While on my first deployment in the Navy, one of our port stops was in Japan. This is where I feel I learned what a true language barrier was. No one in this city knew how to speak English! As a young kid, this was my first experience abroad and to that point, I had never experienced such a wide gap in communication.
“We recognize that we are most comfortable communicating with those who are the most similar to us. This comfort level tends to decrease as dissimilarity increases” (Moran, Ph.D., Abramson, Ph.D., & Moran, MA, 2014, p. 37) If there ever was an example for this statement, I was living it. Trying to convey a message as simple as “Where is the closest bathroom?” was nearly impossible. This was before smart phones took over and closed the gap a bit. Each sailor was given a sheet of paper with about 10 common sayings printed on it with the meaning in English beside it. Not accurate. The longer we were out in the city, the more we realized we needed to find a common ground to communicate on if we were going to accomplish anything while out on liberty.
This is where nonverbal communication came into play. It’s funny, but you would be surprised at how affective one can be at charades when the prize is dinner, or a bathroom. “…80 to 90 percent of communication was nonverbal in that it involved no exchange of words” (Moran, Ph.D., Abramson, Ph.D., & Moran, MA, 2014, p. 43) How true that statement really is. By the end of our visit, we all felt we found common ground with the locals without even exchanging a single word in the same language. There were plenty of laughs along the way, but in the end, I feel as though we developed a level of appreciation for each other.
References
Moran, Ph.D., R. T., Abramson, Ph.D., N. R., & Moran, MA, S. V. (2014). Managing Cultural Differences; Ninth Edition. New York, NY, USA: Routledge: Taylor & Francis Group.
I did notice, especially in the beginning of trying to figure out how to communicate, that the locals were almost holding back laughter. It was quite clear that they wanted to laugh and thought we looked ridiculous trying to mime what were were asking them, but it wasn’t something they did in our face. So to answer your first question, yes. I did notice a cultural ability to conceal emotions while we fumbled through our acting.
I wouldn’t say I ran into a situation where words meant something different as words were never exchanged on this visit. Mostly us using hand gestures, body language to convey our message. In return we would receive a point or nod of the head to help us progress in the conversation. I can’t say that anything we did was ever misconstrued to mean something else. Although I do know that there are cultural differences, we did not encounter anything like that on this particular visit.
During my international travels, I had learned negotiation was a little bit of a challenge. Did you notice in Japan how they had “the tendency to conceal in a public setting emotions, especially negative emotions” (Moran, Abramson, Moran, 2014, 85)? I learned in India to watch the body language as it told me a lot about their emotions. Even though I was taught the Indians never wanted to show disrespect, I could still see the disrespect in the body language; especially during negotiations. I also learned that some of the words that Americans use could mean something different in their culture. When communication with the local community in Japan, did you run into this? I ran into it a lot and I learned really fast, when that happened, by watching their body language, to fix what I just stated. When I saw that something wasn’t right, I went back and tried to restate what I was trying to say by using other words. That became a challenge but it was a great experience.
Moran, Robert T., Ph.D., Abramson, Neil Remington, Ph.D., Moran, Sarah V., MA. (2014). Managing Cultural Differences (9th ed.). Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.