Intercultural Communication

In the article “Intercultural Communication Stumbling Blocks,” LaRay M. Barna discusses barriers that prevent people from different cultures to communicate effectively with each other. According to the author, there are six major “stumbling blocks” that make the cross-cultural exchange challenging. The first block is the language, which relates to not only to the difficulty of using foreign vocabulary and syntax, but also the problem of understanding its various and actual meaning. Nonverbal signs and symbols that can be interpreted differently in each culture are another barrier. The third and fourth ones are preconceptions and stereotypes and the tendency to evaluate and refer to the person’s tendency to judge another culture by his or her own assumptions and cultural values. Lastly, high anxiety is another factor that often influences the intercultural experience due to the unknown environment, different culture, and society. In her conclusion, the author maintains that these barriers are a big challenge and gives solutions to this issue with international communication. In my opinion, it is true that “stumbling blocks” pointed out by Barna prevent us from the full understanding of other cultures. I agree with some of the author’s ideas that the language, preconceptions, and stereotypes can block us from the effective intercultural communication, but I disagree with the idea that high anxiety is a major factor that prevents interaction between people of different cultures.

First of all, it’s hard to deny the fact that language is one of the most apparent barriers to intercultural communication. It is the main tool for people to interact and exchange the information with each other. However, if one person doesn’t know the language of another individual misunderstanding and miscommunication are common to happen. Beside the obvious difficulties of language such as “Vocabulary, syntax, idioms, dialects, and so on…,” (quoted in Spack, p.69) Barna also pointed out the issue of misinterpretation of sentences and phrases that might not contain a literal meaning. I encountered this problem by myself when I was living in Russia. Despite the fact that I was born there and learned Russian language since my childhood, just having decent speaking, listening, and writing skills wasn’t enough for me to correctly interpret the meaning of certain sentences and phrases for a while. For example, in the past, I didn’t understand why I should respond with “to hell with you” if people say to me “no feathers, no fuzz.” However, later I found out that my response wasn’t the insult, but the traditional way to say “thank you” for the wish of luck in Russian. This incident has showed me that, as Barna said, you need to learn not only about the vocabulary and syntax, but also the history, values, and traditions in order to truly grasp the understanding of another culture. However, this complexity of language shouldn’t