Being in Singapore, I have had many opportunities to witness and participate in intercultural communications. In this post, I will be describing the most recent encounter I had in observing intercultural communication.
Last week, I had dinner with a few of my friends, and one of my Singaporean friend, Elise brought her boy friend from US, Jonathan along. We had our dinner on a long table and I was sitting right beside Elise and Jonathan. Halfway through our dinner, Elise asked Jonathan to get her the Calamari Rings that was placed further from her. This was how she did it:-
While cutting her fish, Elise nudged Jonathan with her elbow and said, " Hey Jon, pass me the Calamari Rings." Immediately, Jonathan folded his arms, stared at Elise sharply and said, "Excuse me? What did you just say?" Jonathan looked rather offended and I was quite shocked to look at his expression. At the same time, I can see the blank look on everyone else's faces. Then Elise looked up and responded slowly, "Oh sorry. I mean 'Jon, can you pass me the Calamari Rings, please?' " There and then, Jonathan's expression softened and he passed the Calamari Rings to Elise. Everything returned to normal after the incident, and we had our dinner pleasantly.
Frankly speaking, I was initially clueless when I looked at Jonathan's offensive face, because I didn't think that there's anything wrong with Elise's request. However, after witnessing the whole incident, I deduced that Jonathan reacted in such a way because he found Elise's way of asking rude because Elise request sounded more like a "command" rather than a request for help. As I thought about it further, I realised that for Singaporean, during informal conversation, we tend to speak Singlish -- simplify our sentences and leave out the words or phrases that portray our mannerism. However, for Jonathan who was brought up in a proper English speaking environment, not using phrases such as "please", "can you help..." in a request may sound rather rude.
After a few days, I had a chance to meet Elise for lunch and discussed about the incident. She told me that Jonathan was offended because he thought that the way she was acting very disrespectful towards him, because not only did she missed out the "magic words", she didn't initiate any eye-contact with Jonathan when she spoke to him. Elise told me that in the US culture, speaking to a person without maintaining eye-contact is rather disrespectful. On the other hand, mannerism in speech is also very important for them. She said that similar incidences also happened before, and had caused some tension between both of them.
Through speaking to Elise, my deduction was verified. However, more than that, I came to understand that things that we think is normal and acceptable for one's culture may be unacceptable another person's culture. Therefore, understanding cultural differences is crucial in order to have effective intercultural communication.
