Intercultural communication
Social Distance is a Cultural Matter
Know about it and respect it
Intercultural communication
This refers to communication between people who don't share the same cultural values. That’s simple to understand, right? The thing goes more complex if you add some other factors related to the cultural differences in the communicative process, like the spoken language.
Cultural differences are all those characteristics that identify you as a unique individual and at the same time, it makes you be part of a community. Those characteristics will be categorized for example nationality, religion, genre, age, generation, geographical localization and more.
In my case: Woman, 26 years old, Mexican, latin-american, late 90s’s generation.
It’s important to mention that none of us belong to only one category, and at the same time it’s so hard to remove yourself from one tag. By this, I’m not meaning that you are a tag and that’s all. What I am saying is that all of us are the result of our heritage and background. Because culture is like the luggage we carry with ourselves on this journey called life, and for me it’s beautiful. It’s beautiful that you still looking like your native grandma, and you keep having the essence of your migrant family.
Social Distancing
Proxemics is part of non-verbal communication and refers, between other things, to the distance taken to build a relationship and how it affects the communication process. This can also be considered in different aspects of life like:
- The distance between desks in an enterprise
- The size of a room
- The number of people allowed to be in a room
- How close people can be from a person when just meet
According to the Anthropologist, Edward T. Hallin; countries like the United States or Korea, the acceptable distance to set a conversation would be 2.5 feet. While in Japan, it would be close to 4 feet. In Mexico, where I come from I would say it could be less than 2 feet. We are also noisy, we tend to speak out loud as well.
On the other mand, in Mexican culture, you can’t deny a warm hug from your family who you find in the supermarket. Not even during a pandemic when everybody should be suspicious, I guess.we can just see Mexico’s pandemic statistics and notice that social distance is not a thing to care about, we are having more and more cases.
COVID-19 Social Distance
When quarantine started, I had a reflection on social distancing. Mentioning that I am located in Canada, a very multicultural country. I realized that people tend to move off when I was passing by, and I would do the same indeed.
I heard some Mexicans saying that they found this attitude kind of rude and thought that people were exaggerating.
The thing is that they never considered proxemics, which is the accepted distance to be according to cultural values, as I mentioned above. This has nothing to do with racism.
At that point none knew what would come in the next weeks: Italy and Spain locked down, thousand of deaths, borders closed.
Social distance is also a cultural matter and absolutely we should take care of it and respect it. If you are in a foreign country or in an international community, you better be aware of proxemics and cultural values. In this way you will avoid misunderstandings about racism, or rudeness; instead, you can learn more about the multiculturalism world.
Cultural Social Distance
Don’t take it personally if you people deny your kiss on the check, they are just not used and it’s not a common attitude from where they come from.
In order to make our interlocutor feeling comfortable, especially if you are not sure about the values of their culture on communication matter, these are some points that you should consider:
- Be aware of the body language
- Don’t be invasive. Try to shake hands if possible, but sometimes you will prefer to only say Hi, hello and wave your hand. Especially when it is the first time you are meeting a person.
- Be observative of how other people act when you are talking to them
Final thoughts
Having this reflection and taking a course about Intercultural Communication by Future Learn made me learned 4 important things:
1. Before you feel offended by other people, you must remember that cultural heritage is like luggage and cannot easily be removed. For example, I try to be less noisy when I am on the bus and speak with a low tone. Because for other cultures this might be disrespectful. And maybe I have annoyed some people in the past, which wasn’t my aim. I also try to be very punctual on my appointments, In Mexico is not a big deal to arrive 5 or 10 minutes in retard, for example.
2. It is true that you should adapt yourself to the new place where you are living but there would be some ways of doing things that will never change, or that would feel more comfortable than others. For example, I feel more comfortable having a meal on the table at dinner than in the bedroom on the bed. In Manger podcast says, for example, that due to people studying and working abroad, they are switching to have meals in their bedroom. I really enjoy this podcast, it talks about food in different cultural aspects. You should take a look, or a hear.
3. Every way of living and doing things should be respected as there are a thousand ways of saying hi and goodbye. For example: in Mexico is okay to kiss the interlocutor’s cheek without shaking hands previously. Even in the first recounter. Also, we can also skip these two steps and go directly to a warm hug. It is obvious that this is not even allowed in some countries, and in others, people will feel invaded.
4. Don’t be a victim of toxic thoughts. Sometimes I think that the other person was rude against me. But then I think about the whole context and confirm that cultural values will always be there. Don’t take it so seriously, sometimes we are not meant to be rude, that’s how our culture is. For example, I have thought people are rude to me because they speak out loud, firm and straight when I’m used to Mexicans who will try to compensate bad news with a long story of why they care about me.
