I have been investigating and reading a lot more regarding intercultural communication and if it is being used in entry-level classrooms. What I have found is that it differs greatly from program to program, and even in class to class (with the same instructor). These studies are fascinating to read, but many of these studies were conducted 7-12 years ago. There isn’t much research more current than that, and a great deal of globalization and intercultural communication has occurred in the past 7-12 years, leaving a nice little gap I hope to start filling. A lot of the research that has been published about students perceptions and what has been done in the past in entry-level technical communication classrooms, but I will discuss that more in a future post.
I’m starting to branch off into several research projects about intercultural communication because I was spurred on a little when visiting Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education in Chihuahua. I knew that I wanted to do some research about style and intercultural communication, but I didn’t know where to start, but after my visit and taking few classes at the campus, I started to see a few themes emerge. The most prominent were the concept of time and the the concepts of handling conflicts/troublesome topics.
In Chihuahua, I had several encounters with how “time” differed greatly between cultures (even when these cultures were just a 22 hour drive apart). Chihuahuan time (and I was told by students that this extends to Mexican time in general) is much more relaxed. You start your work day at 8am (which is about the same for the US), you work, eat lunch around 1-2pm, work more, finish your day around 5-6pm, spend time with family, and eat somewhere around 9-10pm. But, when I was trying to write these differences down, one of the students laughed at me because he said that wasn’t a rigid schedule. Some days, you may eat around 1am for dinner, other days you might eat a 7pm. It all depended on the context surrounding you. Chihuahuans wouldn’t end an activity to go to a meal and they hesitate a great deal to end an activity to go to another activity (even if that meant they would be late). A lot of our classes were 60minutes long, but many of the classes actually lasted 90 minutes long because we hadn’t finished the activity or completed the lesson. I found this fascinating, because I couldn’t imagine telling any of my students wanting to stay an additional 30 minutes to finish an activity (consistently throughout the semester). But, I really appreciated this mindset in some aspects because we were fully able to discuss information, relax and enjoys each others company, and really engage with new material. On the other hand, it was frustrating a few times, because our bus was consistently 2 hours late, but that was completely worth it for all the other enriching experiences.
The second concept I noticed that was different was how students (and even faculty) handled difficult discussions and topics. We had several conversations about border relations, the Trump administration, trading with Mexico, etc. in the classes I attended. And, we would usually have very deep conversations, but the tact of the students was something extremely interesting. The students were 17-24 years old, and it was interesting to see how they would skirt around troublesome topics such as “the wall” or Mexico-to-US immigration. Anytime anyone would discuss these topics it would be with a very positive attitude (even though they disagreed), and the always ended on a positive note. But, on the flip side, when the US students were addressing these issues, we were much more passionate in our vocalization of these topics. We were angry, frustrated, etc., and we shared that. It was interesting because these topics do still affect the US, but in a different way than the Mexican students, and it was interesting to see them having a more positive and relaxed outlook.
These are just two differences in concepts that I noticed in my trip, and I’m interested to find more scholarship and research addressing more differences and then investigating how we incorporate understanding these differences and they relate to technical writing.
Katie Rieger, Portfolio 