Earlier this year, I hired a gentleman named Ali. His olive skin made it apparent that his
ancestry was that of somewhere in the Middle East, but his clearly spoken
English let you know that he was either born and raised here in the United
States, or left his home country at a young age. Finding his employee spotlight very
interesting – a tail of fleeing his home country for Africa before arriving in America
– riddled with a dry humor that I much appreciated, I decided he would be the
perfect candidate to interview, in order to understand intercultural
communication and communication issues.
What his spotlight didn’t tell was his whole story, that of having to
learn a completely different culture, where women were considered equal,
religious beliefs are a choice, and a simple joke could get you slapped with a
lawsuit. This is Ali’s story of learning
how to communicate effectively in a completely different culture than he had
been raised.
Ali’s first childhood memory is when he is around four years
old watching the 1978 World Cup on their new 27 inch color television. This was a big deal because not many people
had color televisions, especially one as large as 27 inches, in Iran in 1978. Being from Iran, he remembers that football –
known as soccer to Americans – was really one of the only games the
neighborhood boys played together. There
were only two television stations that ran during limited hours of the day and
the only thing allowed on their stations having to do with the western world
was that to do with Olympic or international sports. Their television was greatly controlled by
their government. Because of this, he
really didn’t know much about America, and the media did not have much
influence on his opinions or beliefs about the Western world.
He lived near the Northern border of Iran, on the Turkey
side. There were beautiful mountains
they could see from their small city, and would visit on vacation. Iran has vast mountainous regions, basins or
plateaus where cities are developed and only small rivers and lakes; although
it has the Caspian Sea to the North and the Persian Gulf bordering the South
(GlobalSecurity.org, n.d.).
Ali describes being not being able to walk safely down the
street as boys would be grabbed while walking and forced to fight in the
war. Nobody would know for sure what
happened to the child until the family would receive a call to collect the
body. The country’s revolution had
ended, but they were at war with Iraq.
According to Dodds and Wilson (2009), the Iran-Iraq War was over a
border and cost over a million lives on both sides over the 8 years yet failed
to meet Iraq’s initial goals (paras. 89 & 92). The war mostly took place around the southern
border, and he lived north, but they suffered air raids where bombs would be
dropped for days on end. Sometimes these
attacks would be targeted to their utility centers, and sometimes they would
just drop bombs on the homes.
Due to the war, poor economic conditions and severe
oppression, many of his family members fled the country…some legally, some
illegally. According to Takeyh (2010),
Iraq and Iran began attacking each other’s civilian population in 1984, which
caused the Iranian people to become demoralized and ultimately was the
beginning of the end of the war (p.374).
Ali said that some family members fled through the mountains into Turkey
illegally and, unfortunately, are now all over the world so he doesn’t get to
see them. His father worked for the
Embassy and after calling in favors with some connections, was able to transfer
to Tanzania when there was an opening.
They knew when they left that they would never return to their home
country. He talked of being excited to
move to Africa, although his father told him that the area was very poor, they
were not at war, he knew he would no longer suffer the oppression of the Muslim
religion and he would be able to play with his friends without the worry of
being taking off and forced to fight in the war.
Iran was a very proper culture. Ali went to an all-boys school and was forced
to practice the Muslim religion. He had
to wear long-sleeve button down shirts all through the year, even during summer
when their average temperature is around 100 degrees Fahrenheit. He was not allowed to speak or play with
girls. Their week is Saturday – Friday
and they attend school Saturday – Thursday.
On their one day off they would go to what we would call a farmers
market. Everyone from the village would
bring stuff the extra vegetables they had grown and they would trade and barter
with each other. This was the one time
that the boys could play and feel a little safer, since everyone was together.
The impression that is most vivid or has the most impact on
him today is the oppression that he experienced as a child. Because he had to wear such proper clothing
every day, he rarely dresses so proper now.
He particularly likes being able to wear clothing that allows him to
express himself, or has logos of his favorite comics and television shows. In addition, he has studied various religions
and is now an agnostic. He said that
renouncing the Muslim religion of Islam was one of the first things he did once
they left Iran, because that form of oppression was such a large part of his
every-day life. Under the Islamic
Regime, the clergy took over government posts that regulate religious rituals
and enforce its definition of religion with the institutions they created;
which determine whether architecture, one’s dress, conversation, and even
movies were Muslim or not (Khalaji, 2011).
If they determine that it is not, then it is not allowed to be built,
worn, discussed or watched.
As stated previously, he was excited to move to Africa. He attended an international school where
there were multiple languages being spoken.
He could choose what language he wanted to learn. Knowing that they would one day move to the
United States, he quickly immersed himself into the English language. He listened to other people talk and asked as
many questions as he could. Within just
a few months he was communicating pretty independently with his other school
mates in the English language. Besides learning
a new language, the biggest change he experienced was taking classes with mostly
girls, as the school had a high enrollment of girls and the school in Iran was
not integrated.
He felt very welcomed both in Africa and the United
States. He was not as excited to come to
America, though because he was 18 and the only one in his family to speak
fluent English so he felt as though he had the world on his shoulders. His mother’s family had to sponsor each
member so his mother came over first and he and his father followed about six
months later. As soon as he arrived he
began looking for a job and applying for college. His mother and father’s relationship had been
strained for some time, and the move to Africa and then to America did not help
the situation any. This strained
situation between his parents only added to the strain and responsibility he
felt to care for both of his parents.
Since he immersed himself into the English language, he
ended up being the translator for his mother and father whenever they needed to
go to the store or doctor. He didn’t
have any difficulty in communicating because he had been speaking English for
almost four years in Africa. What he did
have a problem with was communicating well with women as his culture treated
women as submissive partners. He was
happy to be able to be around women, but found treating women as equals to be a
challenge.
After just a short time here, Ali saw people treating women
equally and tried to do the same. This
very quickly got him into trouble as a co-worker, whom he considered a friend,
filed a sexual harassment lawsuit over a comment he made about her pants. He felt that he didn’t do anything wrong as
he was trying to treat her as equal and spoke to her the same way he would have
spoken to any of his guy friends. He
remembers having to ask what sexual harassment was and feeling very betrayed that
she didn’t just tell him she felt uncomfortable.
Once he moved to the United States, he immersed himself into
American pastimes, especially American football and old-time television, such
as the The Lucy Show and The Honeymooners.
Although he did watch a lot of television, he did not trust the news
media, because of the oppression he grew up with in Iran. He described his immersion into our
twenty-four hour television as almost an obsession. He wanted to learn all about American people,
all of our different sports, and get even better at speaking English. To me he has no accent, which means he speaks
very much like he is from the Mid-West.
While in the United States he spent the majority of his time in
Virginia, a few years in California and moved to Ohio last February. In my time travelling to the South, Virginia,
North Carolina, and New York, it surprises me that he speaks without some
accent similar to people that he spent the most time around in Virginia. When I travel to the south I find myself
starting to mimic their accent and actually struggling no to mimic as I do not
want them to think I am making fun of them.
Moving to America made Ali learn not to trust people until
they have earned your trust. He felt a
lot of anger, “That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it
distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely
facing our own complicity in our condition…” (Obama, 2009, para 23). Although his experience of a lawsuit, and
being at risk of losing his job over what he thought was an innocent joke, was
just a few years after arriving in the United States, it still affects him to
this day. He is not trusting of others,
and pretty much keeps to himself, eating while reading every day. Reading keeps anyone from talking to him
because they do not want to interrupt him and, I believe, is a defense
mechanism that he uses to distance himself and avoid any possibility of a
similar situation to that described earlier.
Ali’s native language is the Persian language of Farsi,
although many American’s refer to Iranians as Arab, they are not actually
considered Arab by definition because of their Persian language (Jandt, 2013). The language is very different from English
because it uses the Arabic letters, even though it is not Arabic, and it is
written right to left instead of left to right.
In addition, Farsi has only one sound for vowels, there is no long and
short vowel sound as in English. Since
there is only one sound for a vowel, there is no combination of vowels to make
another sound as in the American English, for instance, how the “ou” makes the
“ow” sound. When I asked if it was difficult for him to learn the language he
said that it was not at the time, but felt it would have been if he had been
much older than he was at the time (fourteen).
His attitude was very positive and he was very open to learning English
because he knew it would make his transition to America much easier, knowing
the language. According to multiple
research projects, a positive attitude toward foreign language learning can be
a cause of success (Farani & Fetami, 2014). Ali’s positive attitude was probably at least
one of the reasons that he didn’t find it difficult to learn English.
Ali found his cultural differences made it difficult to
communicate easily with the opposite gender.
He was very fortunate to have learned the English language at the age of
14. His cultural up-bringing,
definitely caused his difficulties with understanding how to hold himself
around women and how to speak to women in both formal and casual
encounters. In summation, it wasn’t the
media, or how different his native language was to English that was a barrier
to effective communication, but the differences in culture…specifically moving
from no interaction with the opposite sex to being surrounded by women, that
caused him to experience difficulties with communication.
References
Dodds,
J. & Wilson, B. (2009) The Iran-Iraq War: Unattainable Objectives. The Global Research Center in International
Affairs Center (GLORIA) Retrieved on Jan
3, 2015 Retrieved from: http://www.gloria-center.org/2009/06/dodds-wilson-2009-06-06/
Farani,
S. T., & Fatemi, A. H. (2014). The impact of teacher's self-disclosure on
students' attitude towards language learning in a foreign language context.
Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 4(11), 2415-2422. Retrieved from
http://search.proquest.com/docview/1630750621?accountid=32521
Global
Security.org, [n.d.] Terrain
Retrieved on January 11, 2015, Retrieved from: http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/iran/terrain.htm
Jandt, F.E. (2013). An introduction
to intercultural communication: Identities in a global community (7th ed.).
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Khalaji, M. (2011). IRAN'S REGIME OF
RELIGION. Journal Of International Affairs, 65(1), 131-147
National Constitution Center.
(2009). Obama
speech on race at the National Constitution Center [Interactive website]. Retrieved
from http://constitutioncenter.org/amoreperfectunion/
Takeyh, R. (2010). The Iran-Iraq
War: A Reassessment. Middle East Journal, 64(3), 365-383. doi:10.3751/64.3.12
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