While reading this I tried applying some of the definitions to my culture and the Turkish culture. I found that the American culture tends to be individualist, monochronic, internal and indirect. My reasoning for this is that most children in America, since day one, has been taught that they are 'special' and can achieve anything (the American Dream). This puts there locus of control within them. Americans are constantly trying to find ways to make themselves different. Personalizing this or that. We have so many classifications of different types of alternative rock (kind of redundant) that I don't even know what the hell I'm listening to sometimes. Until the announcer comes on and tells me that what I just heard belongs to the alternative/indie/electronica/dance genre. Phew, thank god we got that cleared up. In American culture, time is money making us monochronic. We are work-a-holics. Finally, we subscribe to an indirect method of communication because we don't really like confrontation. I would not say this is due to high amounts of non-verbal communication, although this does play a role in American communication. Our current foreign policies may point to the contrary but peace over violence is the norm in America.
It was a bit difficult for me to determine the 'settings', if you will, for Turkey. I found it to be a mix of individualist and collectivist. In Turkey, the family is very important. The further East you go, the truer this is. Acting against the family or openly defying a parental command is not as common in Turkey as it is in the States. However, most young adults, when they are outside the family, act very individualistic. From my experience, the males tend to behave more individually than the females. Turks view of time is polychronic. Nothing is on time and stores will close whenever they feel like it. Classes started on time but teachers ran them however long or short they wanted to. As far as communication is concerned, Turks are direct, very direct. They tend to get close to you when speaking and get straight to the point. Whether their locus of control is internal or external I do not know. I heard the word "Inşallah" almost 5 times a day when I was there (it means, "God willing" e.g. Inşallah, we'll get my car out of the snow). This makes me think that the locus of control may be more externally located but the use of "Inşallah" does not mean I can label Turks as external. Perhaps professor grove would like to comment?
This article teaches us that there is much to learning a language than just vocabulary, grammar and syntax. Body language and gestures, facial expressions, direct or indirect language, volume and distance when speaking and many other things must all be taken into account when learning another language. The cultural dimensions of a language are just as important as the technical dimensions. Knowing all the verbs, tons of vocab and the grammar rules is great but without understanding how they fit and are used within the culture, you're still only half way there.
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