Intercultural Communication

“When in Rome, do as the Romans do”. This proverb is probably the most basic advice anyone can get about social and cultural integration. Its conciseness and profound wisdom have confounded me for quite a while. The form of cultural adaptation that the proverb suggests is advantageous in many ways: it avoids misunderstandings, builds good first impressions, helps to find common grounds faster, and therefore promotes effective communication.  The question that I have been asking myself is: what would be the other ‘Romans’ and how to know what do they do?

These questions led me to the idea of cultural behaviours classification. While stereotyping has been shunned by society for various political reasons, for me it remains neutral as how Daniel Kahneman, winner of the Nobel Prize, sees it too. If we can have a classification tree like the taxonomy, maybe it will change the way that we see cultural diversity. Finding common backgrounds will be easier, diversity will be more appreciated, and preserving tradition will be more meaningful. It is always interesting how a premature idea like this will develop.

We need starting points in classification, just like how taxonomy starts with six kingdoms (animalia, plantae, fungi, etc). These starting points must not be too general but able to classify the majority of the people. The first attempt started few years back when I was still in Jakarta, Indonesia. Indonesia is a country where the constitutions require a citizen to have a belief so I thought it would make sense to group people based on the constitutionalized religions: Muslims, Hindus, Buddhist, and Christians. This classification was very appealing in many ways, partly because the nature of religion that already set the majority of personal values, norms, and traditions for its followers. In other words, by having some knowledge about the four main religions and knowing what religion a person holds, I could take a solid guess the what the person eats or cannot eat, the day and time suitable for meetings, how to greet the person, and many other expected behaviours. It all went well until I arrived in Singapore in 2008. The revelations came to me that it is not uncommon that a person doesn’t hold a religion, and that the same religion may have various denominations. But the main reason that the classification is a bit impractical is that religion is not something I can see on a person face.  It is also personal. Some might be offended by being asked about their religion. Therefore, it was probably not the best idea to start the classification with religion.

I would really like to share the idea of cultural classification based on racial diversity, the interesting advantages it has, and the problems in faces at the bottom of the tree. However, I am well aware that I have passed the word limit so I have to end this post here. If you have various useful methods for intercultural classification and communication please do share with me.