The language barrier
There is a theory
seen in class that says that if you don’t speak the same language, the
effective work and communication is close impossible. A clear example of it was
the Babel tower, as they joined people from many different countries that
didn’t share the same language and therefore it was impossible to communicate
and as a consequence the tower fell down. But at least is the language stable?
No, it is not, it is dynamic and is constantly changing, thanks to the Jargon,
the Argot, the Acronyms and the idioms.
Can you judge other cultures?
According to the
discussion handled in class, it is not easy to decide between judge or not
judge other cultures. It is a matter of tolerance and how much can you support
the differences, just as we saw in the Calvin and Hobbes picture.
There are two
approaches for this question, the relativism and the universalism. The
relativisms support the idea that every society has its own legal and social
standards that are the only ones that allow any kind of judgment. As Carl
Rodrigues said, “No cultures ethics are any better than any other’s”.
On the other hand,
the Universalism consist on judging the morality of an action on one universal
guiding principle, however it is not easy as the cultures are so different and
judging the same action in different countries and scenarios could be a huge
mistake.
According to the Hofstede Model, which one is the country most similar to Colombia?
According to the
Hofstede Model, the most similar country to Colombia is Venezuela, even though
Panama, Ecuador, Peru and Brazil are very similar, Venezuela is the one that
has the closest scores.
Regarding power
Distance, we can see how similar are both countries, as their people conceive
the inequality as a fact of life, something that is normal and almost
unchangeable. Even though in Colombia this score is high, in Venezuela it is
every worst, as they sits in the higher ranking of the Power Distances, thus
the feeling of inequality as a normal fact of life is stronger, even
perceivable in democratic positions as the president and use to concentrate the
power over long periods of time.
Analyzing the
individualism, we see that both countries are very similar, which means that
both are very collectivists, thus the importance of belonging to a group is
primary for their citizens. Therefore if we analyze this aspect taking into
account the high levels of power distance, we can see that the people is used
to be part of groups with a very determined purpose and strong identities,
where the relationships are even more important than the tasks.
Both Colombia and
Venezuela are Masculine societies, as both of them got high scores in this
topic. This means that are performance oriented with a collectivist feeling, so
the struggles we see in this case are more group vs group rather than
individual vs individual. Perceiving a kind of struggle between different
social classes.
These two countries
also try to avoid ambiguity, consequently there are a lot of rules that seeks
to avoid misunderstandings, this is also perceive in the religion, however not
always the rules are followed, sometimes they are consider by the groups and
then are applied.
Long term
orientation, in this topic, both countries obtained a really low score, which
indicates us that they are very likely to seek quick results and don’t use to
plan the future, as they prefer to live today.
Also it means that both have a huge respect for traditions.
Finally, if we are
talking about indulgency, we have to take into account that even though
Colombia has a high score, Venezuela has the highest possible, which means that
both countries are highly indulgent, thus they are likely to realize their
impulses, trying to have fun and enjoy the life as much as they can.
Bibliography
Universidad del Norte. (n.d.). Retrieved March 6, 2015, from http://www.uninorte.edu.co/web/wrondon/home/-/blogs/la-cultura-como-herramienta-para-la-ensenanza-del-espanol-como-lengua-extranjera-parte-1-
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