In Figuring Foreigners Out and Hofsted's 6 Dimensions of Culture, I got a general roadmap of how cultures are framed. First is individualism versus collectivism, where individualism focuses on the individual's well-being and collectivism focuses on the group's well-being as a whole. I was aware of this prior to the reading since this seems to largely differ between Korean and American cultures.
Monochronic-Polychronic is how people conceive and handle time and how their concept of time affects their interactions with each other. Monochronic-oriented cultures handles time efficiently and as a rare commodity, and polychronic sees time as limitless and flexible. I believe I have experienced this during my time in New Zealand.
Internal-External is the view of individual's place in relation to external world. Internal is focused on the individual, where one is responsible for one's own success. External is focused on how the individual has little control, and thinks that no matter how hard one tries, there are certain limits as life is predetermined.
Indirect communication with high context requires people to infer, suggest, and imply from rather than saying things directly. This is more in collectivistic cultures, where the goal is preserving and strengthening the relationship with the other person. Direct communication with low context requires one to spell things out more and be more explicit. This is in more individualistic cultures, where the goal is to get or give information. I have experienced indirect communication largely in Korean cultures, but I find it so inefficient because people save face in person but only to talk negatively through endless gossip.
For Hofsted's 6 Dimensions of culture, individualism, power distance, and masculinity were familiar because it seems to be connected to previous individualism research I've done, but I found the other dimensions to be foreign. Uncertainty avoidance, indulgence, and long-term orientation were fascinating, especially uncertainty avoidance because I saw this as a general personality trait rather than generalized to a whole culture.
Keeping these in mind, I will look out for these items as I progress to learn more about the Korean culture and language. It's fascinating to see overlaps and stark differences between American and Korean culture, or maybe I've been too immersed in American culture to know the difference.
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Hi Heera! Nice post. Something you made me think about is the potential that Hofstede's 6 Dimensions could potentially hold bias, in itself. He conducts research from the perspective of a Dutch man. Although his innate biases cannot be eliminated, it makes me wonder if his categorization in the 6 Dimensions of Culture brings to light only what subsectors of the world's population deem to be important across cultures. For example, a female researcher from Korea may call attention to other dimensions that Westerners do not even realize we participate in. One idea, in particular, that came to mind for me is the relationship different cultures have with religion. Certain places in the Middle East might create a dimension that encompasses religion, or their creation of cultural dimensions might altogether be oriented towards religion.
While Hofstede's insight is very interesting, it makes me consider that as language students, we should actively explore other dimensions of culture and comment on our own findings in our target languages!