Reflection for Culture and Identity

 Reflection of “culture and identity”

    The article that we read mainly explains the related issues of culture and identity in different regions, especially the influence of culture on human cognitive orientation, learning and problem solving, and the attitudes of people to the surrounding environment. However, there are two points in the chapter that are most interesting to me. One is about problem-solving approaches and patterns of thought affected by different culture which are low-context culture and high-context culture; another is the final dimension about the attitude toward time among diverse culture.
     People from different cultures  shows different problem-solving approaches and reasoning. In intercultural communication between low-context and high-context people , some conflicts maybe arise because of a luck of understanding on reading a solution. For example, if Chinese  do not understand the low-context system used in the united states and Americans do not understand the high-context system used in china, misunderstanding will occur.Low-context culture needs more information such as facts and evidence than high-context culture used in reasoning. For instance ,Americans in low-context culture always use more specific facts and statistical data  when reasoning or speaking , while Chinese people in high-context culture are more inclined to use implicit words in their communication . Therefore, we can easier to understand the meaning of people from low-context culture than from high-context culture.
   Attitudes toward time as the final dimension, the author shows the three categories  about time orientation: past orientation; present orientation; future orientation. According to the three different views in culture ,the society can be divided to two kinds which are monochronic(one-dimensional) societies and polychronic(multidimensional) societies. However, there is a kind of culture which is between monochronic and polychronic cultures called moderate monochronic cultures.For the attitude of time,I think the most stringent should be Germany. For example, when I was a trainee of a German exhibition company in Shanghai,China which focus on varies fairs about engineering, the biggest difference  I felt was the attitude toward time between German and Chinese companies.German will be accurate to the second when they use time, such as arranging the staff situation of going work and getting off work, they will generally use the fingerprint sign instead of using the staff card to sign attendance situation the same as other companies. According to the table about varying degrees of dimensions in business cultures in the chapter, there is a very interesting phenomenon that the developed countries mostly come from very monochromic business cultures which are efficient ,punctual and likely very much to be on time ,such as Germany, North America and Japan. As for other societies from moderate monochromic or polychromic business cultures, people are seem to be relaxed about time because generally they think interpersonal relationships are more important than schedules.Compared with the former, people from the latter societies are more likely to satisfy with their life . There is a very amusing thing about the attitude towards time of Thai people . Visitors are usually taught by the tour guide three Thai words when they will travel to Thailand; one of them is “ใจเย็นเย็น” which means “calm down and don’t hurry” , because Thai people always keep calm and seldom rush to something, and seems to nothing can bother them enjoying life. Perhaps this is why Thailand can be one of the countries with the highest happiness index in the world.
    Not only the culture of different countries is different, but also the culture of different cities in the same country is also different.
As a "historical reservoir," culture is a significant  factor in shaping identity. Therefore, understanding the culture of our area is one of the basic elements of self-identity orientation.There still are so many knowledge about culture and identity we need to get.

...