Culture Shock

I assume that everyone who is reading this has heard of "culture shock" but please bear with me as I wax academic and provide some definitions, just so we're on more or less the same page to start out. Culture, at its base, consists of "a network of shared meanings that are taken for granted as reality by those interacting within the network" (Zapf, 1991, p. 105). Although culture is surely learned through socialization beginning with infancy, it eventually takes root in the consciousness of individuals and is the lens through which the external world is interpreted. So, when a person is immersed in a different culture by, say, moving to another country, the taken-for-granted meanings frequently are no longer relevant. Since the person is not used to needing to figure out what EVERYTHING means from scratch, at first she may not realize this and continue to interpret happenings through her cultural lens. When she realizes that her unquestioned internal meanings might no longer be relevant, she experiences what is known as culture shock. The literature describes culture shock as having several phases; some authors identify four phases and others identify five, some starting with a positive appraisal and others with initial negative appraisal. What I'm intending to do with this post is tell you some of what I've observed in myself and others in regard to culture shock.

I've previously written about this a little bit, about the concept of personal space. Of course, I've also written about a number of cultural observations as well. Culture shock, though, has emotional content that I've only hinted at.

The first time Doug and I traveled to Mexico was eight years ago, for a conference at which Doug was presenting a paper. We spoke VERY little Spanish at the time (mostly I knew some words for food, how to ask what time it is but not how to interpret the answer, how to count to ten, curse words but not really what they meant--from growing up in west Texas). We were in Merida a couple of days before the conference was to start, so we were going off to visit the town square. Looking at a map trying to figure out how to get from where we were to the town square, I made the astute observation "It would be easier to figure this out if all the streets weren't named 'Calle'." What I didn't know at the time was 1) "street" is "calle" in Spanish; and 2) the order of words in the name of a street is different in Spanish than it is in English. So, Calle 8 is 8th Street. I was feeling frustrated with the difference; when we figured out that calle is street, I also felt dumb (maybe the feeling is embarassment or self-loathing). I don't think I consciously blamed Mexican culture for that, but probably did at some level.

After the conference was over, we were staying for another week for vacation and I had planned a driving trip to various other places in the Yucatan (Merida is the capital of the Yucatan state). Driving was much easier than in England, except that there were highway signs that we had no idea what they said (that still happens sometimes). The second place we were going was an island off the north coast of the Yucatan peninsula. We were going to need to park the car in a village on the mainland and take a ferry to the island. I thought there would be parking lots where we would pay to park (the guide book had indicated there would be places to park so I thought that's what it meant). We got to the little village and didn't see any parking lots. We did see the pier and the ferry and a number of fishing boats. Then we saw people waving us toward a low building of some kind. When we got closer, we could see that there were cars parked VERY close together in the building. An old man pointed me toward a space, Doug got out of the car because there was not going to be room to open both doors, and I parked. By the time I got out, the old man was lowering a hammock, showing us that he slept there to guard the cars, and Doug was trying to pay him. The man was refusing to take the money, so Doug thought that meant we were supposed to pay someone else. Two other men (well, one man and one teenager) came over, so Doug was asking them where we were to pay. One of those guys spoke a little bit of English and we finally figured out that we were supposed to pay when we came back to get the car! Once again, we felt like the big, stupid Gringos. They didn't seem to mind, though. Then we were trying to ask about the ferry and the man indicated that he had a fishing boat and would take us to the island (for a fee, of course). That seemed more interesting that a commercial ferry, so we went for it.

These are examples of where our conceptual maps didn't reflect the reality of Mexico in terms of language/word order and how a parking lot works (or even what a parking lot is!). When we tried to apply our conceputal maps, we were frustrated. When we realized our conceptual maps didn't work, we were embarassed. Other people might have been angry (I had my own angry reactions to cultural differences in India, but that's another story!).

The early experiences of culture shock, as I said earlier, are characterized by negative appraisals by some authors. I think both Doug and I had mild experiences of this. They weren't horribly negative, but there certainly were times of frustration. For some people, the early period in experiencing a new culture is more infatuation--everything about the new culture is so interesting and so special. In the Mexican culture, for instance, family is so much more important than it is in the dominant US culture. The second time we were in Mexico, we were with a group of social workers and social work educators (mostly) from the US. We certainly heard expressions of this--Mexican culture was being perceived by some in our group as so much better than our home culture because of the emphasis on family. Some authors refer to perceptions such as these as a "honeymoon" phase of culture shock. I, on the other hand, have felt almost somewhat offended when people who have just met me ask if I have kids. I heard this as "you should have kids or you're not normal;" instead, I think it is just a reflection of the importance of family here.

If one is immersed in a different culture for long enough, inevitably experiences of both types happen. When I wrote several weeks ago about how dogs are different here than in the US, there was probably some of that overly-positive appraisal happening. However, I would still say that most of the dogs I see in our neighborhood here are better behaved in public (even though there have been a few instances of dogs left outside a restaurant howling, barking, and going totally wild when their people returned to them. I blame that on the people!).

Mostly, I don't perceive of things here in general as being better than or worse than in the US--just different. Some of the things that are different I like quite a lot most of the time. For instance, there is a high degree of politeness--greetings are expected both when you enter and when you leave. That's nice most of the time. I think I will have more fully adapted to the culture here when I don't even think about it but just do it, when it's neither nice nor a pain in the butt, it just is.

As I'm writing this, I'm hearing the sharp whistle used by the guy who goes around with a machine to sharpen knives. Talk about something different!


The article I referenced above is: Cross-cultural transitions and wellness:
Dealing with culture shock. International Journal for the Advancement of Counseling, 15 (2), pp. 105-119 by Michael Kim Zapf.