© Master of Advanced Studies in Intercultural Communication (www.mic.usi.

ch),
Università della Svizzera italiana.

Invitation by a Stranger
1. Describe a critical incident that really happened to you

Description of incident n°1

In January 2000, I spent two weeks in China with my family. We had been traveling from Moscow
to Beijing with the Trans Siberian Railway and we were looking forward to embrace a new culture
and quite open to explore new territories. Together with the Swiss group we were traveling with, we
made it to Beijing where we spent a couple of very well organized days: the tight schedule included
visits to various historical sites, popular areas as well as the city center. On the third day the group
was scheduled to fly back to Switzerland but we decided to stay on and embark on a journey to
Shanghai the following day and then along a river to a magic place called Guilin. Once there, we
found ourselves on our own and experienced more directly the problem of communicating with the
locals: one evening we decided to have a nice dinner at the hotel's restaurant where, we assumed,
communication would be easier, being in an international environment. We decided to order wine
with our food and I decided to take care of the order: we wanted a particular brand we had tried in
another restaurant in the city, early that day.
Expecting a well rehearsed reply from the waiter, we were left rather disappointed when the
latter started to nod confusely, clearly oblivious of what it was that we wanted. Since there were no
bottles around to point at and our bodily gestures weren't having the desired effect, I produced a
drawing of a wine bottle: also this time my efforts weren't rewarded so I indulged in my drawing
activity ending up with a fairly realistic wine grape. By this time the waiter had already plunged
into an impenetrable silence that made us realize there was no way we could get our message
across. This made us very frustrated and, although they probably didn't have any type of wine after
all, the failed attempt at communicating with the waiter had given us a sense of alienation, which
led us to perceive that reality from a very distant point of view. In other words we felt far removed,
almost isolated from the reality of that place and its culture in that instance.

Description of incident n°2

In January I attended a course on racism that bore the title "Fighting against racism in Switzerland"
supported by the Swiss Government. The class presented a quite heterogeneous crowd, both
ethnically and professionally. During lunch break, which we spent in a nearby restaurant, I was
sitting near a young man from Chad who had been living in Switzerland for several years already.
When it was time to pay for our meals, this person paid for my beverage. Quite spontaneously, I
reached for my wallet with the intention to pay him back but he declined dismissing me with a brisk
gesture that betrayed some kind of indignation from his part. Even if it was just a bottle of mineral
water, it didn't feel right to let him pay for me. This state of affairs made me feel awkward and
strengthened my determination to pay him back; so during the coffee break I offered him a
cappuccino but it was obvious by then that he was a little bit upset if not offended: I started to talk
about this misunderstanding openly, in a very care-free manner, in order to shed some light on this
communicative cul-de-sac. He told me that Europeans are a bit too cold and detached and shouldn't
be so formal. I explained to him that I couldn't avoid feeling bad and the desire to pay him back
stemmed from a natural social reflex, that translates into an exigency to be polite. The fact that he
was an immigrant certainly didn't help; this led me to question his financial situation: him paying

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for me had produced some kind of guilt in me at the time. Also my social background, or better my
personal approach to situations in general, had produced a sense of awkwardness in me because we
hadn't spoken that much prior to the incident and whereas I would normally accept this gesture from
a friend or from a close acquaintance, I couldn't do the same with a perfect stranger. In describing
this situation I am possibly understanding it better: the young man just wanted to show his
sympathy and his gesture was just part of his desire to start a new friendship. I reacted following my
social code and ended up misunderstanding the young man's intention.

2. First analysis

I would like to keep both examples of intercultural misunderstandings because they made me think
about the general problem in a deeper sense.

First analysis of incident n°1

In the case of China we were visiting a foreign country. Even though we had an attitude of
openness, curiosity and willingness to get to know different cultures, we were still in a foreign and
therefore alien environment. In other words the language barrier prevented us from understanding
the subtleties that would have enriched our stay in China. In a way we expected the people of that
culture to make an effort to understand us; but when our expectations were ultimately shattered by
the incident with the waiter we found ourselves in a state of detached disillusionment that prevented
us from being objective and making the best of the whole experience as we initially set out to do.

First analysis of incident n°2

For what the incident with the boy from Chad is concerned, I didn't question one bit the fact that I
was the person who had to make the effort to better understand the other person and attempt some
sort of reconciliation, ultimately seeking an explanation. Since this happened in my country of
origin, I felt at ease in the environment: this helped me to maintain enough objectivity to
sympathize with the young man's status as a foreigner: he already had to cope with different
idiosyncrasies of Switzerland and my reaction probably contributed to further distance him from an
understanding of my culture; at the same time this situation made him probably miss his country of
origin where he would have been understood. It is only now, after having analyzed the incident in
China, that I fully understand how it feels like when you're not understood, when you find yourself
away from home and ultimately far removed from your own cultural environment.

3. Second analysis (after having read the documents)

In both incidents the misunderstandings had probably to do with different dimensions as the
psychological, the religious or the social dimension. Not really knowing either the Chinese nor the
Chadese culture, my analyses were more of a psychological or emotional nature but I can imagine
that both incidents had a lot to do with different interpretations of certain values: for example the
different behavioral patterns that exist between women and men and between elderly and younger
people. The Chinese waiter for example might have preferred my father or my mother to ask for
wine and not me, as young woman. The young man from Chad was maybe hurt because I, being a
woman, offered him a coffee, even if it was a sign of gratitude.
I would also like to recall Prof. Liisa Salo-Lee’s lesson of the 27 th of April 2004, when we talked
about the CPS style of Susan Scollon, a direct communication style that makes a person more
assertive. I think that this assertive style can be the source of typical incidents. This style of

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communication supposes you to say straight on what you want to say but for some cultures this
attitude can be seen as rude and could lead to misunderstandings, therefore building obstacles for an
effective intercultural communication.
Despite this, I also think that if there is empathy, sympathy and the will of understanding each other,
also misunderstandings can be well solved and explained and a dialogue can begin. For this matter
I’d like to quote Liisa Salo- Lee’s Vietnamese interviewee: “if the relationship is good, big
misunderstandings can be repaired, if the relationship is not good, even small errors can ruin it.”

4. Competence readings: analysis of the documents

Collectivism and individualism:

Actually it is very interesting to know that a culture is more collectivistic than another and for that
reason its society behaves in a certain way and its country has different laws and policies; this can
also help to communicate better with that culture and to understand it better. But in reality it is
difficult to see so to say “pure” individualistic or “pure” collectivistic cultures; often cultures
include something of both attitudes for different dimensions, for example the family relationships
can be very collectivistic and the way people work very individualistic. Another very interesting
thing would be to know why some cultures are more collectivistic or more individualistic. During
my Erasmus exchange at the Freie Universität in Berlin , Regina Knapp, the social anthropology
1

teacher, explained that the Umeda, one of the tribes that live in Papua New Guinee, has a very laid-
back way of seeing time because of what they use to eat . This tribe eats sago (a palm tree that
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grows in all seasons): not having to watch the change of seasons and climates they always have
their sago available and their attitude towards time is therefore affected by that. My anthropology
teacher had to study this tribe and live with them, she explained that they use to say “me less”
whenever they don’t feel to do a thing straight away because they think that you have time to do it
whenever you feel like doing it, in other words time is not an issue for Umedas. Once she made an
appointment with some people of the tribe to interview them and they came three days later! This is
a way to explain why some cultures have different concepts of things. I would be very interested to
know for example why North-American people are considered individualistic; does it come from
the religion and to what extent? How can we explain that English, as a language, avoids uncertainty
but English people are supposed to be quite individualistic?

Learning intercultural competence:

Not only should we be formed to go abroad but the intercultural competence can be very useful in
our own country of origin, for example when dealing with immigrants or tourists. Intercultural
competence learning could also be extremely useful if introduced already in the early stages of
education in order to build good foundations for intercultural dialogues. Actually, people that are
really aware of cultural differences and idiosyncrasies and are not judging or feeling superior, tend
to believe less in stereotypes and in generalizations. As with education, a very important role in the
formation of intercultural communication has to be played by mass media. The latter, in a public
service optic, could teach respect, understanding and how to avoid stereotypes in general; for
example by showing documentaries and films that avoid the use of stereotypes and that present
situations in a realistic and objective fashion. I really appreciated the work of the Canadian Foreign
Service Institute to describe a profile of the Interculturally Effective Person and I think that this
notion could be extremely important for people that stay in their country as well as for people that
go abroad. The goal of being effective, in my opinion, should be to start a real dialogue, like when

1 I studied Communication Sciences at the Swiss Italian University of Lugano from October 1998 to April 2003.
2 http://www.fu-berlin.de/ethnologie/saap/saap93.pdf

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both partners find themselves on the same level and the ideas exposed are both valued and thorally
explored. Ultimately, the two persons should try to find solutions to problems or accorded
strategies. If a very utilitarian person follows the advices of the IEP profile he could for example
show himself as very humble but in fact he could just act to better reach his goal. In my opinion the
attention should be given therefore to common values between cultures, to the real practice of
listening and respect, thus enriching both partners.

Effectiveness in communicative interaction:

“To be effective in communicative interaction we must realize that: 1)interruptions are not
permitted, [..].” (Chen, Guo-Ming & Starosta, William J. 1998. “Intercultural Communication
Competence”, p. 24). The authors assert that in order to have an effective communicative
interaction you mustn’t interrupt the other person, and speaker’s turns should be alternate
appropriately, this attitude would mean that you are “paying full attention to your counterpart” is
often expressed by interrupting the other person and being too silent could be misunderstood as “not
being interested” in what the other person says. Of course, also other aspects would play a role, like
the voice intonation, the body language, etc.

5. General considerations

Reading these texts was very interesting and useful both for my jo 3 and for my private life in
general. Being aware of diversity and of different point of views helps me to respect other people
even if I don’t always understand why they are behaving in a certain way. Goethe said that to really
understand the soul of a culture you should learn its language.
We often fear what is different because we don’t know it, we may be afraid to have to change
something in our lives or to have to re-discuss our way of living and behaving. To Ibn Arabi , a 4

great Sufi (mystic Muslim) of Andalusia, the diversity of human beings reflects the divine essence
symbolized by the mirror, hence the necessity of safar (the “voyage”), recommended by Sufis as
instrument of self discover: “it is by talking to foreigners that one discovers who he is.”
In actuality, by confronting ourselves with others we can understand better our faiths, beliefs,
values and behaviors because we see them from a more objective point of view, which can help us
to take a certain distance from the subject-matter. Can we always be objective? Can we be able to
be completely rational, right, neutral ? Indeed I think that the emotional, the irrational part, always
plays a role but we should be careful when we are unable to listen to a person who doesn't smell
well or that is very ugly...in that case we should be aware that some irrational, emotional things that
are not related to the rational discourse for example are directly acting upon our initial attitude,
changing it, sometimes radically. Being aware of that could help us concentrate more on the content
of the discussion.
Even if we are aware of how an intercultural competent person should behave we sometimes
make the mistake of categorizing too much certain behaviors not taking into consideration different
biases. Taking into consideration more biases as possible can help the intercultural studies to
become more “scientific”.
During the analysis of the documents and thinking about intercultural communication in
general, I often asked myself to what extent, until what point do we act following our culture? I
thought about the Chinese concept of modesty that we have discussed in class: We acknowledged

3 I work in Geneva for an NGO called OIDEL (Organisation Internationale pour le droit à l’éducation et la liberté
d’enseignement, www.oidel.ch), beside other activities we are working on a paper which is to be presented in Tunis 2005
on the next World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) on the “Intercultural Dialogue and the Information
Society”.
4 Ibn Arabi was born in the city of Murcia in Spain in 1165 (year 560 of the muslim calendar) and died in Damascus in
1240.

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that in China, if you receive a compliment as “your Chinese is very good” you should say “Pu hau,
pu hau” (with a humble body movement). I was thinking that maybe, even if for your culture plans
that you interlocutor follows the modesty rule, if your compliment was really sincere, you might
accept that the person doesn’t follow that rule.
In other words, we are sometimes influenced by our culture to think for example that some
behaviors are rude but if we feel that the other person has good intentions we might accept it even
if it goes against our culture's “acceptability”. In my opinion the most important concepts we should
take into consideration are respect and humility: we should be careful with ethnocentric
interpretation and ask ourselves if our point of view could be questioned by someone else.
I really liked the following sentence, which sums up this concept very well:
“When someone really hears you without passing judgment on you, without trying to take
responsibility for you, without trying to mold you, it feels damn good.... When I have been listened
to and when I have been heard, I am able to reperceive my world in a new way and go on. It is
astonishing how elements what seem insoluble when someone listens.” (Carl W. Rogers on “impact
of empathy”, in Rosenberg 2001:119)

Bibliography:

− Salo-Lee, Liisa, Intercultural Communication in Theory and Practice: Current Trends (slides and 28
of April 2004’s class teaching).

− Salo-Lee, Liisa, Intercultural Communication Competence: Challenges for Research & Practice
(slides and 29 of April 2004’s class teaching).

− A profile of the Interculturally Effective Person. 2000. Centre for Intercultural Learning. Canadian
Foreign Service Institute, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, Canada.

− Chen, Guo- Ming & Starosta, William J. 1998. “Intercultural Communication Competence”. In:
Ghen, G.M. & Starosta, W.J. Foundations of Intercultural Competence. Boston: Ally & Bacon, Inc.,
pp. 239-257.

− Holden, Nigel J. 2002. Cross- Cultural Management. A Knowledge Management Perspective.

Harlow, England: Financial Times/ Prentice Hall, pp. 271-313, 315-317.

− Kim, Young Yun. 2001. Becoming Intercultural. An Integrative Theory of Communication and
Cross-Cultural Adaptation. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, Inc., pp. 3-10, 98-121, 142-143.

− Salo-Lee, Liisa. 2003. “Intercultural Communication as Intercultural Dialogue: Revisiting

Intercultural Competence”. In: Kistler, P. & Konivuori, S. (eds.). From International Exchanges to
Intercultural Communication: Combining Theory and Practice, pp. 121-128.