An Introduction to Intercultural Communication. Fred E. Jandt
has some consonant sounds that do not exist in Japanese. If you grew up speaking Japanese, you didn’t learn to listen for those consonant sounds. English uses the consonant sounds f, v, th as in think, th as in breathe, z, zh as in treasure, j as in the dge of judge, r, and 1. Thus, if you grew up speaking Japanese, it is difficult to distinguish between the sounds b and v, s and sh, r and 1, and so forth, with the result that lice and rice or glamour and grammar are frequently pronounced the same way.
Japanese has borrowed thousands of English words. But if you grew up speaking English, you would have difficulty recognizing them. In Japanese, syllables are basically a consonant sound followed by a vowel. Syllables can end only with a vowel sound or an n. For example, the Japanese word iiau (quarrel) has four syllables—each vowel is pronounced as a separate syllable. A native-born English speaker would not know to do that and would try to pronounce the word as an unsegmented single sound. An English speaker pronounces the word thrill as one syllable. In Japanese, consonant sounds do not exist without vowels, so a Japanese speaker would pronounce all three syllables, something like sooriroo. The Japanese r, by the way, is difficult for English speakers. It’s similar to the Spanish r in pero or Roberto. From our first language, we learned what sounds are critical to listen for. Because languages can have different critical sounds, learning a new language means learning to attend to new sounds.
Organization
The second step in the perception process is Organization. Along with selecting stimuli from the environment, you must organize them in some meaningful way. When you look at a building, you do not focus on the thousands of possible individual pieces; you focus on the unified whole, a building. Turning a picture upside down, for example, can trick you into focusing on individual components rather than your unified concept of the object in the picture.
How are perceptions categorized? One argument is that you somehow grasp some set of attributes that things have in common. On that basis, they are grouped together in a category provided by language that gives the conceptual categories that influence how its speakers’ perceptions are encoded and stored. The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, however, concluded that there need be no such set of shared characteristics (see, e.g., Wittgenstein, 1953/2001). Our language provides the symbol to group perceptions of any kind together.
Grouping Like Objects Together
“One of These Things” is a song used on Sesame Street when children are shown a group of four items, one of which is different from the other three. Children are asked to identify the item that does not belong with the others. Look at the three objects in Figure 3.3.
Figure 3.3Stimulus for Culture’s Effect on Organization
Source: Adapted from Nisbett (2003, p. 141).
In this case, which two objects would you place together? The chicken and the grass? The chicken and the cow? Or the grass and the cow? Chiu (1972) showed such figures to children from China and the United States. Children from the United States grouped objects because they belonged to the same taxonomic category; that is, the same categorization term could be applied to both. The children from the United States would more likely group the chicken and cow together as “animals.” The Chinese children preferred to group objects on the basis of relationships. The Chinese children would more likely group the cow and grass together because “cows eat grass” (Chiu, 1972).
In a similar study, Mutsumi Imai and Dedre Gentner (1994) showed objects to people of various ages from Japan and the United States and asked them to group them together. For example, one object was a pyramid made of cork, which they called a dax, a word that had no meaning to the participants. Then they showed the participants a pyramid made of white plastic and a different object made of cork. They then asked the participants to point to a dax. To which of these two later objects would you point?
People from the United States in the study chose the same shape, indicating that they were coding what they saw as an object. The Japanese were more likely to choose the same material, indicating that they were coding what they saw as a substance.
Interpretation
The third step in the perception process is Interpretation. This refers to attaching meaning to sense data and is synonymous with decoding. University of Rochester researchers Netta Weinstein, Andrew Przybylski, and Richard Ryan (2009) showed participants computer images of either urban settings of buildings and roads or natural settings of landscapes and lakes. Participants were asked to study the computer images, note colors and textures, and imagine the sounds and smells associated with the images. The researchers then asked the participants to complete questionnaires about various values, including wealth, fame, connectedness to community, relationships, and the betterment of society. Participants who studied the computer images of natural settings rated close relationships and community values higher than they had after observing the images of urban environments. Participants who studied the computer images of urban settings rated fame and wealth higher. This demonstrates that the same situation can be interpreted quite differently by diverse people. A police officer arriving at a crime scene can be experienced by the victim as calming and relief giving but by a person with an arrest record as fearsome and threatening. Here, too, the effect of culture is great. As you encounter people of your own culture, you constantly make judgments as to age, social status, educational background, and the like. The cues you use to make these decisions are so subtle that it’s often difficult to explain how and why you reach a particular conclusion. Do people in the United States, for example, perceive tall men as more credible? Perhaps. Applying these same cues to someone from another culture may not work. People in the United States, for example, frequently err in guessing the age of Japanese individuals, such as judging a Japanese college student in her mid-20s to be only 14 or 15.
Case Study: Dogs as Pets or as Food
The meanings you attach to your perceptions are greatly determined by your cultural background. Think of how speakers of English categorize life. Most probably use the categories of human life and animal life. Now think of how you typically categorize animal life—probably into wild animals and domesticated animals. Now think of how you typically categorize domesticated animal life—probably into animals used for food, animals used for sport and recreation, and pets. Look at the picture of the puppy and capture your feelings.
Many consider dogs as pets. (The author’s first dog, Smokey.)
Fred E. Jandt
Most of us see this puppy in the category of pet, for which we have learned to relate warm, loving feelings. Puppies are cute, cuddly, warm, loving creatures. Now look at the next picture of dogs being rescued from a farm where they were raised to be eaten. Capture your feelings. Most of us who love dogs find this picture uncomfortable and disgusting. How can people eat dogs? They are pets, not food! It all depends on where you categorize them. Dogs are pets in some cultures and food in others. In the Arab world, dogs are acceptable as watchdogs and as hunting dogs but are not kept in the home as pets because they are seen as unclean and a low form of life. To call someone a dog is an insult among Arabs. People in most cultures have strong ideas about which foods are acceptable for human consumption and which are not. People in some countries think the custom in the United States of eating corn on the cob is disgusting because that food is fit only for pigs. Some Ukrainians like to eat salo, raw pig fat with black bread and vodka, which might cause nausea in some, as would knowing that horsemeat from California is served in restaurants in Belgium, France, and Japan.