Summary Blog

Summary Blog- Cultural Reporter Project

Greetings and welcome to the final blog of my cultural reporter project. I will be discussing a summary of all the previous blogs, interviews and data I have collected over this period. There will also be a reflection about this project as well as what I have learned overall in terms of intercultural communication, and how to use this information in the future to improve our communication competence. My topic of the cultural reporter project is related to the lower class, more specifically the homelessness culture. In my first blog, I explain the concept of class identity and how it is a very important issue in the U.S. because it translates through nonverbal and verbal communication. Class identity is defined as a sense of belonging to a group that shares similar economic, occupational, or social status (Martin & Nakayama, 2009). I discussed about how you can easily depict people’s class just by their appearance, life style, preference in products, which is a nonverbal way of communicating. A verbal way of communicating would be the way a person who lives in a trailer park would speak versus a man walking down Wall Street. I also pointed out that they come from a wide variety of backgrounds and become homeless for variety of reasons.

Due to the various backgrounds that homeless people come from, trying to communicate between them is not the easiest. In my second blog I explain the concept of minority identity, a sense of belonging to a nondominant group and it develops in stages such as; unexamined identity, conformity, resistance, and separatism (Martin & Nakayama, 2009). The lower class, mostly the homeless, are more aware of their class identity being different from the majority and tend to develop a sense of class identity earlier than the other class. Another concept I explored was the concept of code switching, which refers to the phenomenon of changing languages, dialects, or even accents (Martin & Nakayama, 2009). Language is essential when it comes to communications, therefore, people code switch to accommodate the other individuals. It is important to change languages, dialects, or even accents to accommodate this culture.

Overall, I learned that engaging in intercultural communication is important and vital in today’s society because we are globalizing more and more each day. There is some great knowledge that can be gained when you communicate with people from different cultures. It also makes you more likely to interact with other different cultures more based on the understanding and the knowledge gained. My advice on improving our communication competence is to stay motivated when engaging in intercultural communication. Other components of intercultural competence discussed in chapter 12 were knowledge, attitude, and empathy (Martin & Nakayama, 2009). I was feeling a little hesitant and felt a little uncomfortable when I had to move out of my “communication comfort zone,” however, after I had gained some motivation it lead me to insights into other individuals, groups, and cultures. Another important component was attitudes, which is an individual’s disposition or mental sets. As a component of intercultural communication competence, attitudes include tolerance for ambiguity, empathy and nonjudmentalism (Martin & Nakayama, 2009). I will be focusing on empathy because I believe without empathy the ability to communicate with other cultures can be difficult. For my second blog, I had to empathize with everyone I communicated with because I learned about the people’s experiences and their life. It made it easier for me to understand from their point of view because I felt what it was like to “walk in another person’s shoes.” To be competent communicators, it only takes motivation to communicate, having positive attitudes, and the willingness to gain some knowledge about the other cultures. I have gained significantly about the low class, homeless, culture because of the cultural reporter project. I have already started to utilize this information to life and it will help me later on in the future when I travel to other countries.

The video I posted in my second blog was meant to be posted on this final blog.

References:

"Homelessness." Home. People's City Mission. Web. 7 Feb. 2012. <http://www.peoplescitymission.org/index.php/about/16-homelessness>.

“Homelessness In Lincoln.” Lincoln Homeless Coalition. Web. 7 Feb 2012.

<http://www.lincolnhomelesscoalition.org/homelessness-awareness/>.

Martin, J.N., & Nakayama, T.K. (2009). Intercultural Communication in Contexts (5^th Edition ed). New York, NY: McGraww-Hill.