[SOUND] [MUSIC] Well, so why is it so special, intercultural communication, especially talking about one's culture? We started raised this issue. The general question is that culture determines much in our personal life stories. In our personal lives and our understanding of who we are. We do not always understand the importance of this influence. Only when we cross cultural boarders we see it. It is more than true for the Russian culture. They say that Russians are very proud of their culture, of their nation, of their country, of their history. It is a complicated story and not always you would answer like that with what proud and pride, but that is really true. For Russian culture, belonging to this culture and feeling it as part of your life is really a very serious component of their personalities. But it's actually true for other peoples and other cultures as well. So cultures makes us emotional in a way. We take it emotionally. It's not an object that we started as something being very far from us. So as I said, it is impossible to teach a class on the intercultural communication across the cultural borders only relying on objective truths and hard evidence. And that's why I suggest that kind of introduction instead of introduction. I suggest that we would play a game, or better say, we would talk about simulating a game that tells us something about culture. This game was created in the 50s, it's called Barnga, a simulation of cross-cultural encounters. It was created by two people who were working for Foreign Service Institute, and where two anthropologists. And they needed something to make people understand that cultural knowledge, and at that time it wasn't a buzz word, is really important when interacting with people in professional context in business. And governmental encounters and politics and so. So, participants in this civilization game Barnga, are invited to a card game tournament. There are rules of the game of course. And they are being sitted at the tables for four people. And each table has a list of rules, a stack of cards. And they're offered to play a game. They're not allowed to talk. No speaking. They play a couple of rounds according to the rules. And there are two winners, maybe the best two scores. And these two people move to another table. So, tables are changed between people or people are changed in between tables. And then they continue playing. But what happens next? As they play at a new table, things get kind of weird, Kind of strange. If we describe the feelings of those participants of the game, they would describe it as following. They would think about their partners. Are they stupid? Or are they bad? I mean, they don't follow the rules, because the rules are not followed. It may be the rules about the trumps are not followed, or an ace beats or doesn't beat a deuce. So the rules are different of what to consider an over trick. So things somehow don't work at all. Players gets emotional. The very words, are they stupid or are they bad, already show that you stop to treat this just as simple game. You start to feel something about people who you play about. And you don't feel very nice things about them. We can say that the players become angry and become frustrated. Eventually they try to do something about it, at least some of them, at least some of them. They try to find ways how to make for this strange rules. They're not allowed to speak, yeah, but they will be drawing pictures or they will be gesturing. Eventually after some tries they will arrive at understanding. They will arrive at understanding that rules are slightly different for those people with whom they came to play the second round. That's not that they're bad or they're stupid, they're playing by their rules, and we're playing by our rules. The rules are slightly different, and this is exactly what happens when people get to another culture. What is also important and what is also similar is that emotional and cognitive reactions are similar to what happens when you get into another culture. And often you get to another culture without a common language. But even with a common language, in simulation games we needed to make people stop talking, otherwise everything would become very clear. But in reality, even common language, be it English or Russian, sometimes will not help to understand that now you are playing by slightly different rules. Because you don't think about these rules. They are inside you. They are your culture, which you are not actually really calculating how I behave or what I say, what I'm supposed to do. Culture makes our life easy because it allows us to work on a so to say on an auto-pilot mode. We don't think when we do certain movements. We don't think when we walk. We don't think when we say hi to our friends. We know how we do it everyday. But when you get to other culture all these things may become difficult. As if you have to tell your legs when you walk which one to move first and which one to move second. So, one thing that people who participate in such a simulation game understand, or better say, feel after this game, they understand that communication is emotional because it is a goal driven activity. You want to achieve something. And you think that you know the rules, how to do it. You don't discuss the rules. You just move to achieve your goal. And suddenly understand that it doesn't work. And then you understand, or better say, again, feel this understanding inside you that culture is indeed sensitive. It is about failure and successes. Culture, our own culture help us to go in our lives and do things. And we even don't understand how much it supports our everyday routines, our successes be them oral or written communication interaction with people. And only when we lose this support, when we go to another culture where the rules are slightly different, we start to feel it. As it happens when we don't think about our little finger, only when it starts to hurt, then remember then [INAUDIBLE]. So, better describe it in terms of debriefing, because that's what happens at the end of any simulation. What is the result of this simulation? The first result is the feeling of culture, including of your own culture, of our own culture. Something that is invisible to us. Something that supports us but we only see it when the support somehow fails. Second thing is that we understand that going to another culture is like playing a game where you don't know the rules, or at least you don't know all the rules. But you are used to rely on that. What else? What else is probably more individual, because like in real life, a lot depends on you. As I said, people start to fix things they try to understand what happens. They invent different procedures by drawing by gestures to understand what's going wrong in their second table where they play. Some people don't do this or do this more actively. Some gets more angry, some less. Sometimes understanding comes easier. Sometimes it comes later and with much more effort. So, it's all about strategies that people use to overcome problems. And this is also part of what we need to discuss in a course about communication across cultural borders. What are the strategies? What are the tactics that we use when we have to overcome these problems? [SOUND] [MUSIC]
