Communication and Culture

I really enjoyed Dr. Koji Fuse as our guest speaker. Despite what problems he said he had with English, I thought he spoke very well.

One thing that came up during our discussion of cultural taxonomies was that many of the scales produced stereotypes. When we are trying to compare different cultures or countries, or anything really, it is hard not to create stereotypes. Dr. Fuse made the point that creating stereotypes is part of how the brain works but it is important to understand that not everyone can be clumped into one category or another. I thought his ending was appropriate:

stereotype - a cognitive belief that we have

prejudice - an emotion based on stereotypes

discrimination - behaviors based on prejudices