Coming from a Canadian (North American) up bringing, I had no idea how different written discourse could be across different cultures. From the lecture notes, I have learned quite a bit about Chinese discourse and its several different tenancies. I had always questioned some of the writing styles of my Chinese friends, but never mentioned anything. I now know the reason for their "obscure" writing styles. Being in Singapore, I hope to come across more experience with Chinese written discourse, so that I can learn more about the culture.
The notes cover several different tenancies for Chinese writing, however I wonder what the influences of these written discourses are. How is it that across cultures, written discourse can be so different? I'm sure they must all have different influences from different cultural backgrounds. Being a Japanese Canadian, I wonder at which point did my family switch from Japanese written discourse to Canadian (North American) written discourse and why?
Like several other people have mentioned, how have people from different cultures avoided confusion when reading each others literature? I can't even imagine the frustration and confusion that arises.
As we have now passed the half way mark in our semester, I have come to realize that I have learned several different aspects of communication that are common everyday. This class has shown me a whole new aspect to analyzing communication across cultures. I have learned that there is a reason for everything that I would have never suspected in communication, such as written discourse. Up until now I just accepted communication and had not questioned it at all, but this course has so far really been beneficial to understanding cultures.
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Deep question. Culture changes and culture is dynamic. Cultural traits may have roots in both inheritance and environment. In other words, they can inherited or learned. But I suppose a lot of these traits are learned.
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