Importance Of Cultural Misunderstanding

Before writing about cultural misunderstanding we should identify the word culture itself. Culture is customs, habits, beliefs, values that characterize a particular society or nation. All countries have their own culture. But, of course, they are different from one another. Our culture is valuable for us. We respect our beliefs, customs and traditions. Like us culture is priceless for other nations as well. Everybody conforms their own beliefs. As above I have mentioned, cultures are different. We should try to learn the other countries’ cultures in order to not to come across with culture shock or culture misunderstanding.

What is culture misunderstanding and how it burns the bridge? A cultural misunderstanding occurs when something-a word

Although these changes have improved the need of effective cultural communication, it remains difficult because of both cultural and language differences. In cultural reactions, people should understand the cultural background of each other in order to have successful communication. A lot of researches have shown that cultural communication and the cultural differences between communicators affect the outcome of discussion. In discussion among different countries, small misunderstandings caused from cultural differences lead the whole discussion to bad results. Cultural counselors should understand cultural differences and apply those differences to their non-verbal communication styles to avoid misunderstandings. The importance of understanding cultural differences relative to that of understanding language differences in that the misunderstandings from language differences could easily be recognized. But misunderstandings from cultural differences could not easily be deciphered and corrected. Thus, the consideration of cultural contexts in cultural communication is important to successful

Of course, if people don’t know or don’t understand the cultural differences among countries they will certainly lose their relationship with another countries. The bridge which is standing among them is burned. So we should try to avoid from cultural misunderstandings. In order to be avoid from it we should aware of the differences between cultures. For example, forming a circle with fingers to indicate “OK” isn’t the same meanings. In the USA it means “money” , in Japan and France it has another meaning like “zero” and “worthless”. But in lots of countries it means good, nice or well. Nodding a head up and down to mean “Yes” in Great Britain, USA and in our country as well. But it means “No” in India and Greece. If we go to Greece in order to sign a contract and we are nodding our head up and down while they are asking from us whether we agree the terms of contract, then, contract will not be signed. Because of cultural misunderstanding we can’t understand each other. As a result the bridge will be destroyed between two countries without