Task 1 of the 3rd year module “English for Intercultural Communication”
Daniele Di Brigida
Group C
Rome, 23/11/2006
Sociometric questionnarie does not help understand other’s way of seeing from a
cultural point of view. Ethnografic questions can result more subjective, but can give
more specific answers to the problem of cultural differencies.
Last Fryday I went to Trinity Colledge to interview american boys and girls about their
way of dating. In my bag I had a paper with some sociometric questions I had to ask
them to discover if there were cultural differencies between american and italian way of
dating. The result was not so good because I did not find what I was looking for. They
almost answered to the questions as I, an Italian boy, expected to be answered. There
were no cultural differences between me and american people about dating. Here is my
suggestion about it: Firstly, I think that sociometric questions are not so useful in order
to define other cultural points of view. In fact they are made by people who seem to
believe in the existence of an universal way of seeing things, a stereotype from which
you can define cultural dimensions and cultural differences. In this case, the questions I
had to ask had been made up on the stereotype of a gentleman which is shared in both
the U.S.A. and Italy.
After seeing that my expectations about dating were not satisfied, I started to have a
common conversation about social life’s features, and I let them talk about them. Thus I
discovered some interesting cultural differences.
Firstly, I notice that american boys and girls use to marry earlier than italian people.
This can be added to the will of young american students to leave their families when
starting going to University to be more indipendent. Thus I noticed that american
culture is more Individualistic than that of Italy, where students often prefer staying at
home with there parents until they graduate.
Secondly, the argument changed and we start talking about “street culture”, I mean the
way of expressing oneself by hip pop music, brake dance and, above all, writing on the
walls. The interviewee told me that in America the “graffiti style” is hardly punished
buy the Law, and people do not use to write on the walls anymore, to avoid legal
restriction. They also told me that while staying in Italy they thought that the Law did
not punish such a behaviour, because they could see lots of graffiti everywhere. I
connected this to the cultural difference between Universalism and Particularism
parameters. American people did not write on the walls because their culture is more
Univeralistic than that of Italy.
In colclusion, I noticed that sociometric questions did not help me to analyse cultural
differences, because they represented a sort of stereotype. Talking about different
things, instead, helped me recognise some cultural differences. Maybe I made some
mistake in asking those questions, but I think that if I had not used them I would have
discovered some interesting differences even in the matter of dating.