Gaining Greater Cultural Awareness

Thomas A. Conklin

Chapter 1.18 in Stories to Tell Your Students, 2011, pp 38-40 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract Let me tell you a story about a teacher named Tom who was teaching a class on diversity as part of an organizational behavior class. The class was a fairly heterogeneous mix of students with a variety of ethnic and cultural backgrounds from around the world. As the class unfolded, the topic of cultural differences and nonverbal communication practices in various cultures came up. During the discussion the class struck upon the practice of nodding their heads in an up and down motion to indicate “yes.” This act is understood in the United States to mean “yes” and yet over the course of the discussion, it became clear that what was taken for an affirmative nod was not a message of acceptance in all parts of the world. In Bulgaria, for instance, it means just the opposite. Moving the head up and down indicates the negative reply of “no” and moving the head side to side means “yes.”

Keywords: Scripts; Schemas; Stereotyping; Diversity; Nonverbal communication (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palchp:978-0-230-37043-2_18

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DOI: 10.1057/9780230370432_18

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