Who Is Normal, Anyway?

Positive Stereotypes

It is common knowledge that language has both the function of conveying information and the function of maintaining relationships among participants in speech events. Generally speaking, if we contrasted Chinese and Americans, we would see that Chinese would be on the relationship end of this con­tinuum and Americans would be on the information end of the same con­tinuum. In other words, Chinese tend to be concerned that good relationships are maintained, even if this means that less information may be exchanged, while Americans and Europeans in general will tend to emphasize the exchange of information, even if relationships cannot be easily maintained.

In communication between American men and American women, there is a tendency for men to emphasize information over relationship and for women to emphasize relationship over informa­tion. There is no reason to deny that on this single dimension one would expect to find better under­standing between American women and Chinese in general. The mistake is to proceed from there and conclude that because there is common ground on this single dimension, there will be commonality across all of the cultural characteristics of these two groups.

Whether the stereotyping is positive or negative in intent, it should be clear that it stands in the way of successful communication because it blinds the analyst to major areas of difference. As you know, communication is ambiguous. Effective com­munication depends on finding and clarifying sources of ambiguity as well as learning to deal with places where miscommunication occurs. Such clari­fication is impossible when the analyst does not recognize areas of difference among participants, because he or she will assume common ground and mutual understanding. The perennial paradoxical situation of the analyst of intercultural communication is that he or she must constantly look for areas of difference between people which will potentially lead to miscommunication, but at the same time he or she must constantly guard against both positive and negative stereotyping.

An ethnic stereotype is a generalized representation of an ethnic group, composed of what are thought to be typical characteristics of members of the group.

Ethnic stereotypes are commonly portrayed in ethnic jokes.

Most English people think they are normal and that all others (whom they call "foreigners") are abnormal—that is to say, they might be all right, but they really cannot act and think like the English, because, after all, they are foreign. You only have to look at them, you'll know what that means.

If people from each culture consider themselves normal, then the corollary is that they consider everybody else abnormal. By this token Finns consider Ital­ians overly emotional because they wave their arms while talking. The individu­alistic Spaniards consider the Swiss stuffy and excessively law-abiding. Lively Italians find Norwegians gloomy. French-influenced Vietnamese find Japanese impassive. Most South Americans find Argentineans conceited. Germans think Australians are undisciplined. Japanese see straight-talking Americans as rude.

We can achieve a good understanding of our foreign counterparts only if we realize that our "cultural spectacles" are coloring our view of them. What is the route to better understanding? To begin with, we need to examine the special features of our own culture.

Our second task, once we realize that we, too, are a trifle strange, is to under­stand the subjective nature of our ethnic or national values. While Scots see stub­bornness largely as a positive trait, flexible Italians may see it as mainly intransigence, the diplomatic English, possibly a lack of artfulness or dexterity. We also make assumptions on the basis of our subjective view and, even worse, assumptions about other people's assumptions. The Italian who assumes that French people feel intellectually superior also assumes that the French therefore think Italians are suitable mainly for manual labor when emigrating to France. Finns who judge Swedes as snobs also assume that Swedes stereotype Finns as rough and rustic. There may be a grain of truth in many of these judgments and assumptions of assumptions, but the danger involved in making them is only too obvious!

The world is filled with conflict, racial tension, and war. How can such con­flict be dealt with, avoiding the escalation that leads to violence? How can conflict be transformed into positive and constructive directions?

Negotiation is the process of settling a conflict by facilitating understand­ing between the disputing parties. The negotiation process involves each dis­puting party listening carefully to the other party and then reaching some compromise.

A related means of overcoming conflict is mediation, the process of finding peaceful solutions to a conflict through a neutral, third party intervention. The mediation process is confidential and private. First, one of the disputants is asked to describe the conflict. The mediator then summarizes this side of the story. The other disputant then describes the conflict from the other point of view. Again the mediator summarizes the main points. Then the two par­ties identify the main issues of contention, which are listed by the mediator. The two disputants decide which issue to begin resolving, usually starting with the easiest. When all of the issues have been discussed and settled (if possible), the mediator puts an agreement in writing that the two parties each sign. The agreement specifies exactly who will do what in order to resolve the conflict.

The mediation process is nonbinding in that the participants are not forced to accept the mediated resolution of their conflict. The purpose of mediation is to provide each side of a conflict with an improved understand­ing of the other party's point of view and thus to resolve issues before they escalate into a legal dispute or a more serious type of conflict. Mediation is more difficult when the parties in conflict do not share a common culture. Reaching an understanding is more difficult when cultural differences divide the two parties.

The mediation process, as described above, may have limited application in cultures other than European American. For example, the success of the mediation process rests on the willingness of the two disputants to engage in direct communication about the conflict. In many cultures, however, conflict­ing parties prefer to deal through intermediaries, rather than to meet directly. Individuals in some cultures (such as collectivistic cultures) are more relational-oriented, rather than task-oriented, and would fear the loss of face if they participated in a mediation process. Further, certain cultures may doubt that a neutral, fair mediator could exist. Most experts on mediation believe that we have far to go toward achieving a mediation process that is not culturally limited.

Resolving conflict is the final measure of how competent we are as com­municators. Some conflicts may never be resolved. One of the reasons for that negative prognosis is that the emotions attached to most conflicts often over­ride much of the knowledge we have learned about communicating with oth­ers—alike or unalike. If we develop a habit of viewing behavior with an open, flexible approach, we have a better opportunity to apply the communication skills most likely to lead to an understanding with others.

Multiculturalism is the recognition that several different cultures can exist in the same environment and benefit each other. The cultures may be national cultures or may be those of various ethnic groups within the same nation. For example, in 1960, the U.S. workforce was dominated by Euro­pean American White males. One could stand in the lobby of an office build­ing at the end of the workday and observe people exiting elevators. Well-dressed White men stepped out of the elevators that descended from the executive floors. Women, mainly European Americans, came out of the ele­vators from the floors of the building on which the typing pool was located. The men from the loading dock and the furnace room, dressed in work clothes, were often members of ethnic groups.

Today, the composition in the scene of people getting off the elevators is much different. The genders would no longer be segregated on the executive floors versus the typing pool, nor would members of different ethnic groups be limited to manual occupations. Today, about 80 percent of the additions to the U.S. workforce are women, members of ethnic groups, and immigrants. Male European Americans are now a minority of individuals entering the employed ranks. This dramatic change in the U.S. workforce is one evidence of multiculturalism in the United States.

Brazil is often held up as an ideal society in a multicultural sense and one that might hold useful lessons for the United States. The largest country in Latin America in territory and population size, Brazil's history parallels that of the United States. European colonizers, the Portuguese, overwhelmed the native people, whose population dropped in the 1800s due to the spread of European diseases. The Portuguese imported slaves from Africa to work on plantations and in businesses, Brazil imported eight times as many slaves as did the slave states in North America. Then, about 100 years ago, large numbers of Italians, Germans, Spanish, and Portuguese immigrated to Brazil, as occurred in the US at about the same time.

Unlike the United States, however, Brazil is characterized today by rela­tively smooth race relations. Some 40 percent of the total population are of mixed ancestry, due to widespread intermarriage between the European immigrants, African Americans, and the native people (Aguirre & Turner, 1995). Black and White are not perceived as a dichotomy: Why is Brazil so unlike the United States in its race relationships? Historically, many former slaves were freed in Brazil, and a smooth transition took place when slavery ended in 1888, unlike the U.S. Civil War of the 1860s. Blacks and Whites were economically dependent on each other in Brazil, and people of African ances­try were highly valued as employees. So the European Brazilians were much more dependent on the slave population to sustain the economy. Slaves were perceived as humans and attitudes toward them were not as harsh as in the United States.

Brazilian society has long pursued a policy of assimilation, in which all peo­ple, including those of African descent, were expected to share a common cul­ture and to intermix physically as well as culturally. In contrast, in the United States the "melting pot" policies of assimilation applied to European Amer­icans, and perhaps Asian Americans, but not to African Americans. Many states had laws against miscegenation until recent decades. Cultural blend­ing was expected, but the intermarriage of Black and White Americans was not allowed. Despite more favorable attitudes resulting from the historical experiences described, Brazil has not completely eradicated prejudice. Most of the higher socioeconomic positions are filled by lighter-skinned peo­ple. As in the United States, the government is committed to pursue policies that reduce discrimination, but these policies are not very effective. Looking at other systems can often provide lessons about how to encour­age multiculturalism at a societal and an individual level. How can an indi­vidual become more multicultural?

1. Communicate with culturally heterophilous others. Seek friends who are culturally different from yourself. Travel. Learn languages other than your native tongue as a means of better understanding cultures in which these languages are spoken.

2. Work at understanding people unlike yourself. Reading about their culture may be helpful, but you can also learn by getting to know members of another culture on a personal basis. Go out of your way to develop close relationships with unalike others. Participate in intercultural and diversity training courses that help you become less ethnocentric and more understanding of unalike others.

3. Empathize with heterophilous others so that you can look at the world from their point of view. Be pluralistic and culturally relativis­ts. Do not think of ingroups and outgroups, but instead perceive of a continuum of cultural differences, such as on the basis of individu­alism/collectivism or other dimensions.

4. Capitalize on the natural curiosity that we all have in learning about other people who are different from us. Encourage your friends and family members to become multicultural. Set an appropriate exam­ple for them to follow.

5. Understand yourself, particularly your degree of ethnocentrism, prejudice, and stereotyping versus cultural relativism, tolerance, and understanding.

6. Recognize and appreciate the cultural differences among people in your environment.

7. Be nonjudgmental of others and their cultural values. (Everett Rogers & Thomas Steinfatt)

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