1. Understanding Our Own Culture Perspective

We are born into a culture.  We might also be born into a regional or ethnic subculture.  Enculturation is the process by which we learn about our first culture—and any subcultures that we are born into.  It is how we are socialized and how we learn about the culture where we are born and reared. 

Our culture provides the basis for how we perceive our environment.  We selectively perceive the world based on our individual experiences, our culture background, our education, our religious upbringing, our work experience, and so forth; in sum, we perceive the world from out past experience.  We look at the world, not necessarily through “rose-colored” glasses, but through whatever colored glasses our past experience has taught us to look at the world through.  It is primarily our cultural upbringing that provides the tint for our glasses; that is, for our perceptions.

            In the Maxims, the French author and philosopher, Francois de la Rochefoucauld, put our tendency to perceive based on our cultural background fittingly and succinctly when he stated: “The accent of one’s birthplace persists in the mind and the heard as much as in speech.”

Our culture provides us with reference points about how to view the world and how to evaluate what is going on around us.  Members of a culture, to a greater or lesser extent depending on how homogeneous the culture is, share perceptual frameworks.  This sharing of perceptual frameworks means that members of the culture have some common expectation about what is considered acceptable and appropriate behavior.  The way they see the world and the way they behave and interact with one another is often assumed or taken for granted. 

2. Learning About Another Culture

            The culture and any subculture or subcultures we are born into are also not necessarily the only ones we learn about.  For any number of reasons, which we will soon see, we may encounter a different culture.  Part of that encounter is learning about the other culture.

            While enculturation is the process of learning about our first culture or subcultures, acculturation is the process of learning about a new culture.  Acculturation includes taking on the characteristics or attributes of the other culture.  It means adopting new ways of doing things, new habits, and probably new frames of reference and attitude sets.

We often learn about a new culture even before we get there, before we encounter that culture directly.  This is especially true with the advent of the Internet.  It is very easy to do a search on any variety of aspects of the culture we want to find out about.  In some ways there is almost too much information for us to absorb about a culture we want to gain knowledge about.

  There are variety of other ways we might learn about another culture before we actually encounter it, from seeing that culture on television or in the movies, reading about it in books or in newspaper accounts and stories, and hearing about it from friends and family.

Perhaps the most significant way we encounter another culture, though, is by visiting it.  Getting to know a new culture is the product of a number of different factors, including the mass media and mass communication, popular culture, language, family, interaction networks, and propinquity.

3. Experiencing Another Culture

The acculturation process is one we go through when we learn about a new culture.  We might not make an active effort to get to know the new culture, but we will become acculturated nonetheless.  When we do encounter another culture we see it, smell it, taste it, touch it, and hear it.  We come to have a direct experience with a new culture—and with individual members of that culture.

There are many reasons we encounter another culture.  We might want to be just a short-term visitor or we know the encounter will last the rest of our lives because we intend to remain in the new culture.  We might even go to a different expecting to make just a brief stay, but remain for months or years.

The sojourner is a visitor to another culture.  This visit might be for a short time or for a long time, but the mind set is that of someone who will go back to their own culture.  Tourists, students, diplomats, and people doing project/programme purpose in another country are all sojourners.  They intend to return to their own country once their goal has been achieved.

Refugees go from one culture to another, but they have left their own culture under duress.  They are fleeing from some sort of adversity.  Whatever the cause, refugees often feel that they will someday return to their original culture.  While this desire to return is not always realistic, it is frequently a part of the refugee’s mentality.  

            Immigrants are people who chose to leave their home culture and country to make a new life in another culture and country.  They have made a free choice to move from one culture to another.

4. Defining Culture Shock

As we have seen, when we visit another culture we see it, smell it, taste it, touch it, and hear it.  We come to have a direct experience with a new culture—and with individual members of that culture.

That experience may seem strange to us.   The sights are not those we are used to.  The place has a different smell.  The food is very strange.  The sounds are unusual.  This culture that is new to us seems odd and unusual.  Our encounter with this new culture that is new to us doesn’t quite feel right.  Encountering a new culture can be scary.

Communication scholar, Carley Dodd, defines culture shock as the: “Special transition period and the acorganizationing feelings after entering a new culture.” 

That experience may seem strange to us.  We don’t recognize all of the little things that we normally take for granted.  A simple example is which way to look when crossing the street when going from a right-hand to a left-hand drive culture.  While it may seem simple, it can be deadly if we look the wrong way when a bus is coming.

The sights are not those we are used to.  The place has a different smell.  The food is very strange.  The sounds are unusual.  This culture that is new to us seems odd and unusual.  Our encounter with this new culture that is new to us doesn’t quite feel right. 

Encountering a new culture can be scary.  We experience stress and discomfort with our new surrounding and with new cultural expectations and perceptions.  Our normal ways of interacting and communicating with others might no longer work for us.  We no longer recognize the patterns of behaviors that we have used for most of our lives. 

Our value system, our beliefs, and our norms—the ones we learned from our own culture—might be very different from the beliefs, values, and norms in the new culture.  Our usual way of perceiving the world doesn’t seem to work very well any more.  Our assumptions feel like they are no longer valid.  We can no longer take for granted what we usually took for granted.  We are probably experiencing culture shock.

5. Defining Culture Shock (Continued)

            Culture shock occurs when enter a new culture and feel the stress of not being able to rely on our past assumptions and frames of reference.  We can no longer take for granted what we have for all of our lives.

            Kalvero Oberg, the anthropologist who coined the term culture shock, describes it as follows:

“Culture shock is precipitated by the anxiety that results from losing all our familiar signs and symbols of social intercourse.  These signs of cues include the thousand and one ways in which we orient ourselves to the situations of daily like: when to shake hands and what to say when we meet people, when and how to give tips, how to give orders to servants, how to make purchases, when to accept and when to refuse invitations, when to take statements seriously and when not.  Now these cues, which may be words, gestures, facial expressions, customs, or norms, are acquired by all of us in the course of growing up and are as much a part of our culture as the language we speak and the beliefs we accept.  All of us depend for our peace of mind and our efficiency on hundreds of these cues, most of which we are not consciously aware.”

            Trying to fit in with, to adapt to a new culture is often very difficult.  We need to learn the myriad cues that Oberg refers to.  We need to figure out all over again how to negotiate what used to seem like simple interactions. 

The acculturation process, trying to learn new cultural patterns, means that we even might need to unlearn, at times, the old cues that we were used to and comfortable with; it means giving up some of our old culture to adapt to our new one.

6. Defining Culture Shock (Continued)

Because we can no longer take for granted those cues that we knew in our own culture, the discomfort we feel when we encounter a new culture often leads to stress; the stress of culture shock.  No matter whether we are a sojourner, refugee, or immigrant, we might feel this stress, which can include:

·        Feelings of helplessness

·        Withdrawal

·        Irritability

·        Fear of being cheated

·        Fear of being robbed

·        Fear of being hurt or injured

·        Loneliness

·        A desire for home and friends

·        Excessive concern about cleanliness and health

·        Physiological reactions like a headache, upset stomach, or sleeplessness

·        Anxiety

·        Anger and frustration over minor problems

Culture shock is an ongoing process that never ends.  Even people who have immigrated to another culture and lived in another county for decades still feel the stress and anxiety of culture shock on occasion.  Most, though not all people tend to adapt more and feel more comfortable the longer they are in a new and different cultural setting.

Some people, however, never adjust to the new culture and become alienated, resentful, and embittered.