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Culture, Gender, Personality and Communication

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Culture, gender, personality and communication

COMM 101

Culture, gender, personality and communication Interpersonal communication is a topic that is accepted differently by different people and depends on the contest of the communication. To manage intercultural interaction effectively, speakers need to be aware of the inherent norms of their own speech practices, the ways in which norms vary depending on situational factors and the ways in which speakers from other language backgrounds may have different expectations of language usage and behavior (Duran & Shepherd, 2009, p. 147). Communication in many cases can be misinterpreted due to different cultures, even different skin color or different nationality. There is a little hint of discrimination among the people when meet a person from different nationality and talk with accent. I personally witnessed this discrimination. The first impression is that if you do not understand something, and ask the person to repeat the question, the question will be repeated in a louder voice. The other impression that I have with culture was when someone unknowing my culture just assume that you are coming from the world that is the enemy of the United States (US). I’m born and raised in Bulgaria, this is one of the post-communist countries, I was in US when 9/11 happened and I was at work that day. We all were watching the news when one of my coworker asked me: “Why your people want to be in war with US and are doing this to the American people”? It took me a minute to answer this question; it was even funny at that moment. For me inter cultural communication can be possible only in between people with the same ethnic background or people who studied culture. In case of cross-cultural communication, there will always be some misunderstandings.

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