- Culture shock exactly means the impact you may feel when you enter a culture very different from one to which you are accustomed.
- Culture shock is common among immigrants and foreign students. No matter how well you are prepared, there are many things in a culture that you cannot find in books. This is not simply about meeting new and unexpected things, but also failing to meet what you would never have believed would be missing from any culture. Differences in nonverbal communication and unwritten rules play a large part.
Culture shock can also happen when you take a culture for granted, and can occur when you return from someplace quite foreign, to what should be home, but isn't. You have changed over the course of your stay in the other culture, and now your home culture seems out of place. It is much harder to adjust to, and can have greater impact on relationships and life outlook.
The result of culture shock is an impaired ability to adapt or function in the target culture. Culture shock is a barrier to socializing, learning, and generally functioning in the target culture.
There is no solution to culture shock except to try to learn the culture, and the way to do that is to watch and listen while withholding judgment for a while. Be careful of what you say and do, because it is easy for others, not knowing your culture, to misunderstand you. In time, you will learn the other culture and then you can participate at ease, so what do you think ?
I think people who travel often gain a wider perspective on other cultures than those who don't. Whether you do travel or you tend to choose not to, its important to keep in mind that you really have to think about what you are about to say when you are dealing with people of a different culture. Especially when speaking of sensitive matters such as religion, sex or race. One might never know how the "other cultrure" views these issues and what is considered as taboo and what isn't.
ReplyDeleteYes,add to that the way people talk..
ReplyDeleteIn fact not all the gestures may be understandable.As you mentioned before there are also a certain issues that is difficult to deal with. However There are many different cultures around the world that worth our discovery.
Experiencing Culture Shock
ReplyDeleteWhenever I return to the United States from a trip, I experience reverse culture shock. Culture shock is when we leave your comfort zone and go somewhere new and notice all the differences and start to miss the familiarity of our home. Once we’ve become accustomed to these differences we begin to accept them and the culture shock feeling gradually wears off. Reverse culture shock is when we return to your original comfort zone but realize that we have changed and things that may have been comfortable before are no longer as comforting.
It can be as simple as having to remember to say Thank You rather than Gracias.Or we may now find certain things more important to us than before and others less important than before.
We have experienced, learned and grown. What we do with this knowledge is up to us. What do we bring back to the community? The United States is no longer the isolationist society of the early 20th century.Every aspect of our lives has gone global and for our future and the future of the United States to prosper, we need to understand the world and adjust to these changing times.
Specific cultures are products of historical development. Brazil and the United States, for instance, have different cultural origins and different culture histories which account for present day differences.
ReplyDeleteIn this case, however, the differences are not great, both cultures being parts of Western civilization. It might be useful to recognize here that the study of culture per se is not the study of individuals. Psychology is the study of individual personality. Sociology is the study of groups and group behaviors.
The student of culture studies not human individuals but the interrelationships of culture forms like technologies, institutions, idea and belief systems. Hi is interested not so much in the study of culture as such, but its impact upon the individual under special conditions.
I Agree With What You Said Zahraa In The Second Definition Of Culture Shok, That "No matter how well you are prepared, there are many things in a culture that you cannot find in books. This is not simply about meeting new and unexpected things.."
ReplyDeleteI Think People Think That They Know Enough About The American Culture Through Television Series And Movies. What They Do Not Know Is That What They See On Television Does Not Represent Americans At All. Just Like How Kuwaiti Serieses That Are Brodcasted During Ramadan Do Not Represent Kuwaiti People.
i was read what do write Z.Haider about culture shock thanks it was really enteresting i really enjoy and have a good idea about this theme.
ReplyDeletethank you,,,
Entithar Bouresli,,
29-8-2010