This is a much used expression. So also is it an unfortunate expression, because ‘shock’ to many connotes something on the order of crisis, and crisis is one thing that you almost certainly will not experience in association with going to and getting established in your host culture.
What you very likely will experience is some discombobulation in association with the discontinuity entailed by moving to a new culture, and especially so if this is the first time in your life that you go to live in (as opposed to tour in) a new culture. This discombobulation is going to come in several different flavors and textures, according to your individuality and the particular characteristics of the cultural and academic situation in which you find yourself over there. Generally, though, it is likely to arise mainly from the conjunction of the following circumstances:
A. You will be separated from the friends and acquaintances and work and recreation patterns to which you are accustomed.
B. Unfamiliarity will abound in everyday life. Even if you are going to an English speaking country, not much is going to work in a familiar way right at the start. This will be especially true for everyday ‘basics’, e.g., using the telephone, getting around on public transportation, shopping for essential personal items, constituting a meal from the array of food available to you, etiquette of eating the meal, the local currency, asking directions, casual salutations, what signs and labels mean...... If you are going to a non-English speaking country (the majority of you), even if you have worked on the language of your host country extensively, using it in everyday situations at the beginning is going to feel awkward.
C. Tacit communication. This, I think, is the main thing. Briefly to elaborate: Everyday social interaction most importantly involves the communication of meanings and feelings. To a large extent, this communication is tacit. That is, it involves conventions - of speech, but also and especially of demeanor - which are second nature to us but which we typically don’t and usually can’t articulate. This is not unlike the situation with the rules of phonology and syntax which guide our speech. Everywhere, such tacit conventions suffuse social behavior and, for actors, give it coherence and sensibility and direction and familiarity. But, not surprisingly, these tacit conventions differ strikingly from one culture to another. The tacit social conventions which presently are second nature to you just about certainly will be largely inoperative wherever you are going. And this will quickly be evident to you when you get there. It will not simply be that you will find yourself amid strangers (as just about all of you did when you first came to Swarthmore). You will also, and especially, find yourself among people who are culturally very different from you in this most fundamental respect: tacit social conventions. For your host culture, you can be taught - didactically - a lot about good manners, and so also can you self teach for manners (and I very much hope that you will do so). But no one knows how to teach social ease and fluidity, nor can you train yourself in it.
Very likely, then, some discombobulating awaits you at the beginning of your stay in your host country. What can you do about this?
First, you can and should keep this in perspective: this is a normal kind of circumstance in the lives that most of us lead these days, which lives periodically involve discontinuity.
Second, the real good news about the discombobulating that you will probably experience is that there is a just about sure (99 + %) cure for it, and the cure is perseverance. Stay with it, persist in your efforts to adjust to the lifeways of your host culture, and it will go away. One of the main reasons, I’m sure, that this is so has to do with the ‘tacit social conventions’ business, above: empathy is an important part of getting plugged into such conventions, and empathic processes (which activate automatically, in fact, most people cannot prevent them from occurring) require exposure and time to work. As you spend more time socializing with your hosts in naturalistic, real life, everyday situations, you and they - through unguided empathy - will come to find a shared humanness. And, of course, along with this, you will be making a sustained, consciously directed effort to acquire good manners, by local standards.
A fine, classic discussion of tacit social conventions, especially re the issue of crossing cultural boundaries, can be found in, Edward T. Hall. THE SILENT LANGUAGE (available in the Off-Campus Study Office).Top
Third, in these kinds of discontinuity situations, there are a number of things that you can usefully just do whenever you feel like it:
A. In your non-scheduled time, stay physically active. If you have a regular exercise regimen and can implement it over there, that’s a real good idea. Regardless, walking is a wonderful activity, especially in a new culture.
B. Find ways to associate with natives in their naturalistic, everyday situations. Even if the encounters are brief - e.g., while shopping, or asking directions - they are likely to be worthwhile for you. And, for brief encounters, devise ways to extend them just a bit, e.g., by asking a question that doesn’t have to do with the utilitarian purpose of the encounter. The question might well have to do with the meaning of a word or phrase that has occurred in the encounter. Or you might simply express interest in or admiration for any object that is nearby. And, no matter how rudimentary your language abilities may be, do your best to use the native language in these encounters. No matter how badly, by ‘objective’ standards, you are doing with the native language, almost always your ‘conversation partner’ will be very pleased that you are trying. His or her pleasure with your respectful, good faith efforts with the native language may lead to a friendly prolongation of the encounter. Especially during the first week or two, informal friendliness or laughs that you can share with natives are likely to do wonders for your morale. Normally, some of this will be available to you, if you take the initiative. Since just about certainly these early encounters are going to feel awkward to you, taking initiative means biting the bullet and persevering in spite of feeling awkward. It’s not entirely unlike what many of you went through (or haven’t yet, but probably will go through), re coming to feel comfortable with interacting with Swarthmore faculty members out of class.
C. Write, descriptively, about things you can readily observe in your everyday life, e.g., the street scene in front of your lodgings, what transpires in a local market, members of your host family, social usages in association with the preparation and consumption of food, the etiquette of casual greeting. But, please remember: you should be writing about things that are going on around you, outside of you. It’s not a good idea to write about, e.g., your feelings. In these discontinuity situations, cloying, sometimes self-pitying preoccupation with oneself is one of the things we often want to get over. Focusing and fixating upon your feelings is not a useful means to this end. Re the writing, you may want to take a look at, Ken Wagner and Tony Magistrale. WRITING ACROSS CULTURES (available in the Off-Campus Study Office).
D. Have your sense of humor ready to hand. Do your best to use it to smile at yourself when things are confusing or frustrating. Top
Fourth, there are a couple of things that you should not do:
a. Don’t allow yourself to come to rely heavily on home connections, through, e.g., frequent e-mail or phone chatter with friends or family back in the states. On the other hand, re (c), just above, making this kind of writing the heart of a long letter to someone back home that you care about a lot can be a real good idea.
b. Don’t blame, don’t scapegoat, and don’t complain. Almost never will your situation objectively justify such behavior. And, regardless, such behavior won’t make you feel better, and it will decrease the likelihood of your having a good semester.
Fifth, there is the related and important issue of CULTURAL SENSITIVITY on your part. Many of you have travelled abroad previously, but only a few of you have lived abroad; and almost none of you have lived in the country and the culture that is presently your destination. This is likely to create the following dilemma for you: you will want to be considerate of the sensibilities of your hosts, but you won’t know in detail or reliably how to do so, especially at the outset.
There are a couple of useful rejoinders to this dilemma.
First, make a palpable, good faith, and unremitting effort to express respect and appreciation for your
hosts by attempting to accommodate your behavior to their lifeways. You will, to be sure, make some
social mistakes. But, chances are, the main thing that your hosts will notice is your palpable good faith
effort, and they will appreciate this truly and will overlook or make light of your inevitable mistakes.
Second, many of you will be attending programs staffed by natives of your host culture and/or people fully conversant with its customs. Out of consideration for both you and your hosts, your program staff will often offer very specific guidance and direction, re this accommodation business. I very much hope that you will consider it your moral obligation to allow yourself to be guided in these matters by your program staff members. Don’t allow yourself, on whatever grounds, to suppose that you know better, re the cultural sensibilities of your hosts. The likelihood that you actually do know better borders on zero, indeed, it may be over the border.
In some sub-Saharan African and South American cultures, large quantities of meat are an everyday household dietary staple. Many of these same cultures have an ethos of welcome, especially toward strangers and outsiders, that is unknown in middle class America. A few students attending a home stay program in one of these countries were vegetarian. The program emphasizes the home stay as central to its educational mission, calls upon its students to accommodate to the customs of hosts’ households, and discourages students who require vegetarian diets. These vegetarian students nonetheless told their host families that they required vegetarian diets. Because of the deep-seated cultural ethos of welcome to strangers, the host families acquiesced, albeit this occasioned inconvenience and discomfiture for them. The students’ cultural sensitivities were insufficiently developed to discern this. Indeed, they went so far as to accuse the program of being dishonest, re the dietary matter, in its dealings with its students.
These students experienced some unpleasantness that they could have avoided. But by far the main problem here is that, because they were unwilling to allow themselves to be guided in these matters, they occasioned real aggravation for hosts who had graciously and warmly welcomed them into their homes and lives. Top