8.3. What is Culture Shock数字时代的商务英语写作.pdf

Intercultural Adaptation 8.3. What is Culture Shock Hello, everyone. Welcome back to our course. In the previous section, we have talked about four different types of acculturation. In this section, we are going to discuss culture shock, which is a great concern to everyone who is or will be experiencing another culture. What happens to us when we first go into a new cultural setting? Actually, learning to live in a new and different environment is usually both exciting and stressful. When we enter a new culture, our first reaction is excitement. Gradually, however, this excitement wears off. We may not find big differences in this new culture: people wake up in the morning, drive their cars to work, pick up the kids from school, sit down and eat dinner, watch some TV and then go to bed. But it’s the little things: they drive different cars, eat different foods, and watch different sports. At this time, we realize that we are confronted with a different cultural environment. It is a combination of unfamiliar stimuli and a loss of familiar signs, signals, practices and customs of social intercourse. These differences between our home culture and the new culture then result in a variety of emotions, including loneliness, feelings of not fitting in, anxiety, depression and stress. The term culture shock is used to describe the feelings of individuals when they encounter different social norms, values, beliefs, and ways of doing. It is virtually a communication problem. It involves the depressed feelings accompanying a lack of understanding of the verbal and nonverbal communication of the host culture, its customs, as well as its value systems. It happens when we have to deal with a huge number of new things which are difficult to understand and interpret because the cultural context has change