Running Head: THE EFFECT OF CULTURE IN COMMUNICATION 1

THE EFFECT OF CULTURE IN COMMUNICATION

Abstract

Here, in this paper I have discussed all about the culture and the communication. I have also

discussed about how my gender, culture, ethics define me. I have also talked about my race and

my national origin. I have shared one of my stories from childhood which has helped to define

me. I have also talked about my culture and the American culture, its difference. Here, I have

also talked about how culture differs the way of communication of people and also I have shared

about how communicating with family and friends is different than that with boss and teachers.
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Culture is something because of which we people are united. Culture is the unnoticed,

invisible, intangible set of assumptions which control and influence almost every aspect of our

daily lives [CITATION Kim17 \l 1033 ]. My culture is fully determined by my religion and I

belong to Hinduism. My culture teaches me to behave in a way, speak in a way and follow a

specific way. For example, if we see Christians the god for them is Jesus Christ and we Hindu

have almost 33 million gods. We worship Brahma, Bishnu and Maheswor. Christians read

‘Bible’ as their holy book whereas Muslims read ‘Quran’ as their holy book. But we Hindu read

‘Bhagwat Geeta’ as our holy book.

The most important and the precious thing in the world is relationship because a person

cannot survive without change. Hence, in order to have change we connect with each other and

making a relation with others differs from culture to culture. Different culture teaches us the

different ways of communication. In our culture, in our religion, a daughter from a family does

not touch the feet of the elders to greet them but a son must touch the feet of elders. Our culture

has taught us to greet our elder and talk politely and give love to our juniors which helps in

maintain our relationship strong. We greet our elders by joining our two hands and saying

‘Namaste’ or ‘Darsan’ which determines the way of our communication.

As we all know, culture is the combination of the rituals, beliefs and the way of thinking

which determines or unify a group of people but some people define culture only based on the

religion. Culture can be classified under two sub cultures. They are dominant culture and non-

dominant culture. A culture which is determined by the power and the influence in the economic

aspect, socio-economic aspect is known as dominant culture whereas a culture which includes a

group of people living on the edges of the dominant culture is known as non-dominant culture.
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Racism is a kind of belief where a person thinks that another person is less than human

just because of their skin colour, their way of speaking and language, their culture and their

birthplace which reveals the nature of that particular person. I am an Aryan and I belong from the

typical Brahmin family. I am a Nepali and it is my national origin and while having a

communication with others, we are not compared by our races, culture, ethics and religion.

Rather we are compared by our nationality. Therefore, our nationality also affects the way we

communicate to others.

Our Hindu society keeps on judging people by their gender and their class. I am a female

of middle class family. I live in a society where if girls are born in a family they are handled with

dolls and they make them wear pink dresses but when boys are born in a family, they are handled

with the toys like cars and guns, and they make them wear blue colored dresses. Our society has

made a concept in their mind that males are superior then females. As I am a girl from middle

class family, I am not allowed to stay outside late at night, I am not allowed to wear short dresses

when I go out of the house and I am not allowed to hang out with my friends in a restaurant or

clubs. Our society thinks that girls are neither strong physically nor mentally. Being a girl, my

family has let me get a quality education but still there are some girls in our society who are not

given the chance of getting education just because they are girls. Yes, my gender defines me as a

girl from a middle class family who is allowed to take her own decision but there are still some

girls who are not allowed to go out of their house, who are not allowed to speak in a high volume

with others, who are not allowed to make friends (mainly no friendship with boys). Yes our class

also defines us. Belonging to middle class family there are some need which we can never fulfill.

In our society, the respect and the position are given to the person who is in the higher status or

who belongs to the high class.

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I remember, once I had an argument with one of my friend from my class one. He was a

boy who was really ill tempered. We always used to argue in small things too. One day he hit me

hard but I could not do anything instead of crying because he was stronger than me. I went home

crying and I told everything to my mom. The thing that she said to me at the moment is the most

inspirable thing which I still do follow. She said, “Look my daughter, you are not weak. You are

as strong as that boy is. If you start acting as a weak innocent girl and cry in front of others,

everybody is going to let you down. Nobody will praise you and your work rather everyone will

start playing with your emotions and hurting you. We will not be there every time with you

whenever you need us but remember me you are a girl but not less than any boys and you shall

not cry or broke down in front of anyone even if it is the hardest situation”. And now I think my

mom was right because I follow the same formula till date and I never let others put me down. I

never think that being a girl I must be less than boys. And this has helped me in making myself

strong and it has kept my communication style different than others.

My personal cultural profile affects my relationship to American culture in many

different ways. Firstly, the way of communicating with others as we speak Nepali. I am a Hindu

and we worship cow as our god but in America people take cow as their food. American eats

beef but we cannot even think of killing cow (killing our god). In America, a person from the age

of 18 is independent to their parents but in Nepal, we people are fully dependent upon our

parents. Americans work out but we Nepalese depend upon the property of our fathers,

grandfathers.

The way of communication with our family or friends is totally different from the

communication which we have in an internship and classroom or with that of our co-workers or

the boss. We usually have the informal communication with our family and friends such as day
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to day activities, planning of trips, discussing our future plans and many more. But we do have

the formal communication with our co-workers, boss or teachers in our classroom either that will

be about the study, the works, the duties and responsibilities, etc. our family or friends do not

even need the verbal communication to understand our feelings, they can understand it by our

facial expressions but in our workplace or classrooms, we have to make those kinds of

expression. We communicate to maintain the relationship and keep changes in ourselves because

everybody needs a change but in workplace, we communicate to be well to our workers, or to

our clients.
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Conclusion

The combination of our belief, behavior and personal characteristics is known as culture. It

determines the way of our communication, our behaviors, and our way of looking the things.

Every culture has its different way of communication ad also our gender, ethics, class and myths

defines us and our way of communicating. Culture not only resides in a particular place rather it

differs with the geographical areas. Communication differs according to the person with whom

we communicate. For example, we can easily share about our personal feelings with our family

and close friends but not with our teachers and our boss. We can have informal communication

easily with our family everywhere but we need to be formal with our boss. Culture is a big

environment created by we people.

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References:

Pearson, J. (2016). Human Communication (6th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill Education.

Zimmermann, K. A. (2014, 5 7). What Is Culture? | Definition of Culture. Retrieved from Live

Science: https://www.livescience.com/21478-what-is-culture-definition-of-culture.html