Contact Zones and the Art of Interpersonal Communication | Anthony Hung | TEDxPSUBehrend
[Music] so I want to start by telling you guys a story and it's a very hypothetical but very realistic story and I want you guys to immerse yourselves in the roles of these characters put yourselves in their shoes if you will so imagine yourselves as team leaders all right a group of soldiers in a war torn country somewhere very far away from where used to with different culture speaking different language you have no idea what the culture is like over there and as you're in this city going House to House Clearing looking for the enemy you come up on the last house you stack up your team stack up behind you you give the queue the guy behind you kick open the door you go in you clear each room and then you arrive in the living room there is an old man scared with his hands up you're your team whicher guns point at him you say put your hands up put your hands up hands where I can see them now within your team there's a combat translator whose job is to translate to help you guys communicate with the local population so then you ask this old man you ask him is there anyone in the house is there anyone in the house CU as team leader you need to know if there are any other possible threats in the house so this translator then translates that but unbeknownst to you and your team the local culture and the language is quite different it doesn't go word for word in English in fact the local culture and language they never refer to women or children directly so what the old what the translator end up asking is are there any men in the house are there any men in the house so the old man he's in fear he has like four or five God point at him he's not going to lie to you he says no no there are no other men in the house then the translator translates back to you which nobody's lying because there is no other men in the house but then it is at this moment that a young girl perhaps 14year old comes into the room and says Grandpa what's going on right there and then your soldiers jump into alert mode this guy just says there's no one else in the house with your guns point at this little girl and you as team leader you have a split second to make the decision do you take the shot or not if you don't take a shot it's possible that this little girl can pull out a handgun empty 15 rounds into you and your men but if you take a shot what what if this girl is innocent what if it was just a hamburger a doll that she's holding behind her back are you willing to live with that guilt do you want to go get Court Marshal so as you can see the gravity of this situation and many people interpret this as the mistranslation in war but I'd like to take it a step further in my opinion I think this is more than just a issue of translation Mis transation I think this is an issue of the lack of understanding for the local culture you see whenever you speak with someone from from another culture another language and or there's some translation involved it's not just an exchange of words there's an exchange of culture going on here and I think the problem here is that these soldiers over Reliance on the translator to translate to accurately refer to them the information they need that's the problem so what I want to talk about today is Intercultural communication notice the key word Intercultural as I previously mentioned when you talk to someone from another culture it's not just word for word there is an exchange of culture going on so let me illustrate that with an example since I'm a business student here at Penn State I'm going to use a more business oriented example from my experiences um most American businessmen tend to be not all but tend but a lot of them tend to be a lot more you know dominant aggressive you know confident basically but you see when you tell an Asian when you go to Asia for for example and you tell them hey let's meet tonight let's have a business meeting tonight they might interpret that as okay let's go out for dinner um let's have some food let's get to know each other build a bond because in Asia when you want to do business you got to get to know the person you're buying and selling to him from you got to have that sense of trust but I think with a lot of Western businessmen the value of the transaction comes first I want to fly to Brazil and I want to be out by tonight sign that contract get that deal get the those rolling in get that done now imagine yourselves as now as businessmen or women going to China for example all right so going to a new place understanding the styles of communication is extremely important okay so in I remember a class that I took here in pen said actually marketing 410 personal selling great Professor by the way so so in this class you know we were taught about personal selling right how to how to sell stuff and as salesmen you or sales agents sales women you have to be confident so we were taught the marketing 410 handshake got to be confident you got to you know hey how's it going how are you now in this class I experienced my fair share of hand crushing handshakes you know guys girls you know they got gotta show that confidence that dominance over you you know and I've experienced my fair share of that but you if you were to do that in perhaps where I'm from in Taiwan or in China or in a lot of parts of Asia this could be viewed as aggressive or even unprofessional even so now I want to introduce a concept called Contact zones now contact zones are closely intertwined with the concept of Intercultural communication now what are contact zones contact zones was first developed by Dr Mary Louise Pratt in her the outs of the contact zones now in my own words kind of my interpretation examples contact Zone contact zones are basically spaces where different cultures meet however when different cultures meet it's quite possible that conflicts May erupt because we don't understand each other all right if you look at historical examples you know when the Europeans first came to the Americas what happened you know to the Aztec for what happened to the you know Native Americans this room right here is a contact Zone all right while contact zones are historically usually on the battlefield and still is but in today's world with the world shrinking with social media internet technology neighborhoods your wmart schools classrooms have become contact zones why did I say this room is a contact zone I'm from Taiwan you might be from eie Pennsylvania you might be from where my sister in the crowd Detroit Michigan you know I have people friends here from China from from Italy everywhere this room is a contact Zone and I am initiating Intercultural communication with you guys also to those who may watching online so may ask me at this point Anthony why do you care so much about Intercultural communication and contact and all that like what does that have to do with you what does that have to do with me you see I'm no stranger to contact zones in Intercultural communication I grew up immersed in culture shock I came to United States at the age of s to study U my mom was doing her PhD so I came along Ted along you know studied here and my English back then was pretty terrible I only knew how to say you know the word Apple that's not going to help you much you know to communicate right so I communicated first through the universal language of strength and what is that to put it bluntly with my fists because you see as a you know as a little boy on the playground you know you have a bunch of boys they always vying for Supremacy beating each other up so if you can beat up the biggest baddest kid you know you instantly earn respect from the other kids you know that worked pretty well for me and it was very fun but that fun didn't last you see in high school I moved back to Taiwan and boy was that a shock for me you see despite being Asian despite being from Taiwan I felt like an outsider within my own culture in my own country going to high school in Taiwan the culture there is or should I say the majority of Asian cultures um were more about the greater good the interest of the team of the group of the majority okay and growing growing up in America I had a strong sense of individualism I'm Anthony I'm me you know that self identity is so deeply rooted in me so going back home it wasn't easy for me to get along with other kids or my teachers so obviously you know School wasn't the smooth experience for me in high school especially it imagine coming into the classroom now mind you we had wooden desks all right it's like single desk it's not like this it's connected so single desk wooden desk you know I would come in the classroom my desk would be a pile of wood now you might think that's not that's not that bad pile of wood if you put it back together right no pile of wood with shampoo dumped over it so now I got to drag these pieces of woods Take It Outside wash it up bring it back into the classroom dry it put it back together yeah I wasn't exactly focused on school that much you know having to do this almost every day and I also realize that I'm in high school now I can't just beat up whoever I wish you know I got to be more civilized now too also in this different culture so I talked to the teacher you know I think like the most reasonable thing to do so I talked to my teacher but I think as you may have already guessed my teacher basically said just bear with it you know you're one person let's not flip over the whole classroom trying to find out who the culprit is although I knew who the culprit was I know who hated me the most in the classroom right but see I've always wondered how different things would have turned out back then if I had tried to understand the culture way from the beginning to initiate that Intercultural communication with my classmates and my teachers way from the beginning where things have been different back then but that's out in the past now so let's move on to the next two important steps of my life so after high school I was in the Taiwanese army in the military and then I also was I also worked in a biotech firm that had me traveling overseas this is all before College come in here so I worked in the biotech from that had me traveling overseas quite a bit and these two experiences taught me a lot about why it is important to be able to communicate with people who are different than you so in the Army and the military you got to have trust you got to have that bond with the guy next to you cuz you been trus in your life to him and he's doing the same to you so if there's no trust that Team Works not going to be there in business if you can't communicate efficiently with people who are different from you and most of your clients are going to be different from you by the way so if you can't do that it often times means no deal no money all right it means failure so at this point you might be wondering okay Anthony this sounds really complicated how exactly do I go about doing this well I'm here to tell you it's actually not that hard Intercultural communication how to effectively initiate it how to go about doing it it all starts with being humble setting aside your personal opinion being humble being courteous be nice and most importantly be genuine you see when you want to approach someone you want to talk to them you got to be genuine like actually interested in this person because people aren't dumb people can sense it if you're not actually interested in what they have to say right all of that you know back when I was working all all of that hey how's it going going how's your day you know I'm not actually interested in what you have to say you know I just want to get you signed that deal so actually being interested is really important and this is something that you see I see a lot here on campus you know you might be walking and then you hear a group of kids you know that's foreign right they come from another country they're talking their own language I'll take Chinese for example because I I you know I speak Chinese Mandarin so you know you might hear a group of chineses talking you can go up to them and just say oh wow what what language is that or you know what you guys talking about you know at first they might be a little stunned you know think you're weird or whatever that you can also take this a little step further do a little research before approaching them you know how do you say hello in Chinese niow next time you can go up and say hey niow right and you can ask you know ask him about hey you know what's a good authentic restaurant you know around here cuz you know like anywhere Asian kids go they'll find the real authentic restaurants you know for me personally when I came back here for college in America it was very easy for me to to find kids who are alike and this is also the next step of Intercultural communication once you've started it the next step quite important equally important in fact is relating to that person all right once you show genuine curiosity you got to relate to them and then you you'll find similarity you see when you start doing that you'll realize that we people we we may look different come from different backgrounds but at the end we aren't all that different we're quite alike especially um actually so for me it was quite easy to relate to the local military Community having served in the Army before it's quite easy you know we start talking about guns gear you know it things just click but that's not it like I can also relate to kids who might be a little more you know stylish you know the Hipster City kids right I'm look at where I'm dressed you I'm looking the way I have my hair up so you know I obviously am interested in fashion whatever is trending now at this point you might ask okay okay Anthony but you know I'm not I've I'm not been in the military I'm not really interested in fashion either how do I go about doing this and you want to take it safe do you eat food how many of you eat I hope everybody rais your hand right I mean I eat too see food you can never go wrong right Everybody Eats when I came here I tried everything you know your stereotypical classic American food your steak your Mac and Cheese you know your hamburger barbecue ribs but eating that trying that is not it you you got to go take it a step further see I learned that steak you can pan fry it you can Grill it you can broil in the oven you got to actually understand show genuine interest and after trying these food I tell my American friends all right now it's your turn I'm going to cook some real authentic Asian food for you this is not something you can get in the restaurant this is the real deal getting that Intercultural communication going so why is it important why is it important for us to do that you see when you start initiating Intercultural communication when you are brave enough to take that first step you'll find you you you'll start learning you'll start becoming more culturally diverse you see being comfortable in a contact Zone that's what will help us eliminate conflicts the majority of conflicts in this world comes from the inability to understand each other so if you can put yourself in another person's shoes if you're brave enough to take that first step the benefits are endless but only if you take that first step thank you [Music]