[MUSIC] Hello! My name is Mira Bergelson and I'm going to teach a course which is called Understanding Russians. Contexts of intercultural communication. And this is the first lecture of the first week of the course, and the first week is introduction. The first question is, to make to know each other. Why are we all here? I'm here because I believe in the importance of these course and today's world. The importance of effective communication, of the professional communication, and the cultural knowledge lies in the very heart of effective professional communication. By education and training, I'm a linguist. I researched grammars of various languages. Then later I practiced intercultural communication, even before I knew it was called like that. At that time in Russia we didn't have this term. Then, I also think that my expertise is of importance for this course as well and for For people who are interested in Russian culture. I was born in Moscow, I lived all my life here, I traveled abroad and lived and did research abroad, enough to be able to compare cultures and to think about it. And the most important thing, I was always interested. In these fascinating subjects of how people manage, people of different cultures, how they manage to understand each other. And I think that you are here also for the same reasons. Probably because you are interested in Russia, Russians, and Russian culture. Our course is centered around the following topics. The first is what Russians talk about. The second, how we do it. And third, why Russians talk and behave like that. Well, the question is, why is it so important what, how, and why they talk about What is about talking here? I would say that there is no other way in the world, around us to understand each other, to make sense of the things, so we need to talk. We need to understand, we need to communicate. Communication is essential to our lives. Actually everything that we do when we get up, make coffee, go to work. Everything else before we end again sleeping is communication. We work through communication, we make connections with people, we conceptualize things. We think. We assess things going around. We even express our emotions through communication of course. So, it is essential and this is the only way to interact with people and the world. And communication is interaction indeed. It has all of the features of interaction. That's why our course will cover not just russian culture or russians, or language, it will be a course on issues of intercultural communication with the area object Russian culture. Also I need to say what this course is not. It's not a list of instructions of what to do or what not to do when you deal with Russians. How to be more successful and less successful in terms of direct commands, or direct Denies of certain actions. It's also not a manual on doing business interculturally. Not because I don't believe this is important, it is an extremely important and motivating topic and something that is really in demand for people. But there are many very great resources for this. And actually you see the link here which points to a very interesting resource that provides a lot of useful practical information. And you can use it actually, to practice how well you understand what we're talking about in the course, or maybe you disagree. Would you be disagreeing about something that I may say and what may be written on this page, on this website. This is exactly what we need, we need some substance To be discussing it. The specific issues of Russian communicative behavior as reflected in etiquette, in dinner rituals, in the ways you introduce yourself, how you interact with strangers. How we interact with friends, how we talk about this or that, what is behind various ideas or prejudices that you may consider as such. So what is behind that? That's what we were talking about, but the substance of these things, the very facts you may find in many different sources both on the web or in the books. I will be pointing you for what I believe is the most interesting and the most consistent because of course sometimes you find rather shallow and stupid ideas about Russians all the time do this and that. Something like the bears on the streets of Moscow. Well, also what it's not. It's not a course in communication theory, or any other theory. Of course, I will need to introduce some concepts that may belong to theoretical knowledge because we need a language to talk that will allow us to describe those issues that we are interested. But in a way, I would say I would generalize like falling. This is, of course, about special knowledge and soft skills in one package. Special knowledge here is knowledge about Russian. Cultural history. Russian mindset, Russian contemporary life as much as I am able to render all this in one course because it's a huge topic. And by soft skills, I mean what is usually meant by soft skills like the ability to communicate, to relate with people. But also an ability to communicate and relate across the cultural boundaries, ability to be culturally sensitive and understand potential problems. Potential stumble points in communication between people of different cultures and motivation and wish to overcome them. Now, how will it be organized? There will be my lectures, of course. Each week of the 8-week course, you will have several mini-lectures. Each mini-lecture will not last longer than 10, 12 minutes, and there will be several of them during one week, and they will cover one big topic. Also I hope and we will provide it the so to say firsthand knowledge, short interviews with external expats, external experts, I'm sorry. These are experts living in Russia and maybe some other people who have this expertise of experiencing the problems or maybe the benefits of intercultural communication with Russians, who will tell you about certain specific cases of real live Russian interaction. Also there will be quizzes, both graded and ungraded to let you self assess your advance in the course. We plan two assignments with peer evaluation. We hope that this type of work will again provide you with opportunities for better assessing your work through the eyes of other people who do the same. Work the same job and who are in the same boat with you. and not less important are discussion forums. There will be of course a special forum for organizational issues but also Especially because this is a course on communication. We need to have some discussion grounds where we can exchange opinions, where you will raise issues. Where you will be able to discuss those things that will be presented to you here as an objective from me. Our object culture and we will be talking about culture in all its variety but mostly in the aspect of communication but this is about culture. Culture is sensitive and talking about one's culture is a fascinating but very risky past time. Why is it risky? Exactly because it is sensitive. We will raise uncomfortable issues and topics. If we do not, then this course doesn't make any sense. Even talking about stereotypes or prejudices or Ideas that exist between people of different cultures and nationalities. All this is something that we in our modern world feel very uncomfortable about bringing about. But there is no reason otherwise to discuss these issues if we cannot discuss it openly and sincerely. We will deal with these topics for the sake of acquiring knowledge on it, for understanding, and for creating empathy. It means that we hear proclaims that we actually vow to be delicate in our attitudes for these issues. We may discuss things because we want to understand and we want to have some objective truth if there is objective truth in such issues. And that's why it may be Unpleasant or uncomfortable. But we definitely will not allow ourselves to hurt one's feelings by doing it on purpose. What I understand by creating empathy. It's something that allows you to see the situation from the perspective of another person, and with the eyes of another person. It doesn't mean that you have to take the position of another person to acquire this ideas, but it's an ability at least to see it from that perspective. And that is what is required in any discussion of any sensitive issues, to be able to see it from the other side so to say. So there will be some discussion rules. We will probably write it out on the course page, on the page where the forum will be opened. We discuss cultural manifestations. We don't discuss people as it. I suggest that we beware stereotyping. Of course stereotypes is a topic interesting enough on itself and we will talk about stereotypes. But generally, even now, we all understand what stereotyping is. We try to beware stereotyping because they prevent us from getting broader knowledge, broader understanding, deeper understanding of things. And of course, we will avoid loaded language, we will try to be mindful in our communication. One more thing I would like to say is that And i will probably repeat it many times. Is that culture, studying culture is not like studying, i don't know, mathematics or maybe nuclear physics. Exactly because culture is about values, beliefs. Because it's somewhere between, within us. It's sort of about our soul, if we can use this concept in an academic course. You can just relate culture as a number of, you know, data, statistics, just information. It's also attitudes that you normally pass to your audience, to your public when you talk about cultural issues. And usually people do this with stories, sometimes with anecdotal evidence. So don't be scared or don't be sceptical if I will tell you Stories, because cultures are narratives. Narratives are how people used to live, how they live, how they bred to live, what they want to do, what they like, what they dislike. and this is about any culture. So, there is now even such a trend in intercultural and teachings of cultural communications when you provide not just data and statistics, but when you tell stories of culture. So this phrase, you'll hear it in this course. There will be stories of culture, and of course these stories cannot be just impersonal, they will be personal, and I hope you will like it. Not less than just information about how many Russians do this and how many Russians like that. [MUSIC]
