Individual food habits
Dr. Dina Qahwaji
• Eating choices are typically made by:
1. Availability
• Local geographic consideration, such as
weather, soil, and water conditions.
e.g. a society living in the cool climate of
northern Europe is not going to establish rice as a
core food, just as a society in the hot wet regions
of southern India is not going to rely on oats or
rye.
Dr. Dina Qahwaji
• Political, economic, and social management
is directed to assuring reliable and reasonable
sources. e.g. advances in food production,
storage, and distribution.
• Experience the impact diet (fear of disease)
can alter accessibility.
• Availability issue is not the first issue in case
where serious food shortage is the norm.
Dr. Dina Qahwaji
2. Edible or Inedible
• Inedible food:
Toxic or not eaten because of strong belief or
holy.
Vary culturally. e.g. animals dangerous to catch.
• Edible by animal but not by me:
Rodents -vary by culture.
• Edible by human but not by my kind:
Acceptable in some society but not in one own
culture. e.g. Snails (Africa), dog meat (Asia).
Dr. Dina Qahwaji
• Edible by human, but not by me
Acceptable by a person’s culture group but not
by individual due to factors such as preference,
expense, or health reason.
• Edible by me
Accepted as part of individual dietary domain
• There is always exception to the way that food
is categorized – not always poisonous food and
plant is avoided (fugu, Japan).
Dr. Dina Qahwaji
Intercultural Communication
• Intercultural challenge:
• Iceberg analog-describe how a person’s
culture heritage can impact communication.
Ethnicity, age, nationality and gender –most
visible personal characteristics affecting dialogue
(tip of the iceberg)
Beneath the surface but equally important may
be degree of acculturation or adaptation, health
condition, religion ….. etc.
Dr. Dina Qahwaji
Iceberg model of multicultural influencing on
communication
Race
Gender
Age
Nationality
Acculturation
Socioeconomic Status
Occupation
Health Condition
Religion
Educational Background
Dr. Dina Qahwaji
• Communication is described as action chain
meaning that one phrase or action leads to
the next.
Successful communication, if communication
action chain is understood.
• Communication is a whole series of
unwritten expectation regarding how a
person should respond, and such expectation
is largely cultural in origin.
Dr. Dina Qahwaji
• Meeting a person for first time-only data
speaker have to work from their own
cultural norm.
To predict how that person will respond to their
word.
What conversational approaches are correct.
• Meeting a person for first time-speaker use
social roles to determine their
communication behaviour.
Dr. Dina Qahwaji
• Observing personal signs about
communication habits that vary from
cultural or social norm.
• Interpersonal relationship (2 persons)-based
on personal communication preference;
group interaction- depend on cultural or
social norm.
Dr. Dina Qahwaji
• Intercultural Communication Concept:
• Non-verbal actions are idea, emotion and
attitude translated (such as signal, position,
eye contact) to send a massage.
• Only the sender of the massage knows its
meaning; receiver must use what it is known
about cultural and social norms as well as
the sender personality.
Dr. Dina Qahwaji
• Verbal Communication
• The abstract natural of language means it can
only be correctly interpreted within context.
• Verbal communication happen within these
culture premises, often operating at an
unconscious level in the speaker.
Dr. Dina Qahwaji
• The cultural parts of context are usually
together that a speaker often beliefs they are
natural - that all other people must
communicate according to the same beliefs
Context include issue common to culture
worldwide such as role of individual, power,
status …. Etc
Dr. Dina Qahwaji
• Low and high context culture:
• The context in verbal communication varies
culturally
• Conversational context can be defined as
effective and physical signs a speaker uses
to indicate meaning such as tone of voice,
facial expression, position and signal.
Dr. Dina Qahwaji
Low Context
High Context
Precise wording
Nonverbal action
Logical
Context
Linear sequence
unclear
More Objective
More personal
clear
Circuitous & incomplete
Straightforward direct
Attitude and feeling – more prominent
Massage through the words
Indirect & implicit
Disagreement are personal
Reading between the lines
e.g. European
e.g. Middle Eastern, Asian
Dr. Dina Qahwaji
• Misunderstanding easily happen if either
participants is unfamiliar with the meaning of the
nonverbal means being use. e.g. eye contact,
sound….
• Low context listener are often impatient with high
context speaker
• Low context listeners miss the effective and
physical expression in the massage.
• Health care professional-extremely low context
Clients from high context culture-disappointed, by
such impersonal, objective interaction.
Dr. Dina Qahwaji
Five limitations for effective communication
1. Provider can never fully know a client’s
thought, attitude and emotion, especially
when the clients is from a different cultural
background.
2. Provider must depend on verbal and
nonverbal signals from the clients to learn
what the clients believe about health and
illness and these signals may be unclear.
Dr. Dina Qahwaji
3. Using your own cultural understanding of
communication is not enough for accurate
interpreting of meaning in another cultural
context.
4. Provider’s state of mind at any given time
may bias interpretation of a client’s
behaviour.
5. Misunderstanding of meaning is common.
Dr. Dina Qahwaji
Responsibilities of the health care providers
• It is the practitioner’s duty to understand what is
said by the client and to provide the client with
information needed to participate in treatment
•
•
•
•
Need to be familiar with cultural norms
Listen carefully and seriously to client
Take action based on what is said by the client
Caring and considered communication can empower
the clients within relationship and improve treatment
efficacy
Dr. Dina Qahwaji
Four stages of intercultural communication
awareness:
• Unconscious incompetence: speaker
misunderstands communication behaviour but
doesn’t even know misinterpretation has
happened.
• Conscious incompetence: speaker is a ware
of misunderstanding but make no effort to
correct them.
Dr. Dina Qahwaji
• Conscious competence: speaker considers
his/her own cultural communication
characteristics and makes modification as
needed to prevent misinterpretation.
• Unconscious competence: speaker is skilled
in intercultural communication practice and no
longer needs to think about them during
conversation.
Dr. Dina Qahwaji