14. Define culture shock; list its symptoms and stages. Which features of the Russian culture might be shocking for the representatives of the culture of your second language?

Culture shock- is a mental state that comes from the transition that occurs when you go from a familiar environment to an unfamiliar one and find that your old, established patterns of behavior are ineffective.

Culture shock is precipitated by the anxiety that results from losing all our familiar signs and symbols of social intercourse. These signs include the ways in which we orient ourselves to the situation of daily life: how to give orders, how to make purchases, when and where not to respond. Now these cues, which may be words, gestures, facial expressions, customs or norms, are acquired by all of us in the course of growing up and are as much a part of our culture as the language we speak or the beliefs we accept.

*Culture shock also involves a powerful disruption of one’s routines, ego and self image.

It causes stressors that demand readjustment before you can adapt to new surroundings. These stressors may include communication problems, mechanical and environmental differences, isolation, and the experiencing of different customs, attitudes and beliefs. These stressors can lead to a variety of individual reactions.

Reactions:

• Antagonism toward the new environment

• A sense of disorientation

• Feeling of rejection

• Upset stomach and headache

• Homesickness

• Missing friends and family

• Feeling a loss of status and influence

• Withdrawal

• Perceiving members of the host culture to be insensitive

Stages:

U-shaped curve

A model designed to describe the emotional adjustment process of cross-cultural adaptation over time. The 'U' shape suggests sojourner’s emotional well-being begins positively, dips to a negative state, and eventually returns to positive levels of satisfaction.

• Excitement phase (the top of the left side of the curve)

Is filled with excitement, hopefulness, and a sense of euphoria as the individual anticipates being exposed to a new culture

• Disenchantment Phase.

You recognize the reality of the new setting and some initial problems begin to develop (ex. Adaptation and communication difficulties begin to emerge). This phase is marked by feeling of disappointment, discontent and that everything is awful.

• Beginning resolution phase

Is characterized by gaining some understanding of the new culture, person is making some adjustments and modifications in how he/she is coping with the new culture. Everything seems less stressful

• Effective functioning phase.

The person now understands the key elements of the new culture (values, customs, beliefs, communication patterns), the person feels comfortable in the new culture and is able to function with success.

15. Define ethics. What are the two main approaches to ethics? What does David W. Kale suggest as the bases of ethical universals and why? What are the four principles of ethical communication according to the mentioned author?

Ethics - judgments that focus “on degrees of rightness and wrongness, virtue and vice, and obligation in human behavior”.

Approaches:

1. Fundamentalism/ Moral absolutism

Ethical principles are universally applicable and timeless moral truths are rooted in human nature and independent of the conventions of particular societies.

2. Cultural Relativism / Moral relativism / Ethical Multiculturalism

Ethical principles are culturally bound, context dependent, and only applicable to their respective cultures.

David Kale suggests human spirit as the basis of ethical universals. It is this human spirit which people of all cultures have in common that serves as a basis of belief that there are some universal values on which we can build a universal code of ethics in intercultural communication. It is from this spirit that the human derives the ability to make decisions about right and wrong, to decide what makes life worth living, and then to make life the best it can possibly be.

Principles of communication:

1. Ethical communicators address people of other cultures with the same respect that they would like to receive themselves.

2. Ethical communicators seek to describe the world as they perceive it as accurately as possible.

3. Ethical communicators encourage people of other cultures to express themselves in their uniqueness.

4. Ethical communicators strive for identification with people of other cultures.

Identification is achieved when people share some principles in common, which they can do while still retaining the uniqueness of their cultural identities.