Self Disclosure In Culture

As I went to the United States, I experienced the difference of communication style between Japanese and American. I had intended to show my curiosity without talking, but my uncle cannot realize my interests. He told me that I should have acted out my curiousness and express distinctly in the United States. Compared to the United States, many Japanese tend to express obscurely and hide their true feelings.

This experienced taught me how important express myself. Expressing myself is called self-disclosure. Fallows (2012) said that self-disclosure is purposely reveal personal information to another person. It means that self-disclosure is to express who they are and what value they have. Of course, there are many characteristics to help intercultural

Different communication styles cause some difficulties of intercultural communication. Especially, between high-context and low-context cultures, there are many difficulties about communication. Self-disclosure is the best means to avoid some difficulties about different communication styles and provides intercultural communication efficiently. Self-disclosure can support the communication between high-context and low-context cultures. The characteristics of high-context and low-context cultures can describe the importance of self-disclosure. Edward T. Hall defined high-context and low-context

Self-disclosure is the best aid to help people who are from different cultures to communicate effectively in verbal and non-verbal way. Bae stated that they do not need to have verbal communication to be self-disclosure (as cited in Tili and Barker, 2015, p.201). Using non-verbal expression also can explain the importance of self-disclosure. Non-verbal communication also can express who they are and what they think about. Of course, non-verbal communication might cause some misunderstandings among different cultures. However, even if people use non-verbal communication, expressing their feelings and thoughts can avoid misunderstandings and provide effect intercultural communication. There is an example of the useful of non-verbal communication and how non-verbal communication help intercultural communication. According to Sunaoshi (2005), she analyzed one conversation between American and Japanese. She found how they compensate the limitation of language and differences in communication style by paralinguistic elements (pp. 196-201). In their conversation, two people are in the situation that the language is limited. Instead of the language, they exploit many non-verbal cues to tell the information such as gaze, gesture, and positioning. Especially, during the confirmation of quantity, non-verbal communication has a great impact to communicate. Sunaoshi (2005) analyzed this conversation and found Japanese who