For the most part I don’t believe in the rationality and perfectibility premises. The reason why I don’t agree with the rationality premise is that I really don’t believe that most people are rational. Let’s take religion for example. When you are a religious fanatic your mind can’t be changed. Even when someone brings a rational argument they won’t budge from their beliefs, so no I don’t agree with the rational premise. I really don’t believe that we are born as sinners. When a baby is born what possibly can a baby do that could be considered bad. I’m not a big fan of the words good and bad. I believe that we chose to either be good or bad. We as humans have something that most being don’t have. We have free will. But I believe in the mutability premise. We are indeed shaped by our environment and that we could improve our physical and psychological circumstances. The first two I don’t believe, but for the mutuality I believe in. For the rationality premise I belive that most Americans believe in this. For the perfectibility premise I believe that christens believe in this. For the mutability premise, maybe Buddhism.

Chapter 12 Question 3

I feel that intercultural communication is necessary for all of us. The reason why I feel this way is due to the fact we need to communicate with other cultures to establish peace and understanding. We cannot stay isolated in our own cultures, believing that our set of norms and standards are superior to other cultures. Let’s take for example the gay culture. Right now they are fighting for there right to be recognized. Currently there are 6 states that allow gay marriage. You might not agree with the gay life style, but in order to keep peace we need to communicate. Both sides of an argument need to communicate, we can’t be one sided and ignore people based on they don’t have the same belief system as you do. When we communicate with people from another culture we grow as humans. We get to experience what some people will never get the experience to. We get to see things from another persons point of view.

Chapter 12 Question 1

Anthropologist Ruth Benedict stated that we are “creatures of our culture” and I believe this statement to be true. One example could be how we define beauty. In America we believe that beauty is tall and skinny, but in other cultures it could be something else entirely. But this belief is portrayed by Hollywood and this is what they call the standard of beauty. I believe that most of our beliefs are in fact shaped by our culture. When we are young we see how our parents act and believe and we absorb like a sponge what they tell us. We are told when we are younger that hard work pays off and I do believe that a majority of American people do believe this, so this could be another belief of culture.
How we as a culture could break through the limits is to question is what is going around us. Ask about beliefs about a culture and try to figure out if the idea in question makes any sense. We need to find the truth.

Question 3

I thought it was interesting in chapter 5 when it was discussing dress and how it serves three functions which are comfort-protection, modesty, and cultural display. I never really thought about it but it is true. Our clothes give off nonverbal gestures that tell strangers who we are. But that also has its fault. Just what you wear doesn’t tell who you are as a person. Also clothing is used to establish if a person has credibility. A good example of this could be a lawyer. If a lawyer would come to court just in a t-shirt and shorts with sandals he wouldn’t be taken seriously. I’m not saying a lawyer that would do that isn’t smart and professional, but others could interpret this to be bad. So yes I do believe that clothing tells society about us, but it is not the entire truth. But we shouldn’t judge people on what they wear.

Question 2

Nonverbal messages just based on what culture you come from could be mistaken by other people. The example of miscommunication in the book is about giving what we Americans call the “OK” sign. We may be used to giving that sign over here but in other countries that sign could have different meanings that we don’t intend to give out. According to the book in some countries the “ok” sign is meant to say that something is worthless. Or in some countries giving the “Ok” symbol refers to the female genitalia. So what we as American consider to be a non verbal message saying that we are ok, in other countries has an entirely different meaning altogether. To be fair I never really had a bad experience with communicating with someone from another culture. I know in some cultures it is a sign of disrespect to show the bottom of you shoe. But I feel that to communicate with other people we should always show respect.

Chapter 5 Question 1

Nonverbal messages and gestures could be misinterpreted, let me give you one example. One day I was hanging out with my friend Alba and we went to go get something to eat at 3am. We started talking about what we did over the weekend and I told her I was hanging out with my friend Mario and his girlfriend. She asked if there were any other girls and I told her no, but immediately she told me that I was lying. This puzzled me because it truly was my Friend Mario and I and his girlfriend. I tried to argue, but I realize that it was going nowhere. I promised her that I was telling the truth. She said alright, and then I noticed she started to cross her arms and immediately thought she was angry and trying to mask the fact she was angry. I immediately thought that she was angry but then I noticed that it was 3 am in February and was extremely cold, and she wasn’t wearing a jacket. When I noticed this I offered her my jacket and she was happier at this gesture. I believe that how we could improve on interpreting nonverbal messages by analyzing the whole situation. We shouldn’t act right away, but look around and see if there could be other explanations.

Why listening is important

We talk about listening, but I feel that most of uses really don’t do it. I believe that we hear, not listen. For example in a class when the professor is giving a lecture we tend to sometimes zone in and out. But to become more effective as students and people we truly do need to enhance are listening skills. In the book it said that 60 percent of business errors are due to not listening. If we focused are attentions on what the boss tells us instead of what we are going to do tonight we could get work done. But it is also in are personal life as well as professional life. When we come in from a long day and we just want to relax and are significant other comes in and starts to tell us about their day we sometimes just zone out or give one word answers. When we do this is gives our significant other the impression that we don’t care and cause a fight. But we do.

Question 1

When it comes to perceiving others in my own personal opinion I believe to a certain extent we tend to judge people. I’m not saying that we all gather around and criticize people for the fun of it, but it tends to happen. But I don’t believe that all judgment and categorizing is essentially bad. In some cases it is like racial profile or judging a persons character based on the way the dress or look. But sometimes it’s innocent. A good example of this could be we see an athletic individual in their sports uniform. Based on their appearance we could assume that they are on a sports team. How we could make our judgments fairer is that we need to realize that we truly don’t know some of the people that we judge. We need to remind ourselves that that maybe we’re not normal and that we should be fairer when judging.

Question 2 Men and Women

On the position that women and men use language differently, I totally 100% agree with that statement. I like the example in the book about three friends that are lost and the males refuse to stop and act for directions. I think if the woman wasn’t there they would stop and ask for directions. But men in the company of women sometimes have such an ego they can’t admit confusion. I do agree that women like to talk about feelings and emotion more than men. Men don’t like to like to discuss feelings with other men, but with women involved it’s another story. But one thing that both men and women don’t use the same language is when they are in a relationship. Both partners tell their friends about a certain argument or conversation and could have two totally perceptions of what just took place. With your friends they could agree you are in the right, but with her friends you are in the wrong. So, yes men and women use language differently.