Interpretations

"It is almost impossible to send a message that does not have at least some cultural content, whether it's in the words themselves, in the way they are said, or in the nonverbal signals that accompany them. and even is it were possible to send a message without any cultural content, it's not possible to receive one without passing it through the filter of one's own cultural conditioning." -??

This past week I've had interesting conversations with two separate people. The topics themselves were not so staggering or amazing, but it was what taking these two conversations together made me consider. They were both quite similar discussions about what a specific e-mail we had received meant. Discussions that revealed we had interpreted fairly simple sentences in completely different ways. And we were two North Americans coming from fairly similar backgrounds. It made me start to see how things between us and some of the Turks can get so confusing. If two people coming from similar places can't read three sentences while getting the same impression what chance do a lot of cross country interactions have? I'm hoping that this reminder will give me a bit more patience and understanding when I have trouble getting my point across in the future (which happens plenty...you should of seen me trying to explain what I meant by the word "hiss" to my office mates last week). It's a good reminder, one that I was made aware of during my peace corps years, but one that as I continue to move around needs to be refreshed in my mind.