Brittany Braun

Final Analysis Paper

Throughout our lives we experience some type of intercultural communication, even if its
in the slightest form or unrecognizable. Although some may experience it at a later time in their
lives, if not at all, others may communicate with people from a different culture at a far-more
younger age. When it comes to intercultural experiences these relationships may be fairly simple for
those involved or they might contain a lot of conflict. It all depends on how each individual handles
certain worldviews, such as power distance or masculinity and femininity, within their relationships.
Worldviews such as these mainly effect intercultural communication based on how the individuals
communicating express their beliefs-which vary from culture to culture-depending on the situation.
These overall differences in communication style, if not fixed, create tension and may positively or
negatively determine the nature of their relationship.
For me, I participated in this type of communication beginning at the age of twelve until I
was seventeen with an older Hispanic male from the inner-city of Chicago. His name was Jesus
Vilella and the only reason we had somewhat of a relationship was due to him being my mothers
boyfriend who lived with us at the time. This relationship, Jesus and I had was far from healthy due
to our ethnic, racial, regional, and socioeconomic identities being different from one another. He
was a Hispanic-American who was very loud, aggressive, and short-tempered. While I was a white
German-American who was also stubborn and strongly voiced her opinion whenever interacting
with him. This is what brought the most problems into our relationship. It also did not help that he
was from the side of Chicago that was lower income based; therefore he was exposed to more
violent behavior and crime. His socioeconomic identity had a big impact on his behavior, as one
could see, and forced him to be overly aggressive on a daily basis in order to protect himself. Due to
Jesus growing up in a lower class within society, it ended up following him into adulthood where he
was very defensive when interacting with everyone. Whereas I was from a very quiet middle class
suburb where crime rates were low making me unfamiliar with this type of behavior Jesus
possessed. My background and where I was from never required being combative to survive. The
fact that Jesus and I had almost completely different social identities not only made our relationship
intercultural; but it also ended up creating a lot of problems in how we looked at certain
worldviews. These views were the main element throughout our relationship that caused almost all
of the disagreements we had.
The first communication style that affected this relationship the most was universalism and
particularism. This was the biggest issue because Jesus believed everyone living under my moms
roof had clearly defined rules that he set. If any of his orders were to be broken by either one of my
sisters or myself he would immediately start yelling or punishing us, no matter the situation, due to
there being knowledge of the guidelines from the start. Along the universalism-particularism
continuum I fell at a four leaning toward the particularistic side, while Jesus was placed at a 1.5 for
expressing highly universalistic behaviors. In my opinion, situations are different from one another
and are always changing depending on the circumstances. In different situations, not everyone
should be punished when it comes to going against a few rules because they might actually have a
valid reason to why they were breaking that guideline in the first place. Jesus on the other hand,
having a strong Hispanic background, was raised believing once a rule was made, it was set in
stone. The guidelines never change, therefore, everyone is expected to know them at all times. Jesus
made it very clear that in his culture there is never room to make configurations to what is already
said and done.
For example, when I was a senior in high school Jesus designated the house-chore of doing
the dishes to me. With being given this specific job, he expected me to have all the dishes done by
five each night. If they were sitting in the sink dirty as soon as that time hit, it was unacceptable in
Jesus eyes and I was immediately punished. This circumstance shows just how strong his

universalistic views were. Being a high school student enrolled in all AP and honors courses, I
wasnt disobeying his rules on purpose, I just had a tremendous amount of homework that needed to
get done. In my opinion I thought school work was more important, but Jesus thought differently.
Being particularistic I sternly told him I would get the dishes done after I finished my work, which
varied from day to day, whenever he started to yell at me. On the contrary, I always had the dishes
clean by the end of the night. It was just never at the time he demanded and that really bothered
him. I tried explaining my situation to Jesus, but he considered this talking back and it created even
more problems. To him there were no excuses for breaking rules regardless of the situation or
circumstance causing him to not care where I was coming from at all. With that being said, if the
dishes were not finished right at five each day it resulted in him taking privileges away from me,
such as my phone or freedom. Overall, this ended in arguments between us because the moment he
started screaming at me, I would tell him that he had no right to take anything away from me. I also
told him it was ridiculous to get that upset over dirty dishes, which really caused him to revert back
to his aggressive behavior. He would furiously yell back at me to the point where the walls of the
house were shaking.
Aside from always screaming at one another, Jesus and I tried to resolve this problem in
communication styles by coming up with a new solution to getting the dishes done. After a lot of
persuading, we came to the agreement that as long as I cleaned them before I went to bed there
would be no consequences because I still completed the given task appropriately. This altered our
relationship for the time being because there was less bickering in the house. Since we were starting
to get along it allowed for us to start bonding and making our relationship stronger. However, this
did not last very long with him whatsoever. Several weeks after making this change he did not like
where it was going because it was too inconsistent for his standards. In the Hispanic culture there
always needs to be some sort of structure and consistency when it came to getting things done,
whereas in mine there was more leniency on an individual for completing tasks. In my culture we
figured house-chores would get done when you have the chance to get around to the task. As a
result to this inconsistency he ended up reverting back to the way the rules originally were which
brought the fighting right back into our relationship.
Although Universalism and particularism were the worldviews that created the most
problems in my relationship with Jesus, masculinity and femininity caused just as many, if not
more. Along this continuum I fell at a 4.5 due to my belief that there is gender equality within
society. There is no specific distinction between what a man can do versus what women can. Due to
our cultural differences though, Jesus being raised in a predominant Hispanic household, we had
very clear differences in what we thought about gender roles. That is why he is placed at a one on
the continuum.
Jesus can be seen having strong masculine views by how he treated all the females living in
my house at the time-particularly me. Every day he would sit on the couch for hours on end
watching television without getting up. The moment I would walk through the door from school he
would scream from the living room all the way to the kitchen, where I was doing my homework,
ordering me to start dinner. In this case, he wouldnt stop shouting until he knew the food was being
prepared. I became so fed up with this behavior because he would expect me to drop everything I
was doing just to cook for him. After months of him living with us, I finally reached my limit and
furiously yelled at him one day to make his own dinner. My reaction caught Jesus off guard because
in the Hispanic culture women are not supposed to talk back to men in any situation. This was why
he did not like being told he needed to do things on his own by women. So the fact that I went
against Jesus in this situation infuriated him and started a bigger fight between us. Coming from a
Hispanic household he never had to cook for himself because he was raised on the idea that it was
the womens job and thats all they were good for, as he stated multiple times throughout our

relationship. Jesus being raised on these values was the main reason to why he had such high
expectations for women waiting on him hand and foot. Having such strong feminine values from
the American culture I was raised in, it made it very hard for me to put up with Jesuss behavior. At
the age of 43 I felt like he should be able to cook for himself. That was why I ended up losing my
cool with him because I viewed his Hispanic background and behavior as Chauvinistic at this point
in time.
Although Jesus had these beliefs partly due to his cultural up-bringing, I still thought it was
unnecessary and unrealistic to have such fine distinctions like those between men and women. In
the culture I was raised in, I was taught that women are more than just homemakers and
housewives. Jesus was taught differently though which was shown through his behavior. We worked
at trying to fix this problem throughout our relationship by coming to a mutual understanding. We
came to the agreement that he would learn how to cook for himself. By giving him this knowledge
I thought it would allow for him to be more independent and not have to rely on women for every
little thing. However, Jesus did not follow through with this agreement in learning how to cook
because he did not care enough to change his mindset that women were equal to men in society. He
still wanted to believe women were the only ones responsible for domestic house-chores. By
refusing to change his thought process, our fighting only increased throughout our relationship and
nothing was ever resolved.
As a whole, this intercultural relationship I had with Jesus for several years ended up
teaching me more than I realized. I learned in order to have a stable relationship with someone both
people involved need to be open to the others thoughts and opinions. They cant be so closedminded because that leads to nothing but problems-as it can be seen through my interaction with
Jesus. The fact that he was not willing to listen to my explanation when it came to doing the dishes
because his mind was already made-up in terms of the situation shows just how much closedmindedness affects a relationship. Jesus not listening to me created more tension than there needed
to be, but due to his cultural background, he was already set in his ways and there was no budging
with him. From this relationship I also gained the perspective that it is alright to have disagreements
with others. How you address those problems though determine the nature of your relationship.
Although Jesus and I tried to fix our differences, him not following through on our agreements, also
caused our relationship to fall apart. Therefore, in order for a relationship to thrive-especially if it is
intercultural-both individuals need to be open to thinking differently and accepting others
differences.