Intercultural Communicatons

Most people, from their birth and likely to the last day of their life, have one very important subconsciously asked question in their mind “who am I”. It is a question of self-concept. How we come up with an answer to this question has various degrees of variation for each person, but very often this question in part is being answered for us by the hints which others give to us. Our own ability to compare ourselves to others puts things in perspective as well. Staring at very young age, even before person is able to think about the things such as who am I, other people start labeling that person by certain qualities and descriptions. Our physical qualities, such as bodily features in part predetermine our personal identity. Parents give boy or girl names, which suggests their gender. Environ

In my communication experience with my e-mail partner, although many things were not being clearly spelled out, I was instantly able to pick-up important aspects of my pal’s dimensions of self-concept. I could tell, even just by stile of writing that I was communication with confident person, who was willing to explore uncharted territories in communication process. Starting first conversation that we had via e-mail we both stated sending messages about each other’s personal self-conceptions. We were willing to share things that were valued and important to us as individuals, what was acceptable or unacceptable, favorable and unfavorable, what were the things that we thought that were right. Of course those things were primarily self-centric, were my partner and I had tendency to put our own qualities of self-concept over our counterpart’s qualities. We started to compare ourselves one to another on how similar we were. Surprisingly enough although we were living in same part of the world we probably had 90 of variation of how we viewed ourselves as a person. This helped be to look beyond my self’s usual framework, and made me able to evaluate myself once again, but from different perspective. I realized that who I am was something that was learned, and there are endless possibilities of what I am able to become if I had desire to do it. I realized that people are not limited to what they were told to be like since they were children, and that their personal identity has room for liquidity and change. This concept has strong connections to personal open mind ness and ability to adjust and adapt to various situations in life.

I remember when not so long ago I stepped out of an airplane into new country and new environment. Eight years ago my family and I mover form country of Belarus, in Western Europe to United States. From day one to this day I am experiencing culture shock which in many ways have open my eyes onto importance that culture plays in our lives. Our culture clearly dictates what is “ok” and not “ok” in respect how the people’s lives should be lived. I left one form of life behind in the country where I was born and raised, and started new life here in US. During this experience I am not only was able to learn about different cultures, I

Some topics in this essay:
, Europe United, personal identity, compare ourselves, social identity, social change, identity perspective, ethnicity gender, environment live, culture shock, e-mail partner, adjust adapt,