Imagination, Culture, and Perception

In this blog I am going to give my opinion about the way in which we perceive things around us can affect our lives. First off as we can notice, information that we have studied provides us with a very good example of how perceiving a thing in our own way, shapes the way in which we think about that thing  during a long period of time, or sometimes the rest of our lives. All of us know that in order to see all what happens around us our eyes collect information and transmits it to our brain, but the way in which each of us imagines how that happens is so different. In that situation we can say that the way in which an individual is imagining a situation is affecting the in which the individual is living.

Besides of this depending on the way in which we perceive things, our reaction for most of the events will be different. When I lived in Spain I knew one person who was from a different country. After becoming friends with him I realized that for each event that happened, his reaction was way different than the reaction of the rest of individuals. I remember that one time this person had a pretty bad score in an exam, and started to cry. Many people would see this as a really weird thing, but my believe is that this person used to cry for failing an exam, due to the fact that education in his country is taken so seriously, so this really impacted me, because I could see the way in which the culture of this person shaped his reaction to one event. While this person was crying for having a bad score, other students were laughing and not carrying about it, due to the fact that the culture of those students is different.  

So as we can see, in this case the culture of the individual shaped his thinking about studying, so the way in which he perceives some information is different to the way in which a different individual from a different culture is.

Besides of this, another good example for this is the way in which each person sees the death. Many people imagine death, as an event in which the soul of one individual is reborn in a plant or an animal. So this people maintains that believe all their life and perceive the world on a different way, while for example followers of God may believe in different beliefs that affect the way in which they perceive the world and life.

This difference of beliefs will probably create a variation In the way in which this individuals will react to certain events.

Culture and Emotion

How does your own cultural background influence your emotional responses?

 

First off we can find a variety of opinions that have to do with this phenomenon, but these opinions opinions can be divide in two categories. The people who does not accept this phenomenon thinks that emotion is part of our evolutionary history, that each emotion carries a function, and also that emotions are the same everywhere, no matter the culture nor the cultural background.

 

On the other hand the people who supports the idea that culture truly shapes the emotion of an individual, bases this idea in several facts. The first fact is that culture suggests what are the appropriate solicitors of each emotion. This statement implies that each culture has a specific way of thinking in an emotion,for example, depending on the culture of an individual, the individual will have a different image on his mind about what happiness is.  Besides of this, culture shapes appraisals of emotions, which means that the same appraisal will lead to different emotion depending on the background of the individual.

 

Furthermore studies have shown that culture totally shapes the way in which individuals express their emotions. Being more specific, when, how and, why would and individual express emotions. For example in America, and most of Europe laughing in public is seen as a pretty normal thing, but in some Asians countries laughing in public is considered a bad and impolite thing.

 

The next factor is the valuation that each culture places in experiencing emotion, or also known as the way in which each culture puts more or less importance to different emotions. An example of this is that Western individuals have as ideal feel the feeling of positivism, while Asian individual reports tell us that their ideal feeling is calmness.

 

Lastly, culture influences the kind of emotions that a person emphasizes, which also can be described as the emotion that a person highly regards, or the emotion that most captures the attention of an individual.

Challenge of Translation

Even though English is the common language at Raha, what may be some potential issues caused by connotations or different cultural understandings of words?

 

First off, it is important to know that each culture shapes the idioms of each individual. As we have studied it is proved that some sentences or some words can have a meaning in one language, and a different one in another language.

 For example, while some individuals coming from one culture understand that the word dog is a word that  expresses friendship, different individuals coming from a different culture will interpret this word as an insult. This statement basically portrays how people from different countries, as in the case of Raha International School, sometimes would not understand each other, misunderstanding the meaning of a word or sentence. This problem is due to the idioms that each culture have in its language. Once the idioms are translated to the English, they do not mean the same thing since the idioms are understood just by people of the same culture. 

This phenomenon is known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which points out that the structure of the language affects the way in which an individual conceptualize its own world. This theory presents two versions, the strong, and the weak version. In my personal opinion I think that language can affect thought, and non-linguistic behavior, but it does not limit or determine cognitive categories.

 

Understanding a little more about the challenge of communication, how might Raha communicate more effectively to such a diverse cultural group?

 

The best way Raha students and teachers can understand each other better, is to know that each person uses his or her own idioms depending on the culture and mother tongue, and that sometimes some words or sentences have a different meaning depending on the cultural background of the person who says the words or sentences, so we should not misunderstand some idioms, and ask for the meaning of them if it is not clear.