Difference Between Uncertainty And Intercultural Communication

Question 1:

My best friend and I are extremely similar, personality wise, therefore we share many subcultures; however we are also of very different ethnic and religious backgrounds therefore we tend to argue quite a lot due to the difference in our backgrounds. For example, we have very different views on the Palestinian- Israeli conflict, I am of Arab decent therefore naturally I am pro Palestine while he is of Jewish origin, he was raised to be pro Israel, therefore we argue on the conflict consistently. Our political views are radically different due to our cultural upbringings and ethnicity which causes temporary tension in our friendship.

Question 2:

While my best friend and I are extremely close we have experienced tensions due to

The Uncertainty & anxiety management theory, defined as “a framework that explains how uncertainty and anxiety affect intercultural communication.” Due to my best friend and I’s radical difference in cultural backgrounds a lot of what is said may also be misconstrued as I am from a high context culture while he is from a low context culture; at times during our discussion he may say something that is too direct and may offend and shock me while I may say things that have vague implications behind the words which may seem very unclear to him and may anger him. According to the Uncertainty and Anxiety management theory, one should be at a level in between the maximum and minimum threshold for uncertainty and anxiety; where “you feel confident enough to participate in the conversation, but not so much that you don’t pay attention and your anxiety level leaves you motivated to communicate carefully but not frightened or overwhelmed. “ I believe the issue we face is that we both would feel very overwhelmed by what the other would say and would feel the need to retaliate. In scenario A of which actually happened; Patricio and I had a huge argument as we both had very different points of view concerning the Palestinian Israeli conflict. While I was expressing my point of view, he must have grown anxious thinking that the intentions behind my words were cruel since I take a vague approach to the elaboration due to the culture that I am from. However, while he was expressing his point of view, I was growing anxious thinking that he was being very offensive to the Arab culture as I felt that his argument implied a generalization towards the Arab culture, while there are 22 Arab countries in the world. Therefore at one point we both started screaming at each other and the root problem was not because of our different