Breaking Barriers or Creating Barriers?

I asked a number of friends if they would mind sharing stories where they had either had a positive or negative experience with healthcare professionals where cultural norms differed between themselves and the practitioner they were seeing.  The results were very interesting.  In some cases, they, as clients, were respected with regards to their culture.  In others, well, the results were not so great.  I have altered the names of contributors, for confidentiality's sake. These are the real stories of real people. As you watch the videos, try and think how you would feel from the client's perspective, and how you think you would react if you met this person when you were in the position of power as a practitioner. What would you do if you saw or overheard a colleague behaving in these ways?

 

 Amy's Story

George's Story

Karla's story

So that's the not-so good. The times when a lack of cross-cultural understanding led to poor intercultural communication. Now I'll share some examples that are much more positive.

 

 Carol's Story

Henare's Story

 

These examples are much closer to what we should be aiming for.

Know Yourself

In order to be able to understand the cultures of others we must understand our own.  In the first year of my degree, we had a social anthropology paper, in which we looked at the iceberg model of culture, created by Edward T Hall in 1976 (in Devarakonda, 2013).  For those not familiar with this model, here's a short video:

(ConstantForeigner, 2013)

As you can see, there is very little about any culture that is openly displayed, and what is on display can be difficult to interpret without an understanding of the psychology and philosophy that is beneath the surface.  For this paper, we also had to create our own version of the iceberg.  For my analogy, I used a river delta.  I chose this as my model because I connect to the sea, it is very important to me spiritually.  Maori are a Polynesian people, a people of the Pacific Ocean, seafarers and voyagers.  We came to this land via the sea, we are a nation of moderate-sized islands, and in most parts of the country, are no more than a few short hours from the sea.  In my model, pictured below (Brown, 2011), the river is the seen behaviour, the tidal flats are the marginal areas that some observant people may notice, and the sea itself is the unseen.  The river is clear-cut, the flats diversify and become more difficult to follow, and the life in the sea is almost entirely below its surface.  At the delta, the tide goes in and out, allowing what is unseen to feed what is seen.

(Brown, 2011)

Without a sound understanding of our own cultural norms, we cannot see the ways in which our behaviours, psychology, and philosophies may impact upon those from differing backgrounds to our own, and we cannot see how this may impair our ability to engage with such people in a therapeutic way.

References

Brown, M.L. (2011, November 3). River delta [Image]. Personal collection.

ConstantForeigner (Producer). (2013, June 5). Edward T. Hall's cultural iceberg [Video file]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6aeqXaXOSg

Devarakonda, C. (2013). Diversity and inclusion in early childhood: An introduction. London, UK: SAGE Publications Ltd.

What is Cross-Cultural Communication?

So what exactly is cross-cultural communication?  It pays, firstly, to look at what defines cultural communication.  Cushman and Craig (in Philepsen, 2003) suggest that cultural communication is made up of two basic components; networks and codes.  Networks include "nations, culture, class, subculture, region, community, and family" (p. 36), and codes are "language, dialect, and accent".  Non-verbal communication cues such as body language and gestures can also be included under codes.

Language and dialect can mean more than just the basic language spoken and its variations, such as Mandarin with its numerous dialects.  Language can also be a subset of a specific language, that depends upon an environmental, cultural, or occupational context.  Different sports have language specific to them, that may seem unintelligible to a speaker of that general language who does not have knowledge of that particular sport.  Cricket has a number of interesting terms, such as silly mid-on, googly, beamer, third man, slips, reverse sweep, and yorker.  To a cricketing fan this language makes sense, but to the uninitiated, such terms would most likely seem nonsensical.  Similarly, different employment fields have their own languages, as do different religions, and different leisure activities.  There are an untold variety of both formal and informal language subsets within any language.

Who are you speaking to today?
(U-coaching, 2013)

Cross-cultural communication occurs when a person from one culture, with its own networks and codes, tries to understand the networks and codes of a person from a different culture (Prosser, 2012).  When two people from different cultures meet, and attempt to communicate, this is called intercultural communication.  Spending time looking at cross-cultural communication assists the individual in their intercultural communication.  Obviously it would be near-impossible to understand all the various dialects and cultural norms on the planet, but by having a look at those most common in our area, we can improve our ability to build therapeutic relationships with members of our local population.



Reference:

Philepsen, G. (2003). Cultural communication.  In W.B. Gundykunst (Ed.), Cross-cultural and intercultural communication (pp. 35-52). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.

Prosser, M.H. (2012). Cross-cultural communication. In Encyclopedia of communication theory (pp. 248-252). Retrieved from http://www.sagepub.com/edwards/study/materials/reference/77593_6.1ref.pdf

U-coaching. (2013). Cultball [image]. Retrieved from http://u-coaching.de/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/cultball.jpg