Whitney Scholtes CAPs Blog #4

Culture Shock

When transitioning into new cultural contexts, individuals may experience many challenges. Culture shock can happen to almost anyone and everyone in these intercultural transitions. Culture shock is "a relatively short-term feeling of disorientation and discomfort due to the lack of familiar cues in the enviornment" (Martin & Nakayama, 2009). The term culture shock was derived by Kalvero Oberg who was an anthropologist. He suggests culture shock is like a disease meaning it has symptoms like irritability or excessive hand washing. By learning the language of the new culture or making new friends, you can "recover" from culture shock or adapt to the new cultural situation. This may reduce culture shock and may make you feel more comfortable in your new surroundings.

One example the book gave on culture shock was of the military going over seas. Military personnel who stay on their base over seas and don't have much contact with the civilians may experience little culture shock. Military members nowadays have more contact with civilians of other countries making culture shock more prominent. As Americans we have different cultural norms than someone who may be Muslim. Culture shock may arise when going into their country and territory where their culture is much different than ours. One way in reducing culture shock would be for military members to learn about the culture they are going to be entering.

I have experienced culture shock myself a time or two but one paticular example would be when I went to New York City. I am from a very small town so going to such a big city was quite a culture shock all in its own. Things are much different there from what I'm used to. Everything is extremely fast passed and it's like the city never sleeps, whereas I'm used to the night being quite and peaceful back home. I remember going on the subways where it was always crowded and there was always people in a hurry. Some people also dressed very differently and some people seemed quite strange. The subways is where I had the most culture shock, but the more times we rode it, the more normal it started to become. At first I had extreme culture shock and then it died down a little. But I suspect that if I ever go back to New York and ride the subways again, I will experience culture shock all over again.

References
Martin, J.N., & Nakayama T.K. (2009). Intercultural Communication in Context (5th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Higher Education.

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