Awkward Analysis

‘Awkward…’

Has this ever happened to you while communicating with people from different cultures and countries?

This ‘awkward moment’ can be described in a theory called the stumbling blocks, designed by a lady named Barna. Her theory describes the relationship between intercultural people. There are mainly six points she focuses on: Assumption of similarities, Language difference, Nonverbal Misinterpretations, Tendency to evaluate, Stress, and Culture shock. I would be explaining about these stumbling blocks, while using the example of three videos. ‘What is politeness?’ The first video was a scene taken out from a movie about a foreign man, who came to Japan to play baseball. The video was describing a scene of food culture and table manner differences. The scene was this: a Japanese family eating Japanese cultural lunch, while the foreign guy makes various types of cultural problems. For example, Japanese have a habit of eating noodles while making a sound, in order to also enjoy the scent. However, as a foreigner, the baseball player didn’t think slurping noodles was an appropriate thing to do. Yet, after being told by a Japanese that it was actually polite to make a

It was about a foreign guy living in a European country, and falling in love with a girl he met on the streets. To express his admiration, he decides to buy flowers and put it inside the lady’s bike that was standing outside her door. He also put a piece of paper addressing her name. Coincidentally, a huge truck knocks down the bike, and leaves the flowers crumbled on the ground. A neighbor sees that situation, and quickly come to a conclusion that the lady died from a car accident. This wouldn’t have happened if there was no Assumption of similarities. The foreigner thought it was normal to give flowers to someone you like, while in that particular culture, giving that particular flower to someone symbolized