In the beginning of the semester I
was made aware of the amount of international students on the UNL campus via
social networking like UNL Haters, Twitter and Facebook. I’m not sure how much
I would have looked into and or thought about all these comments and
accusations of the international students, had I not taken this class. (Martin & Nakayama 2012) define culture
as: a learned pattern of behavior and attitude shared by a group of people. The goal of my research was to see how the
Malaysian culture fared against American culture.
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| Kuala Lumpur |
I’ve spent the last couple of weeks interviewing
international students from Malaysia.
After the first interview the rest felt somewhat repetitive in their
answers and how the felt about where they were currently living. What I found most intriguing were the answers
to some of my questions from one student in particular, Celine. Right off the bat I found it interesting that
she “Americanized”(assimilating) her name, which was originally Sze Ling. When answering questions I noticed the other
students were more timid and uncertain how to answer the question. Not from lack of knowledge but as if there
were searching for an acceptance from me I suppose. In more than one interview
I was asked, “what would you like/need me to say?” I’ve met with Celine on more
than one occasion so we had an established rapport, which may have aided in her
confident answering. Kurt Lewin’s circle
model for intimacy definitely held true for the interviews, as time carried on
the more they would self-disclose. I
kept noticing the repetition of a few topics, while others I found really
interesting. The three I focused on were
drinking, population and Asians on campus.
All of the students brought up drinking throughout the
interview. Celine said she found it
“extremely weird that you guys party every night. Like on school nights! Why? In Malaysia we
just drink on Fridays and Saturdays but other than that we don’t just sit and
drink for no reason.” Despite this
Malaysia is the 10th largest alcohol consumer in the world with 11
liters per capita (Tan 2011) There is no set drinking age in Malaysia however
you must be 18 years or older in order to purchase alcohol.
When I asked about population size Masahiro said he
preferred it here. He said, “People here
have more organize, like when in line at bank there is a line. We don’t do that at home. Everyone just stands around in a big
crowd. You’re very disciplined
here.” Masahiro is from Kuala Lumpur the
capital city of Malaysia and also the most populous with an estimated 1.6
million people. He said the driving here
is much better. The streets have more
organization and the people are more polite.
One of the questions I asked the students
regarded to whether or not they felt like a minority. All three of them made the same conclusion
that there were a lot of other Asian students.
Celine said, “Sometimes it feels pointless (coming here) I came here to
experience a different culture but it feels like I’m still back home
sometimes.”
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| Hectic traffic in Malaysia |
One more thing little side note I took that stuck out to me
later was language. As in cussing, 2 of
them brought that up. Celine kept coming
back to that and making sure I wrote it down. “It doesn’t even work when they
say it they just say it!”
Most of what the students talked about involved aspects of
self control and personal space. Those
findings make a lot of sense to me in relation to proxemics. Back in chapter 7 we learned about space like
‘public’ and ‘personal’. So it grabbed
my attention because it is fitting that they are in a new location and like
distance and dislike how out of control other students get while drinking.
Martin, N.J., & Nakayama, K.T. (2012) Intercultural communication in contexts 6th
edition. NYC.: McGraw Hil
Tan, M. Malaysia ranked world’s 10th largest
consumer of alcohol. May, 23,2011.
http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2011/5/23/nation/8737875&sec=nation
