Name: Contact Zones and the Art of Interpersonal Communication | Anthony Hung | TEDxPSUBehrend
Uploaded: 2024-10-03T01:40:30.000Z
Duration: 16 min
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Gerund

So I want to start by telling you guys a story, and it's a very hypothetical, but very realistic story.

To-infinitive

And I want you guys to immerse yourselves in the roles of these characters.

The imperative

Put yourselves in their shoes, if you will.

So imagine yourselves as team leaders of a group of soldiers in a war-torn country somewhere very far away from where you're used to, with different culture, speaking different language.

You have no idea what the culture is like over there.

And as you're in the city, going house to house, clearing, looking for the enemy, you come up on the last house.

There is an old man, scared, with his hands up.

Your team, with your guns pointed at him, you say, put your hands up, put your hands up.

Now, within your team, there's a combat translator whose job is to translate, to help you guys communicate with the local population.

So then you ask this old man, you ask him, is there anyone in the house?

Because as team leader, you need to know if there are any other possible threats in the house.

But unbeknownst to you and your team, the local culture and the language is quite different.

In fact, the local culture and language, they never refer to women or children directly.

So what the translator ends up asking is, are there any men in the house?

He has, like, four or five guns pointed at him.

He says, no, no, there are no other men in the house.

Then the translator translates back to you, which nobody's lying because there is no other men in the house.

But then it is at this moment that a young girl, perhaps 14-year-old, comes into the room and says, grandpa, what's going on?

Right there and then, your soldiers jump into alert mode.

This guy just says there's no one else in the house with your guns pointed at this little girl.

And you as team leader, you have a split second to make the decision, do you take the shot or not?

If you don't take a shot, it's possible that this little girl could pull out a handgun, empty 15 rounds into you and your men.

But if you take a shot, what if this girl's innocent?

What if it was just a hamburger, a dog that she's holding behind her back?

So as you can see the gravity of this situation, and many people interpret this as the mistranslation in war.

In my opinion, I think this is more than just a issue of translation, mistranslation.

I think this is an issue of the lack of understanding for the local culture.

You see, whenever you speak with someone from another culture, another language, or there's some translation involved, it's not just an exchange of words.

There's an exchange of culture going on here.

And I think the problem here is that these soldiers over-reliance on the translator to translate, to accurately refer to them the information they need.

So what I want to talk about today is intercultural communication.

As I previously mentioned, when you talk to someone from another culture, it's not just word for word.

So let me illustrate that with an example, because I'm a business student here at Penn

State, I'm going to use a more business-oriented example.

From my experiences, most American businessmen tend to be, not all, but a lot of them, tend to be a lot more dominant, aggressive, confident, basically.

But you see, when you go to Asia, for example, and you tell them, hey, let's meet tonight.

They might interpret that as, okay, let's go out for dinner, let's have some food, let's get to know each other, build a bond.

Because in Asia, when you want to do business, you got to get to know the person you're buying and selling to and from.

But I think with a lot of Western businessmen, the value of the transaction comes first.

I want to fly to Brazil, and I want to be out by tonight.

Sign that contract, get that deal, get those rolling in, get that done.

Now imagine yourselves as now, as businessmen, or women, going to China, for example.

So going to a new place, understanding the styles of communication is extremely important.

So I remember a class I took here in Penn State, actually, Marketing 410, Personal Selling.

So in this class, we were taught about personal selling, how to sell stuff.

And as salesmen, or sales agents, saleswomen, you have to be confident.

So we were taught the Marketing 410 handshake.

You got to, you know, hey, how's it going?

Now, in this class, I experienced my fair share of hand-crushing handshakes.

You know, guys, girls, you know, they got to show that confidence, that dominance over you, you know, and I experienced my fair share of that.

But if you were to do that in perhaps where I'm from, in Taiwan, or in China, or in a lot of parts of Asia, this could be viewed as aggressive, or even unprofessional, even.

So now I want to introduce a concept called contact zones.

Now contact zones are closely intertwined with the concept of intercultural communication.

Contact zones is first developed by Dr. Mary Louise Pratt in her Adoption of the Contact

Now, in my own words, kind of my interpretation example is contact zone.

Contact zones are basically spaces where different cultures meet.

However, when different cultures meet, it's quite possible that conflicts may erupt because we don't understand each other.

If you look at historical examples, you know, when the Europeans first came to the Americas, what happened, you know, to the Aztecs, or what happened to the, you know, Native Americans?

Well, contact zones are historically usually on the battlefield and still is, but in today's world, with the world shrinking with social media, internet technology, neighborhoods, your Walmart, schools, classrooms have become contact zones.

Why did I say this room is a contact zone?

You might be from, or my sister in the crowd, Detroit, Michigan.

You know, I have people, friends here from China, from Italy, everywhere.

This room is a contact zone, and I am initiating intercultural communication with you guys, also to those who may be watching online.

So you may ask me at this point, Anthony, why do you care so much about intercultural communication and contact zone and all that?

Like, what does that have to do with you?

You see, I'm no stranger to contact zones and intercultural communication.

Subtitles ListPlay Video

Contact Zones and the Art of Interpersonal Communication | Anthony Hung | TEDxPSUBehrend

authentic

majority

genuine

basically