Page 172 - Between One and Many The Art and Science of Public Speaking

Considering Diversity

Between Two Cultures: Tomoko Mukawa

Tomoko Mukawa was born in Japan and lived there until guage changed the way Tomoko was perceived. Language
she was 15, when she fi rst came to the United States as a and culture are closely intertwined, as her experience has
high school exchange student. When she returned to the shown.
United States as a college student, Tomoko was struck by
the differences in the way students and professors com-
municate in the two different cultures. Tomoko gives an ex-
ample of differences between the two cultures:
I wanted to keep my fl uency in Japanese, so I took
a class from a Japanese professor. Although the
American students were allowed to call the professor
by his American nickname, I was required to follow the
Japanese tradition of always using his title and surname.
He stressed that, as a Japanese student, I needed to
preserve my cultural heritage.
Tomoko also noticed that the language in which she
spoke made a difference in how she was treated. As an
English tutor for Japanese students coming to the United
States, Tomoko discovered that when she spoke English
she was perceived as more assertive than when she spoke
Japanese. “You are like a different person when you speak
Japanese,” she was told by one of her students.
These experiences illustrate the differences between a
large-power-distance culture like Japan and a small-power-
distance culture like the United States. In Japan, students
would never be familiar with professors, and women are
generally not assertive. Simply speaking in her native lan-

In speaking to a more collectivistic audience, one would emphasize the greater
good rather than individual benefi ts. Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez drives
people from individualistic cultures crazy with his plans to nationalize private
industries. For the collectivist people who voted for Chavez, however, his public
speeches reinforce their belief that these industries should benefi t the population
as a whole, not just the executives and stockholders of individual companies.
The highly individualistic orientation of Americans may be slightly changing
given immigration patterns and birth rates. Census data show that more people
from collectivist cultures such as Asia reside in the United States today than at
any other time in history. American college students today fi nd that people from
collectivist cultures are an increasing part of their audience. To fi nd out where
you stand as an individual on this dimension, see the box “How Collectivistic or
Individualistic Are You?”

Femininity Versus Masculinity
The third dimension of culture in Hofstede’s scheme is femininity versus mascu-
linity. Hofstede explains: “Femininity stands for a society in which social gender
roles overlap: both men and women are supposed to be modest, tender, and
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concerned with the quality of life.” Masculinity, on the other hand, “stands for 139