Caleb Ferger CCS 100 Reflection Essay COM499

The reason I chose to include this particular artifact in my portfolio is that it demonstrates

how communication is interpreted antithetically among various cultures. This artifact was written

my freshman year of college and the focus was aimed at the definition of culture. The students

were instructed to reflect upon a time during the class in which their initial perception of culture

had been challenged. In this instance, a class trip to the Milwaukee Public Museum seemed to

have the greatest impact on how I perceived the idea of culture and what theories in the

subsequent years of my education would help educate me to be more receptive toward other

cultures.

The reflection of the Museum illustrates how the depictions of certain cultures, and the

artifacts associated with them, are indicative of how their societal norms, beliefs, and values

were all relatively different and similar in regards to the United States as a whole. Although

some museum representations of cultures are deceitful, the overall experience and feeling of

immersion into a specific culture helped to redefine my perspective.

Correlated, this idea of ethnocentrism, or that ones own culture is superior over another,

is one that ties into the Expectancy Violations theory as defined by Judee Burgoon in the mid-

1970s. The Expectancy Violation theory suggests that people react in different ways to the

abrupt violations of a specific cultures social norms and expectations. For example, in the

United States, people often greet each other with such actions as a hand-shake, a wave, or maybe

even a hug in some instances. However, if a person from the United States were visiting the

island country of Japan and was unsure of how to greet people, individuals from either culture

might experience aspects of the Expectancy Violation theory when the American reaches out to

shake hands and the Japanese person bows ( a mistake even some world leaders have made).

This is where ethnocentrism may be provoked in people unwilling to adapt to cultural

Caleb Ferger CCS 100 Reflection Essay COM499

differences, which can ultimately lead to cognitive dissonance, or the psychological discomfort

experienced when two or more people possess conflicting beliefs or values, as proposed by

Festinger in the late 1950s.

Over the course of history, there have been instances of some societies trying to instill a

sense that they are superior to another based upon assumed privilege or material possession. The

connotation of the word culture is often misconstrued with ideals of superiority in motion. The

reality is, culture is not definitive, nor absolute. Culture is interpreted through the core beliefs,

values, and societal influences of an individual or a collective group of people.

In time, that preliminary idea of culture has evolved into communication across cultures.

From the communication perspective, messages, styles, and symbols are influenced by societal

norms, beliefs, and values. It is essential that communication, like culture, is being studied and

adapting in respect to the rapidly globalizing world. Communication has always been a barrier

between cultures, and many languages have since faded away or become intertwined with others

to form hybrid types of communication. Today, the advancement of communication technologies

has had tremendous impacts on breaking communication barriers and indicates how

communication as a whole is evolving on a global scale. The idea of culture, in respect to

theories like Expectancy Violation and Cognitive Dissonance, is directly correlated with

communication because it is constant and sometimes unintentional in eliciting a formed

perception. Communication exemplifies how cultures can either adapt, evolve, or fade if they do

not acclimate to the ever-changing and globalized societal norms and expectations.