness to accommodate their spouse and their spouse’s

family like my parents did with each other. With this in mind, I was able to observe my parents’

relationship as I was growing up and now, as an adult, I am able to understand the cultural
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differences that added to their relationship and the differences that added difficulty to their

relationship.

One of the most important elements that impacted their relationship was language. My

mother is a Venezuelan-Italian woman who grew up in Caracas, Venezuela and claims Spanish

as her mother tongue. My father, however, is and Irish-American man raised in New England

who only took French classes in school. When my parents first met when they were students at

Georgetown University, my mother spoke English but still struggled with communicating herself

effectively in an unfamiliar language and my dad spoke no Spanish. As they became better

friends and subsequently dated for five years, my father taught himself Spanish because he

understood how important it was to integrate himself into my mother’s Spanish speaking family.

He became so dedicated on being a part of my mom’s family that they were married in

Venezuela and my parents only spoke to my sisters and me in Spanish until age five. This is an

important element of intercultural relationships because it not only highlights the learning that

comes from being in an intercultural relationship but it also shows the willingness all partners

should have to be close to their spouse’s family, especially in intercultural relationships. In my

parents’ case, the language component of intercultural relationships truly became a bonding

experience for them because it allowed them to learn about each other’s heritage and learn more

about the world around them, but it became very difficult and created conflict when one

individual or the other couldn’t communicate effectively with the other. According to Thomas K.

Nakayama, “of course, every husband and wife develop their own idiosyncratic way of relating

to each other, but intercultural marriage poses consistent challenges,” (Nakayama 418).

One challenge that my mother described to me when I interviewed her for this paper is

that when she was still learning English, she was not able to keep up with my dad’s incredibly
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fast-speaking family. She struggled with code switching and explained that many times when she

was with his family, she found it challenging to keep up with what they were saying, so much of

the meaning or the semantics of the conversations were lost in translation. This was also

heightened because some of the expressions or sayings in Spanish that my mother would use to

express herself don’t have a direct, reciprocal term or phrase in English (and vice versa), so it

became frustrating when my mother and father felt like they were simultaneously not

understanding each other.

Along with some issues that language barriers pose, intercultural relationships add so

many opportunities for learning and new experiences to people’s daily lives. My parents’

relationship and their mutual willingness to learn and understand each other’s culture attributed

to immense amounts of growth and achievement, not only as a couple but as individuals. As a

couple, they have learned to communicate with each other well and when an argument or

kerfuffle arises, they are able to address the issue by using clear, direct language to address the

issue. On an individual level, my father who was once an incredibly stoic, somewhat

emotionally-guarded man is now able to communicate his feelings more effectively and has

become more warm and open to new experiences while simultaneously maintaining some of his

stereotypical New England stoicism. My mother now has a better grasp on the English language

and through my dad, has learned about American culture and cultural practices and to an extent

has fused her American cultural knowledge with her ingrained Venezuelan cultural knowledge.

As an intercultural couple, my parents faced various challenges when getting to know

each other, but they were able to overcome their struggles and successfully raise 3 bilingual

daughters with a propensity for learning about different cultures. Through my parents’ teaching,

my sisters and I were able to learn about the dichotomous natures of our parents’ cultures while
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simultaneously blending them and creating our own family culture. We spend time with both

sides of our family and we occasionally bring the two sides together for big family gatherings.

We made our ‘new normal’ a unique, blended, bilingual version of the traditional suburban

family from Maryland.