Pieper CAPS #6

Intercultural Friendships

Before this chapter, I never really considered that different cultures view friendships in different lights.  I completely agree with Martin & Nakayama’s point that we “form friendships with people who are often very similar to ourselves.”  (Martin & Nakayama, 2011, p. 393) That is one aspect that made my response to this blog prompt slightly more difficult.  In our Western culture, we are often prone to develop relationships quickly with strangers with whom we share interests.  Even if these interests do not go beyond mutual friends, similar favorite sports teams, or commonly liked bands.  We often refer to people we recently met and held conversations with about these topics as our “friends.”

In other cultures, people are not so quick to call people their friends.  Creating relationships takes a lot more time and effort, and they “develop only after long and careful scrutiny” (Martin & Nakayama, 2011, p. 394)  In general, it takes longer for people in non-American cultures to let others into their “middle” and “inner circles.”

After having spent the summer overseas in Germany, I was able to relate very well with a couple of the points that Martin & Nakayama made in this chapter.  Though I personally disagree with their assessment that German people take longer than a year to call someone their friend.  I was asked on multiple occasions about some of the ways that I normally strike up conversations.  In particular, I often got weird responses when I asked people how they were doing today.  Some people would simply nod their head as if to acknowledge my question.  Others would simply not respond at all.  

Luckily, I was able to become close enough friends with my roommates in Dresden that I was able to have a conversation about this particular phrase with them.  They asked me if I actually cared about how they were doing when I asked this question.  They thought of it as a superficial question, thinking that I really did not care to know.  I explained to them that the question was a way to stimulate conversation.  That I was looking for a response where they told me their day was going either good or bad, but then to elaborate upon that and tell me WHY it was good or bad.  After that, asking how each other’s day went was a typical greeting amongst us.  

A picture of myself and my German roommates

In my mind, the static-dynamic dialectic is the best way to describe many of my friendships.  A Bob Marley line came to mind when I read about the static-dynamic dialectic.  The line goes “good friends we have had, good friends we’ve lost along the way.” 

There is a relationship I have had with a friend from grade school that could be described in this static-dynamic way.  We have gone in and out of being best friends.  We were very close early on in grade school since we were both boys and played on the same soccer teams.  I remember running around his backyard catching bumble bees (yeah maybe not our smartest move).  Later on in grade school we drifted apart as he became better friends with another group of guys.  Our Catholic grade school labeled his group of friends as the “skaters” and mine as the “jocks.” 

We both attended the same high school but did not become friends until Sophomore year when a mutual friend brought us close again.  We began going to the same parties and hanging out at the same places.  I distinctly remember us being into the same video game (Halo 3), which made our friendship rekindling an easy transition.  From Sophomore year on, we remained extremely good friends.  Hanging out multiple times throughout the week and even getting into what we will call “mischief” together.

Upon graduation, we chose to attend different universities.  He set out for Colorado State and I for UNL.  This obviously affected our friendship.  He was occupied in Colorado while I was in Lincoln.  We would call each other a couple times a semester and catch up for a bit, but we were not talking and seeing each other as much as we did in high school.  Well after a serious of events, he ended up in some trouble and was dire need for someone to talk to and lean on.  It was at that time that I began increasing the number of calls and now we talk regularly.  We shoot each other texts throughout the week.  Show each other funny videos on the internet.  Our friendship is growing again and luckily for me he is returning to Nebraska soon.  I think his and mine relationship is the perfect example of how a relationship ebbs and flows over time.  

References

Martin, J. N., & Nakayama, T. K. (2011). Intercultural communication in contexts (5th ed). Boston, MA: McGraw Hill.