Figuring Foreginers Out was an interesting read, especially the sections on monochronic time and polychronic time and high and low context communication. While I don't have much experience with the former, as a writing consultant in the Academic Skills Center, I have first-hand experience holding sessions with students from both high and low context cultures. The way each students' cultural communication style appears in their writing always determines the way I go about each session, especially when it comes to helping edit the organization of a student's paragraphs and utilizing transitionary phrasing. I didn't realize it until I began as a consultant but, in the U.S there tends to be more indirect/low context communitcation, at least in comparison to some of the other cultures represented at UofR. ASL, similarly, seems to be a more direct/high context culture too. So, I definitely agree with theses particular assessments in this reading.
The Dimensions of Culture maps were suprising and I found some of the results to be slightly contradictory, in my opinion at least. Particularly the Uncertainty Avoidance and Power Distance maps for the United States. The most interesting characterisitc of ASL is that anyone from any culture can be deaf or hard-of-hearing though. So while these communities use ASL in America, they could identify as African-American, Asian-American, Mexican-American, etc. which I think creates unique learning experience for me in particular as my language learning partner is not a part of a community of color. For example, even though ASL is a direct/high context langauge, if I'm communicating with somone who is deaf/hard of hearing who is cultural from a European country where there is a higher level of uncertainty avoidance, this may potentially be visible in how they communicate is ASL.
Replies