Comparing Japanese and Americans with a Jewish Background Communication Styles

In contemporary, there is a globalization of society while there are some problems of cross-cultural on communication. This paper examines the use of language from different cultural background in the context of the communication difficulties from cultural difference. By using a situation in which a native Japanese speaker and an American with a Jewish background as an example to demonstrate communication difficulties could arise in their conversational interaction.

First of all, there might exist misunderstanding among a native Japanese and an American because of spoken style and sentence formation. The native Japanese speaker would probably feel the American is being rude and not polite. It is because the American with a Jewish Background – their accent in which the way they speak English has a negative image or meaning attached to it. According to Tannen Deborah, he summarized some Features of New York Jewish Conversation Style which including two main areas that Topic and Pacing (1981, 137). For example, an American prefers to shift topics drastically and introduce topics without hesitance. Moreover, if a new topic is not immediately picked up, then an American would reintroduce it repeatedly if necessary. Nevertheless, the pacing of an American who has Jewish background usually has faster rate of speech and turn taking when they communicate with others (1981, 137). These features in the view of native Japanese are the specific attribution of aggressiveness to a speaker who used fast pacing in conversation. As a result from that, it will lead to misunderstanding when they have communication among each other such characteristics as sound aggressive, a little too energetic and sort of in a hurry. In addition, by using another e...

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...consistent with their roles when using body language. Do less meaningless movement that would distract the attention of the other, so as not to affect the communication effectiveness.

In conclusion, this paper comparative of Japanese and American with a Jewish background designed to identify the characteristics of the communication styles and pointed out the problems and issues in intercultural communication. The discussion that follows is threefold: it presents the difference of the spoken style and sentence formation between native Japanese and an American with Jewish background, a discussion of the cultural differences lead to miscommunication, and a consideration of Japanese communication style. Its purpose is to help the reader gain an understanding of the different cultural experience of which the language and its communication style are a part.