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Communication and Culture

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This essay will discuss how key issues such as gender, religion, and dress affect communication and culture. Gender issue in Communication and Culture – Human communication is profoundly affected by gender and many social issues are raised by it. We may wonder how our everyday conversation is affected by gender. Does our being male or a female affect our communication? Is our communication with other dependent on the gender of our listener? (Allison, (n. d) They say that the way we communicate is because of the way our brain is made or designed. The brain of a female is expert in verbal tasks and that of male is good at mathematical, visual-spatial tasks. Where woman likes talking, men would prefer to act. Men and women have their own pattern of communication because of the way their brains are structured. Their have their own distinctive way to communicate and each of them assume that the other gender understands and acts the same way as they do. This is exactly the area because of which misunderstanding in communication arises as each one of them has their own pattern of communication and understanding a message. It is therefore advisable that men and women should cease to judge and instead understand the difference in the pattern of communication. If they accept the difference in the linguistic styles, skills and abilities it can help them work with each other and grow as a team. (Kabeer, N. (n. d) Culture shapes the expectation about the behaviour and attributes of male and female. In a Culture, identities and relations between genders is a crucial factor as it gives shape to the way life is lived in family or at workplace. There is a cultural meaning associated to being male and female in any society. We even see that work is divided between the two genders based on the gender more than any other factor. A man’s work and a woman’s work is clearly defined in most of the societies and culture. Even in today’s progressive world, women are expected to do and is responsible for household work, as a carer, nurse, raising up kids, etc and men is responsible for earning livelihood for the entire family. In any society, one would find women with less authority, decision making power and limited resources as compared to men. These are the developmental and human rights issues resulting out of pattens of disparity. (Kabeer, N. (n. d) Clothing and Culture and Communication – whether we recognize this fact or not, but culture has a tremendous impact on one’s clothing. If we bifurcate the culture country wise, we would notice men and women in those countries have typical style of dressing up. Example would be, traditionally Chinese women wore pants of pajama-type and men had been wearing robes. They also had this in their culture that wearing white for wedding was considered appropriate and black for mourning on deaths of friends and relatives. (Hidden Aspects of Communication) In Muslim countries, one would find women wearing hijab or burka, covering her completely from head till toe. Whereas we see women in Western countries wearing short skirts, hot pants and that’s completely civilized as per their culture. In India one

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would see culture of different states affecting the dressing our men and women. People of villages of most of the states prefer to wear more sober clothing than men and women in cities. In India sari is traditional dress for women and kurta chudidar for men. Clothing speaks a lot about culture of a place. A man from western country visiting Middle East country would find himself in a little awkward position as the way he would be looked upon because of his dressing. (Culture, Clothing and Modesty) Clothing is basically used to provide protection from weather, other people, or any element, although the style of clothing varies from culture to culture. People throughout the world have different perception about modesty. People of Western countries are more open minded about their dressing than most of the part of the world. Also, there are clothing that are worn to provide supernatural protection against evil, like wearing a symbol of God around one’s neck. Wearing your lucky T-shirt to collect your report card, etc. Most importantly, clothing in all culture is a sign of one’s status, purpose or occasion, age, gender, profession, intentions, etc. When you see a man wearing tight ironed blazer, shirt, pant and tie, with an expensive wrist watch and a branded pen in his pocket, it immediately communicates that this man is ready for an important office meeting and holds a high position with the company. Woman wearing a white frock with a tight scarf on her hear and stocking would communicate that she is a nurse. This type of clothing might not be accepted if worn for a wedding occasion or for a meeting. People belonging to Royal families again have a typical style of clothing, which communicates their status and class as much superior to that of a normal man of the same region. Thus, it is obvious that clothing itself communicates a lot about a person’s class, purpose and intentions, occasion, profession, etc. (Hidden Aspects of Communication) Effects of Religion on Culture and Communication – Different religion have different interpretations of God, life, values, etc. It is a system based on certain beliefs which is expected to be followed by the people belonging to that section. Culture is again a set of values, beliefs, customs, behavior, etc which is followed by people of a particular society and is transmitted to the next generation through learning. A Culture is molded on the teachings of the religion. It is Middle East culture where women do on come in front of unknown men, not allowed to interact with them, wear a hijab or burka when going out of the house, to remain in parda system, etc. the culture is such because of the teaching of Islam which is quite strict for women. In India, it is the culture to welcome guest with lot of compassion and warmth, because of the religion that teaches guests are form of God and hence to be treated with lot of warmth and love. In West, the religion teaches that the God help those who help themselves. Hence we see in Western culture people follow individualism. They prefer to work on their own and generally do not like to take help. (Religion and Culture) Through this essay it is clear that there are many key issues like religion, clothing, gender, etc that affects communication and culture. These are inseparable elements that form a society and hence have an effect on it. It is important to understand them and accept their differences to live cordially.

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Reference: Kabeer, N. (n. d). Culture. In Culture, Gender Equality and Development Cooperation. Retrived September, 22, 2010, from http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/2/9/1896320.pdf Allison, (n. d). The effects of Culture on gender identity. Retrived September, 21, 2010, from http://ematusov.soe.udel.edu/final.paper.pub/_pwfsfp/000000a8.htm Culture, Clothing and Modesty, (n. d). Retrived September 21, 2010, from http://veiledglory.wordpress.com/2007/05/25/culture-clothing-and-modesty/ Hidden Aspects of Communication, (n. d). Retrived September 21, 2010, from http://anthro.palomar.edu/language/language_6.htm Religion and Culture, (n. d). http://www.cultureandreligion.com/

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