Saturday, July 14, 2012
Different Culture Communication
I think
for sure I communicate differently depending on the person I am talking with.
For example I am a 25 year old Black woman, and I have a wide range or
colleagues at the elementary I work at. Yet I know that I “carry” myself differently
when I speak to my colleague that is a 28 year old Caucasian woman who has been
married to a Black man and currently dating a Black man compared to an older
Caucasian woman. I knowingly approach each of these ladies differently. I speak
in a different manner and if there is a conversation that I am having I use
different examples or speech pattern when it comes to who I am talking to.
Since the younger woman is someone I communicate with outside the school,
usually my communication with her is more casual. I think as a professional
though, you have to be able to relate and communicate to different cultures. It
allows you to learn and understand who you are talking to in any situation.
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Hi, Keisha! We really do adjust our language depending on the person we are currently interacting with. You are correct to point out too that age can be also be a factor in changing our communication pattern/style. What strategies can you suggest others can do to become more effective communicators?
ReplyDeleteKeisha,
ReplyDeleteI agree, good or bad we do adjust ourselves but what I wonder is if we are all guilty of feeding into sterotypes because of the norms? My grandma use to have a family voice and a phone voice, and my siblings and I would always say to grandma, that she sounded fony, on the phone LOL. I guess some diversity in speaking is needed, and of course to reach people and not push them away requires some adjustment so that we can connect. Great post
Keisha,
ReplyDeleteAge can definitely be a factor in the way we communicate with the people around us. During my student teacher I was told my my cooperating teacher that I possessed the ability to communicate with anyone, regardless of the situation. She said I just "blended" in with the setting I was in at the time. To me that simply meant I could get along with others well, but now I wonder if maybe she thought more about my communication skills with different people, just like you do with your colleagues at the elementary school. Great post.
Keisha,
ReplyDeleteI think we all adjust our communication style depending on who we are with. The ability to do this leads to successful communication. Your post reminds me of a fellow student during my undergrad studies. It was in my Spanish class and she was a bilingual student. She would get in arguments with the professor and actually walked out of class once because he was constantly corrected her grammar both spoken and written. He would explain that any professor would not accept slang and poor grammar if it was written in English, he would not do it in Spanish. She was obviously having a hard time adjusting her communication style. i know in my own family growing up their were many Italian words we used for foods but I would not use those words with certain friends because they would have no idea what i was talking about.