Week 9. (Cross-Gender Interaction)

From my own observation, women and men communicate in different ways whenever they are in their own gender group conversation. From the tutorial activity 2 exercise, reading the topic itself, we can tell whether it’s a woman-woman or man-man conversation. The types of interest for both gender differs.
Men like to talk about cars, sports. Mostly actions pack stuff. For women, like my younger sister, she talks about fashion; shoes, bags and she love to talk about TV sitcoms and like wanna predict what’s going to happen next, she simply talks a lot. These types of conversation I would find it weird and seems to be in the wrong channel of communication.
During lecture we found out that the fact is, we do tend to believe that women talk too much, but research shows that men on average talk more than women. For me, I think men talks a lot or have a long conversation when they are in a group and share a common interest or talk about past history. Take myself as an example, my group of friends can really talk very long when we recall back our NS days and it never seems to expire or when we talk about soccer matches. We also like to argue, like he recent Man Utd and LVP match, we argue on whose gonna win or player who are on top form.
Even though society is changing, but gender interaction within same group will not change much.

Week 8. (Computer Mediated Communication)

When compare communication 10 years ago and now, lots have change. Previously, when we communicate, we only have our home phones or public phone, sending written letters and by means of “pagers”. Communication in previous years maybe very costly, say when you want to make an overseas call through your home phone or maybe one can communicate at a cheaper cost, which is by mail.

Now with the development of technology and internet, communications have been made easy and cheap. We can now even make direct calls, chat through means of MSN; windows live messenger and even video conferencing. Now in Singapore, it’s difficult to find a public phone booth unless you’re at the MRT. This in because, almost every Singaporean own his/her own mobile phone also nowadays, phone are equip with 3G function (Video calls).

With the culture and system that we have here, everything is fast ready available. This fast paste that we are currently having is affecting everything. People are starting to be inpatient and want everything to be done fast, even when chatting through msn, facebook, twitter and many more.

With this, people develop a new hybrid language “netlingo” eg, brb = be right back. This is a kind of language that people use to cut shot of actual sentences and also to communicate fast.
Nevertheless, with the development of a hybrid language, actual proper language will not be affected in terms of quality. People here know how to adapt to different environment and situation and communicate according to such. You will not find writing in a school composition with “netlingo” or sms language. You will also will not find anyone when doing a presentation communication with lor, or hor.

In summary, people will communicate according to different environment, this is because, they want to fit in the group and the use or writing of proper language is not affected.

Week 7.(Face and Politeness)

Oh my, this week review almost slips my mind.
Hum... Politeness... Where do I start.....
Politeness is a must for us to portray at the right time and place required. Through our face expression, one can tell if we are being polite or not.

I believe that all of us when face with any difficult situation, we would want to resolve it as peaceful and as polite as we can in order not to agitate the other person . Eg, when in a movie cinema and the person in front or at the side is talking on the phone. You would not say out something rude or say something off the record like “Humm, i wonder where the noise is coming from” as you know something bad will happen afterwards. Instead, you reply with a negative politeness, like “Sorry to bother you, could you lower down your volume please” with the sorry look on your face.

Week 6.(Component & Representation)

This week, cultural misunderstanding is shown clearly in the video. It is really funny when you look and analyse it. In Singapore where it is a multi racial country you will definitely see some cultural actions. E.g. my grandpa is an Indian and whenever he answers yes or no, he will have this slight movement of a head gesture. For the Muslim Malays, whenever they meet, they won’t say hello but “Peace be upon you” in Arabic. I hope you understand what I mean. Different culture groups will have their own signature cultural action.
Following on to Individualism and Collectivism; In Singapore, to me, I think it depends on where you are located. Say example in the city (Orchard Road or Raffles Place) where it is CBD area and people are always busy with individual work. No time to eat; no time for this that; everything is in a rush. If something were to happen, a man to fall in the streets. Not a single person will come up to give a helping hand; instead surrounding people will stand and stare. I saw this situation my own eyes and I came up to the man from far to help. Once I came to the man, everything goes back to normal. If you were in a neighbourhood area, people are more collectivism. Another example of which I’ve seen is a young school girl’s purse being stolen by a thief. The moment she shouted “help thief” immediately you can see people of all races chasing down the thief. If this situation were to happen in the CBD area, I might think that maybe just 1 will go after the thief as the rest will just stand to watch. People are so busy that they don’t have the time to catch thief and if they do, they will be late for work.