Week 6: Cultural Elements of Emotion


Every culture experiences emotion differently. Some cultures are a lot more emotional, while others are a lot more closed off. While going through the motions of this trip, I have experienced many emotions. Many of the emotions are a result of my environment. When I first got here, I wasn't home sick; the distraction of getting use to somewhere that I hadn't been before, kept me occupied enough. As the weeks went on, I started to become a little homesick. Last week was definitely the hardest; it was the halfway point. Some of our fellow WVU SPICE members' time abroad was up, and leaving familiarity was hard, but when it leaves you, its even harder.

According to Chapter 5 in the textbook we have been using throughout this trip, Intercultural Communication: A Peacebuilding Perspective, "Emotion is a Process" (Remland, 2015). This is then followed by a model by Sally Planalp (1999) and her book Communicating Emotion: Social, Moral, and Cultural Processes. There are five "steps", to this model. The first step talks about something that has to grab our attention in order for us to feel some type of emotion towards it. This could be for example an event. Step two says how we then evaluate the situation. Step three says once we have evaluated, we react to this event in a physical manner.

The fourth and fifth step of this model describes that people either have an "Action Tendency" or "Emotional Tendency". The tendencies pretty much describe themselves. They are the reactions that occur to the situation. The textbook explains examples for both. For an "Action Tendency", if you saw a family member in the airport, you may shout for them without really thinking, while an "Emotional Tendency" is you see a family member in the airport, you want to shout for them, but decide not to because there are people around and they may be bothered by the action you have just done.

A time that I can think of myself feeling "emotion as a process", was when we took a day trip to Weimar to see the Buchenwald Concentration Camp. You always hear how sad these places are and how emotional people get. Concentration camps and the history that coincides with it is truly devastating. While at Buchenwald, the whole situation grabbed my attention. I didn't realize how big Concentration Camps really were. I almost felt lost walking around in there. When putting myself in the shoes of the people who went through the hardships there, I couldn't do it. I couldn't imagine living a life in fear and giving up my rights. My physical reaction wasn't to cry or get angry. I was mostly just disappointed in the fact that this happened. It was so unnecessary and the fact that humanity let this happen was mind boggling. It really doesn't hit you in the moment because you are taking it all in. As soon as I got home, I felt emotionally drained and didn't even want to talk about what we had just experienced. I suppose I had more if an "Emotional Tendency" in the end. I didn't necessarily express what or how I was feeling.

You really don't understand how horrible an event in history is until you go there and experience it yourself. This is also seventy-two years later and it was still so sad. I couldn't imagine what it would be like on any given day in 1941-1945.





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Week 4: Cultural Frames

Image
We have made it to week four in our SPICE Program and each week brings new adventures. We visited Bruges, Belgium this past week. It was a small but cute city with many fun things to do. We went to a french fry museum and went in and out of a TON of chocolate shops; not to mention we had some really cool hostel-mates, one from England and one from Portugal/Spain! This weeks objective is Cultural Frames . We take what we know from our background and experiences and apply it to our reality (Remland, 2015). Us, as Americans, try to take our social norms and apply them to our environment; and with a different culture comes different social norms. I was once told that Americans have really short goodbyes, but what I found in Bruges, is that they have an even shorter goodbye. You will be purchasing something from the shop and before you have your credit card back and receipt in hand, you are basically pushed out the door. A cultural frame that sticks out to me from the chapter is the In...
Read more

Week 7: Verbal and Nonverbal Communication

Image
European and American verbal and nonverbal communication are quite different. In class, when we are having discussions, I notice that when an American student is called on, we will respond very loudly compared to the German students. I also notice, at the school coffee shop, the man working behind the counter will be very soft-spoken when talking to a customer. I almost want to shout, "CAN YOU TALK A LITTLE LOUDER?!", even though I can hear him perfectly fine from a few feet away. I realize the reason I want him to talk louder is simple: I am nosey. I am also use to a loud coffeehouse setting. When you go to Starbucks in the states, you typically walk into a setting of glasses clinking together, music blaring from the speakers, and names being shouted so people can pick up their orders. With nonverbal, I notice that we also are very different. When the teacher is speaking and looking around the room, she typically makes eye contact with everyone. When she makes eye contact...
Read more

Week 8: Intercultural Communicative Competence

Image
As we come to our last week in Europe, I look back on the memories I have made and the people I have shared them with. When arriving in Germany, I knew I would talk to the people who also went on this trip, but I didn't think I would become friends with them as easy as I did. One person who stands out the most out of all my friendships that I made abroad, is my friendship with Ashley Pearson. When going through the "General Process of Friendship Development  ( Remland, 2015) " in chapter 8 of the book, it describes each of the steps you take when developing a friendship. The first stage is the   Role-Limited Interaction . Whenever you meet someone new, you are usually the nicest person in the world; you don't want to give them a bad impression. I remember being super nice because I really liked Ashley from the beginning. We soon moved to the Friendly Relations stage. This stage is more of an acquaintance stage. We were no longer new to each other, but we weren't...
Read more