In Australia, there are a lot of people who are from
different nations such as Asia and Europe. Each nation has its own culture and
customs. Therefore Australia has many multicultural communities in various ways
such as university and workplace. It must be very difficult to find a mono-cultural
community in this country. For example when I was in Monash University, there
is a club called “Japanese Club”, but people who join the club come from
different nations. It means that we have to learn Intercultural communication.
This post will focus about two examples of my experiences.
Firstly I have realised that communication style is very
different between Australia and Japan. Australian people have a tendency to
speak out their opinion and ideas much clearer than Japanese people. For example, if someone says “Yes” in
Australia, it means yes. On the other hand it could be no in Japan. Japanese people
have to seek the actual meaning from nonverbal expression and social setting. According
to Guffey and Loewy (2011), this difference is called low and high context
culture. They said that “low context culture tend to be logical, analytical and
action oriented”. In the business, people believe that stressing their opinions
and ideas is professional and efficient. This is very Australian style culture.
However high-context cultures are not straightforward and Japan must have this
culture. This is because in Japan, people tend to emphasize interpersonal
relationships and nonverbal expression. However when I was working in a big IT
firm in Sydney I found it very difficult to understand what Japanese clients
actually think about. This might be because I mainly used email to contact my
clients and I could not see any nonverbal expression from my clients. Additionally
it might be because I had spent more than 5 years of my life in Australia, and
I may adopt low context culture already.
Through my work experience, I found that Japanese people
tend to focus on small issues. In my workplace, so many Japanese clients asked
me about small technical issues which people from other nation would not think
about. For example one of the client kept compiling and decompiling the data by
using three computers and finally the data does not compile anymore. However I
tested many times but I could not find the technical issue and my manager said
that no one would do the same thing furthermore one of my colleague got very frustrated.
The way of Japanese people thinking
about the technique is the main cause of the conflict. However Japan has
created lots of cars and computers, such as Toyota, Mitsubishi, and Toshiba. It
may be because Japanese technicians always try to improve their products as
much as they can. On the other hand Australia do not have many car or computer
company as Japan. It may be because Australian do not focus on techniques as much
as Japanese.
Guffey and Loewy (2011) mentioned how Japanese culture is
different with Western cultures many time and various ways in the text book. AS a Japanese person who lives in Australia
for a long time, I must have learnt intercultural communication a lot through school
and workplace. Two examples that I mentioned are only small parts of my
experience.
Guffey, M.E. & Loewy, D (2011) Intercultural Communication. Business Communication Process and Product (7th
ed). Mason, USA, South Western Cengage Learning.
