Intercultural Encounters and Cultural Shock

Since two people from different cultures first interacted, intercultural or cross-cultural interactions have existed. While multiculturalism refers to the presence of several cultural identities in an already established cultural context, intercultural communication is simply the exchange of information and ideas between members of different cultural groups (Curtin-Gaither, 2008). The cultural identity is not determined by the geographical origin, according to Curtin and Gaither. Numerous writers discuss the benefits of cultural variety and multiculturalism, which promote intercultural harmony. 

Hofstede contends that despite language and discourse playing a significant part in these exchanges, intercultural encounters do not always result in mutual understanding (Browaeys, 2022). Lewis created many discourse models for various cultures and explained how the people in each of these cultures think and speak, particularly in business meetings. Due to the presence of multinational corporations, worldwide alliances, meetings, collaboration, and training, it is necessary in the globalized environment and market of today to interact with people from many cultural backgrounds. However, as Lewis points out, there are nations with strong intercultural and adaptive capabilities, as well as those with less developed intercultural capabilities. 

The cultural shock is a significant phenomena that happened during these contacts in a foreign cultural setting. Cultural shock has been characterised by many writers, but in my opinion Kim's definition is the most thorough since, while the stages outlined in other theories are significant, cultural shock cannot be thought of as a linear process. Cultural shock, in Kim's opinion, is not a phenomenon that is linearly adapting and changing but rather one that is continual and cyclical, developing intercultural, communication, and adaption abilities via a continuous process of learning and growth. He prefers to refer to this occurrence as "stress" rather than "cultural shock," and views it as a beneficial aspect of the adaptation process (Kim, 1988).

Experiencing cultural shock myself when moving to The Netherlands at the age of 15, I agree with Kim's opinions. It is not a linear process at all. It is a continuous learning cycle of ups and downs. The exchange of stress and adaptation is very chaotic you can say. With time, stress decreases and adaptation increases exponentially. That is our natural human reaction to adapt to our situation. But then after we adapt, stress decreases for a while and then adaptation drops as we do not need to adapt anymore as it became normal. Then stress increases again and back to step 1. This cyclical fashion of stress and adaptation I experienced a lot when I first moved to the Netherlands. The individualistic approach of the Dutch culture put me in a corner and forced me to adapt to a point where I became comfortable being individualistic which is very strange coming from a very collective culture. But then my natural instincts pushed me our of that corner and the loop started again with stress increase. This goes on for a while until the loop becomes so small you barely notice any difference. But this process can sometimes take years. See graph down below.

Figure 1: Adaptation- stress loop (Cross-cultural Theories, 2015).

References:

- Browaeys, M. (2022, October 8). Understanding Cross-Cultural Management. PEARSON.

- Curtin, P. A., & Gaither, K. T. (2007, January 18). International Public Relations: Negotiating Culture, Identity, and Power (1st ed.). SAGE Publications, Inc.

- Cross-cultural theories. (2015, October 22). Beyond Cultural Differences. Retrieved October 8, 2022, from https://beyondculturaldifferences.wordpress.com/research-theories/

- Kim, Y. Y. (2000, November 29). Becoming Intercultural: An Integrative Theory of Communication and Cross-Cultural Adaptation (Current Communication: An Advanced Text) (1st ed.). SAGE Publications, Inc.

- Lewis, R. D. (2018, December 18). When Cultures Collide: Leading Across Cultures 4th Edition (4th ed.). Nicholas Brealey.