Essay Instructions: Over the course of the semester, we have considered a wide variety of ways of thinking about cross-cultural communication, conflict, and cooperation. Our discussion has also included thinking about how the “culture concept” itself has been understood and put into practice across these many discussions. Our course conversation, therefore, has taken place on at least two levels: 1. The many ways cross-cultural communication matters interpersonally and in the context of the growing interconnectedness that is our era of globalization; 2. The different ways the culture concept has been understood and invested with relevance (e. g. as behavior, as part of identity, in the effort to predict, as a means to eliminate conflict). Furthermore, these two levels are always connected: What culture is taken to be, or to mean, is deeply connected to how it is understood to matter in relation to a given problem.
Norine Dresser’s book, Multicultural Manners, is a case in point. A compilation of vignettes and examples from her own Los Angeles Times column devoted to practical demonstrations of “the importance of knowing about others’ customs and beliefs” (p. 3), her book is a good illustration of how cross-cultural communication has come to be a widely held and commonsensical expectation. But what version of this enterprise ??" of how to manage cultural diversity ??" is working its way into our lives? We can understand Dresser’s book as an example of how the ubiquitous self-help genre in the publishing industry now “does” the cross-cultural thing. This is a variety of “how-to” book dealing with apparent “dos and don’ts” regarding cultural differences. But what sort of account of these differences are we given here? What are we being told about the ways that cultural questions confront us on an everyday basis? I do not want you to take Dresser’s book, at face value, but I do want you to take it seriously as an exemplar of an emerging cross-cultural commonsense in the U.S.
How is this book organized? First, give careful consideration to the Introduction, in which Dresser lays out her rationale and the book’s organizational logic. Please note: we are only concerned with the book’s first section, “The New Rules of Communication” (pp. 11-197) and not the second. This part is divided into 15 thematic or topical sections, with each containing from 4 to 16 short cases or vignettes of what Dresser calls “cultural mishaps” (p. 5). You should pay close attention to the organization and presentation of each such vignette, which tell us a great deal about the assumptions the author makes: A situation (usually a mishap) is presented, followed by a brief back story and/or culturally appropriate explanation, and punctuated with often bulleted rules of thumb for cultural situations.
Reading these many cases, we are provided accounts of how to handle cross-cultural communication well and poorly. We might further note how cultural differences are introduced into the descriptions of each case. One such example is the usage of strong emotional language to mark apparent cultural gaffes (e. g. “aghast,” “angry,” “horror,” “embarrassment,” etc). We might also note that each such case is presented in the form of Hall’s “situational frames” (p. 129). This is one clear indicator that Dresser’s book shares in common some of Hall’s basic assumptions about the importance and status of culture. For our final assignment we are, in effect, considering what it means to take the idea of situational frames at face value.
I want you to treat Dresser’s book as “data” rather than as an authoritative source of cross-cultural wisdom. I am going to ask you to write about what Dresser’s world of cross-cultural understanding looks like. Despite some changes across editions, her book is written primarily from the perspective of interactions between “newcomers” to the US and US citizens. With this assignment, I am asking you both to compile and to compare Dresser’s accounts of US and other cultures, as these are presented in piecemeal fashion across the many cases and situational frames presented. Specifically, you are asked to do the following:
1. Assemble a description of “US culture,” selectively based on Dresser’s own discussion of the circumstances and behaviors of people from the US, as they appear in her descriptions of cross-cultural encounters across the many cases she provides. How do people from the U.S. act? What appear to be the assumptions guiding their actions? How do they handle social relations?
2. Then compare “US culture” according to Dresser to her discussions of other cultures, taken as a whole (e. g. Japanese, Hmong, Latin American, Chinese, etc), as they collectively appear in Dresser’s cases. How are people not from the US depicted in ways different than those from the US? What are their responses to cross-cultural mishaps?
Try to look for regularities in these accounts: behaviors or circumstances that are repeated, or which can be understood in the same terms, and make these the basis of your discussion.
