Reaction to "Stumbling Blocks in INtercultural Communication" by Barna

 In his essay, Barna mainly looks at why and how we feel frustrated or fraught when we communicate with people from other cultures. He raises six stumbling blocks to illustrate how they become a problem, giving some examples in each section. 

 

For the first stumbling block he talks about "Assumption of Similarities", in which people assume that they are all alike simply as being human and having common requirements of food, shelter, security and so on.  This can make you feel frustrated because what you think other people are would be different from what they actually are. 

 He next takes "Language Differences" as the second stumbling block. This is when people cling to just one meaning of a word when they learn languages. This could lead to problems because one word can have more than one meaning, nuance and sense. 

 For the third one he raises "Nonverbal Misinterpretations". People tend to interpret any meaning of things such as gesture, postures and other body movements through the frame of reference of their own culture. This can misunderstand the utterances or actions of people from other culture, leading to problems. 

 "Preconceptions and Stereotypes" also can be a problem, he says. They roots in people's mind because people want to reduce the threat of the unknown by making the world predictable. Unfortunately, people actually feel more frustrated when their stereotypes collapse. 

 The fifth Stumbling Block is, he mentions, "Tendency to Evaluate". People tend to evaluate other cultures as whether it is good or bad, believing their own culture is the most natural. This can lead to conflicts between people from other cultures. 

 Finally, he raises the last stumbling block, "High Anxiety". This is linked to the other stumbling blocks as high extent of anxiety requires some form of relief and defense, which appears in the form of stereotyping or evaluation, for example.

 As I read through his essay, I found it helpful. I had an experience in England for a year, his essay looked to me more real and made it easier for me to understand the text. I thought that it is really important to keep us open-minded, as is often told in ICU. I didn't know how we should open our mind. This "open-mindedness" could also be dangerous to the people who come to the middle of nowhere what to believe. But I learned that nothing is natural, and there may be things that are more meaningful than what I believe now, so it is important to know other concepts of way of life, or of doing things.