Communicating Effectively Across Culture (1170 words)

Write an essay about communicating across culture from an anthropological perspective.

In effectively communicating within a culture, the anthropologist must be aware of two things: recognizing the anthropologist himself as Other (Mitchell 1988) and recognizing what actors in the culture studied use as symbols in communication (Hickey and Thompson 1988).
Always the anthropologist studying another culture is considered the Other until such time the group being studied accepts him as part of their community. This makes communicating cross culturally challenging, but anthropologists have found successful ways in breaking down communication barriers in their fieldwork. In attempting to study an Eastern European Jewish community in New York City, Mitchell, a white male from Kansas, is advised by his fellow Jewish social scientists to lessen his Gentile Otherness, his “cool WASP manner” and become “more lively” and “speed up” his conversation (1988:225), though he saw himself as part of an already friendly Kansas community with less of a slow and heavy Midwestern accent than most....

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