Identification of the problem and rationale
Terms such as “the American culture”, “the Vietnamese culture” or “the Japanese culture” are ubiquitous in our daily life and even research articles These terms seem to indicate that each country has only one uniform culture, which, if not everyone, then at least the majority of people in it would share This kind of assumption often appears in intercultural situations, such as the one below between two Hanoikids members, the students who work as free tour guide in Hanoi, and their American guests The audio was recorded in an attempt to gather data for this research exclusively
American 1 (A1): Russians, they’re not that nice They're really cold
Hanoikids 1 (H1): Yes, as cold as their weather
A1: And then Vietnamese are as warm as their weather
(both laugh) H1: Yeah, so Africans are the most… the friendliest in the world
A1: Uhm I think so We've been there a few months, they're very friendly
H1: I went to the south, Nha Trang and Phan Thiet That's the place in Vietnam where there're many Russian tourists
H1: Because they have a straight flight from Russia to the city
H1: So for Russians - they're really beautiful but they're not that friendly, uhm, so I went there, not during the summer vacation - I just took some days off
H1: Yeah, I went travelling but after that we had a kind of tourism presentation so we conducted a kind of survey to ask the tourists and ask if they could record But when we approached them
A1: Oh (laugh) H1: Yeah, they just give me a really very cold expression so… they're just like mafia
H2: Russians are like mafia? Because when listening to mafia, we just like think of Italians
A1: But Russians are also really pretty
A2: But of course they're cold
H1: You know, Vietnamese really like Russians because they helped us a lot during the war, they do
H1: Yeah, until now, like people from my parents' generation
H1: They really like Russians My dad, when he went to Russia, how to say, he said that they really welcome, was really welcomed there He really likes Russians
H2: Yeah, different from the younger generation They suffered from something bad, like World War II
H1: Like US war, so they shared the same pain Oh, and we have something like, English or British are really cold They're really cold
H1: Yeah, they're kind of reserved, and then, but then there's a story that because England is so foggy, so we're this close, but because of the fog so we can't see each other So it appears they're cold but they're not really, because they don't see you (H
Nguyen, M Nguyen, personal communication, June 19, 2016)
There are many generic country and cultural assumptions here, from the weather of a country (“England is so foggy”), its people’s physical appearances (“Russians are also really pretty”), to their characteristics (Russians “are really cold”, British “are kind of reserved”) These assumptions often imply the homogeneity of characteristics or sharing of identity among people from the same country, or culture
However, would individuals really be shaped by only just where they come from?
How are their personal values affected by their geographical dwellings and/or their native culture? How do international and/or intercultural experiences exert impacts on their beliefs and values?
To seek answers for those questions, the research is carried out by studying the three groups of the U.S residents whose mother tongue is English, the Vietnamese from Lao Cai province, Vietnam, whose first language is Vietnamese, and Hanoikids club’s members, who are students in Hanoi conducting free tour guiding for foreigners visiting their city.
Aims of the study
The first purpose of this paper is to investigate an often alleged assumption made in intercultural communications, that people from the same country or culture share a higher degree of similarity in identity than those from a different one
The argument is that, in this day and age of globalization, with easy access to various sources of up-to-date, all-over-the-world information, foreign music, reading materials and cinematography, and the development of transportations leading to more convenient traveling, the intercultural exchange frequency is higher than ever and still increasing Thus, for people enjoying large intercultural exposure, it is possible to develop background knowledge and values very different from those of the same nationality/culture with less exposure, while more similar to a foreign culture
The second purpose of this paper is to examine if the effect of intercultural exposure on individuals of the same group is definitive, i.e., if it results in consistent outcome, such as tending towards being more similar to another certain culture, for each person
The research is designed to offer answers for the following questions: a, To what extent do people from each nation share the same set of cultural values? How does this affect its people in terms of underlying cultural assumptions, or schemata? b, How would exposure to international and/or intercultural situations impact individuals?
Scope of the study
Due to limited resources, the research focuses on investigating only three groups: thirty-two Americans, thirty-four Hanoikids members – Vietnamese students with high international interaction frequency and thirty-two Vietnamese students with low international interaction frequency It is to compare if the two Vietnamese groups demonstrate substantially higher degree of similarity than the group from a foreign culture U.S residents are chosen to be in this study as they are often regarded as a culture with values on the other end of the spectrum compared to oriental cultures like the Vietnamese’s, as well as because of their popularity and greatest number of guests for Hanoikids (along with Australia, Singapore and Canada – number in 2016), therefore, Hanoikids members are more likely to be affected by their culture than others’.
Methodology
The study employs the Associative Group Analysis, which is specialized on analyzing cultural background knowledge, and in this case, an indicator for underlying cultural assumptions of each group This is a method employing both psychology and linguistics approaches, most commonly used in intercultural studies, making the research an interdisciplinary one The method and procedure will be described in more details in Chapter II.
THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
Literature review
Ryan (2010) argues that people from different nations (“people at national level”) would take up upon different sets of values and beliefs that distinguish them from others, and those make up the concept of culture – “the glue that bonds individuals to help them interact in an efficient and harmonious way.” (p 215)
However, while an exact definition of culture has not yet been agreed upon by the scholars, many works, especially recent ones, do not refer to culture as belonging to a nation, instead, a specific group only The definition of Nieto (1999) suggests that culture is “ the ever-changing values, traditions, social and political relationships, and worldview created, shared and transformed by a group of people” (p.48); this view on culture is also shared by Moeller & Nugent (2014), that culture is an ever- changing entity
From this definition, in order to perform well in intercultural environments, a person needs to possess a specific set of skills and/or competence to deal with intercultural situations, which has been named intercultural competence by some scholars (Byram, 1997; Deardorff, 2006) Intercultural competence can be defined, in very broad sense, as the ability to interact appropriately with people from a culture foreign from one’s own (Sinicrope et al., 2012)
An exact definition for this concept has so far been elusive, but one of the more recent viewpoints by Arasaratnam (2009), similar to the model by Chen & Starosta
(1996), states that there are three dimensions to this competence, namely Cognitive (or cognitive complexity), Affective (affective empathy) and Behavioral (both interculturally and interpersonally) This model follows the model of human competence in the field of cognitive psychology under different names: knowledge
(cognitive), motivation (affective) and skills (behavioral) dating back to the 1950s’ works of Bloom (1956) and Havighurst (1957)
The research focuses on the cognitive dimensions of intercultural competence It investigates specifically the knowledge about and attitude towards the same concepts of subjects from different groups, to be more exact, the schemata of one group of Americans and two of Vietnamese
1.1.2 Schema and underlying cultural assumptions
Schemata, as defined by Nishida (1999), are “generalized collections of past experiences which are organized into related knowledge groups and are used to guide our behaviors in familiar situations” (p.401) This term was coined by the psychologist Bartlett (1932) to refer to the previous knowledge that directs our behaviors under a new stimuli A person gains cultural schemata by storing certain information that appears repeatedly in interactions with people from the same culture Without cultural schema, people may have difficulties making sense of unfamiliar situations (Malcolm & Sharifian, 2000) In this research, the aspect of underlying cultural assumptions of schema is emphasized
After collecting the data about underlying cultural assumptions of the three groups, the research then compares and contrasts if the schemata of the two Vietnamese groups resemble each other, and if those differ from the American’s By doing so, the research hopes to determine whether individuals in each group share common schema, and if those of two groups from the same nation or culture would resemble each other more closely than another nation/culture’s.
Previous Studies
Matveev & Merz (2014) noted that a wide range of intercultural competence assessment tools are being utilized for different purposes and in different contexts and disciplines Among these tools, a few aim at evaluating the performance of an individual, specifically, the communication performance (McCroskey, 1982) or sometimes, both communication and behavioral performance (Byram, 1997), as an indicator of intercultural competence Other tend to focus more on the potential to perform well in intercultural context rather than on the performance itself (Arasaratnam & Doerfel, 2005; Dervin, 2010)
However, while attitude and behaviors are substantially easier to observe, implicit cultural perceptions and values are “methodologically more difficult to investigate”
(Linowes et al., 2000, p.75) To tackle the issue, Szalay & Deese (1978) developed a tool for cultural mental representations, which is the Associative Group Analysis (AGA) It is based on the argument that people sharing the same culture would have similar sets of concept associations, thus a mental map of concept representations would describe the culture’s dominant mindset and by extension, its belief as well (Szalay & Deese, 1978; Linowes et al., 2000)
The method has been employed in several studies, such as by Kelly & Szalay (1972) to investigate the effect of an student exchange program to the United States on Korean students, Linowes et al (2000) to highlight the differences in patterns of thinking by American and Japanese, or by Ryan (2006, 2010) to give insights into the potential conflicts in specific intercultural contexts
Kelly & Szalay (1972) investigated the common assumption behind students exchange programs that these would promote cultural and political understandings
Their research investigated the views of three groups, each consisted of fifty students from the U.S., South Korea, who had been enjoying American college educations and those who had never travelled abroad respectively, on four systemic themes, four social interaction themes and the United States The results showed that the Koreans having studied in the U.S demonstrated slightly higher positive correlations with American students than their counterparts from the home country in the systemic themes, and indicated that exchange students had significantly more positive attitude towards the United States compared to their Korean peers (75% positive response versus 45%)
The research by Linowes et al (2000) attempted to investigate and illustrate the differences of young American and Japanese patterns of thinking in the domain of international business by using AGA on 100 respondents from each national groups
It then came to the conclusions that the two groups indeed possessed different
“dominant mindset” (Linowes et al., 2000, p 95), in that Japanese youngsters were more collectivism-minded, while still showing explicit traces of “vertical conflict and peer rivalry” (p 95) The researchers also noted that the method offers a “fuller picture of different cultural understandings than traditional survey approaches have shown” (p 96)
The papers by Ryan (2006, 2010) aimed to explore the differences in the way American and Japanese perceived certain concepts in university and business contexts, but with no intentions to draw an extensive mental map for each culture
The research in 2010 suggested that “culturally-based schemata are largely unrecognized and often disruptive in cross-cultural contexts” and that the differences in cultural schemata would lead to perception deviations and thus dissimilar interpretations of key concepts, possibly resulting in disagreements and conflicts
All in all, the aforementioned researches have used AGA to draw inferences about the understanding of certain concepts of different cultures and commented on the notable advantages of this method compared to traditional survey instruments.
ASSOCIATIVE GROUP ANALYSIS: METHOD AND
Research groups
The research was conducted on three different groups
The first group is Americans holding citizenship of the United States as well as English as their mother tongue There are thirty-two such respondents, with eleven males and twenty-one females, ranging from twenty-one to sixty-six years old with the average age being 32.63
The second one are native Vietnamese students from Hanoikids Club, a student-run organization in Hanoi with its main activity being tour-guiding for foreign visitors to Hanoi, which conditions their members to extensive exposure to inter-cultural environment and good chances to build up their English vocabulary The research group contains thirty-four members from Hanoikids, four males, twenty-eight females and two of unstated sexes, from eighteen to twenty-five of age, the average being 23.12
The last group (hereby referred to as the Vietnamese group) consists of Vietnamese students from the same class in a university in Lao Cai province, a mountainous area in Vietnam, who receive from none to little education on English and hardly get exposure to inter-cultural environment and communication There are two males and thirty females in this group, comprising twenty-two members in total, with their age ranging from nineteen to twenty years old, and the average age for this group is 19.41.
The Associative Group Analysis method and procedure
In order to gain understandings about the similarities and differences in schemata (in other words, background knowledge), as well as the mindset and attitudes of different groups, the research employed the method of Associative Group Analysis (hereby referred to as AGA)
The Associate Group Analysis (AGA) method was originally developed by Szalay and Deese (1978) to identify differences in cross-cultural perception, then further adapted by Linowes et al (2000) for a more visually interpretation of these differences The general procedure can be described as followed
Participants from the two first groups were contacted first by an email asking for their acceptance to join the research by means of filling in the survey form Then, the survey, embedded with a note of consent, was sent to their email address The note of consent was also embedded in the printed form for the last groups
Each participant was presented with a survey form consisting of two parts: the first part is a demographical questionnaire to collect his or her basic personal information, as well as their frequency of international exposure and their level of English in communication, and the second is a list of theme words with spaces to write his or her free associations of the given theme words The first and second groups (Americans and Hanoikids) were presented with the theme words in English in an online survey, while the last one (Vietnamese) were shown the Vietnamese equivalent in the printed form This was for the convenience of collecting responses, as the first and second groups could only be reached via online survey due to geographical distance, whilst the last group study in the same class; even though it may create discrepancies in reply patterns as the last group sit close with each other, leaving a chance for them to copy each other’s responses
Originally, there were nine theme words employed in the research Those were
“Graduation” (“Tốt nghiệp”), “A Good Job” (“Một công việc tốt”), “Ambition”
(“Tham vọng”), “Moving out” (“Chuyển ra ở riêng”), “Parents” (“Phụ huynh”),
“Happiness” (“Hạnh phúc”), “Freedom” (“Tự do”), “LGBT” (“Đồng tính nam, đồng tính nữ, song tính và chuyển giới (LGBT)”), “Travel around the world” (“Du lịch vòng quanh thế giới”) and “Friendly” (“Thân thiện”) These words were chosen because they demonstrate concepts that are familiar to both Americans and Vietnamese, so the chances that participants misunderstand the theme words are slim Also, the theme words consist of both less abstract concepts (“Parents”,
“Graduation”) and more abstract ones (“Happiness”, “Ambition”), as well as common items (“A Good Job”, “Moving out”) and more recently introduced ones, at least to the Vietnamese society (“LGBT”) The variations are hoped to also contribute to the detection of possible deviations, if any, in association patterns of the research groups as regard to the mentioned aspects
Each research group’s participants then were asked to make free associations, or write down the first words that come to their minds, when reading the given theme word Each response receives a weighted score according to its order of appearance in the participant’s theme word response list The original weighted score distributions follow “the differential stability of rank place, assessed by the test- retest method” (Kelly, 1985): beginning with the first association, the weighted score of each response is 6, 5, 4, 3, 3, 3, 3, 2, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1 However, as regards to the scale of the research with the number of responses for each theme word from each participant fluctuates from one to six, this weighted score distributions are adapted to a rank order of 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 1 for six responses from the first to the last
For example, as a reply to the theme word “Travel around the world”, one American in the research wrote down the following responses: “Exciting, important, essential, education, growth, memories” in that exact order In this case, the first word, “exciting” gets a weighted score of five points, the second, “important”, gets a four, “essential” – three, “education” – two, “growth” and “memories” both take a one The limit for number of responses was applied because it allows the participants to quickly and easily make associations, resulting in a compact list of associations most obvious to the schema of the theme word while checking the less apparent ones, thus showing most relevant and dominant definition and attributes of
The responses then were classified into categories of meanings and/or concepts, and each category was assigned a total weighted score of the words it contains In order to boost the accuracy of the classification, the author cross-checked the meanings and implications of problematic words in several dictionaries, including the Oxford Dictionary for Advanced Learners, Collins Cobuilds, and Webster-Mariam The classification was then re-checked by a trusted American acquaintance Afterwards, these categories’ degrees of relative prominence were analyzed in the attempt to depict the image of the theme word in each research group’s mind, or its members’ attitude towards the theme concept This procedure was applied to all other theme words In the final analysis, only nine themes, excluding the theme word “Friendly”, are included, because too many among the responses for this theme are ambiguous and can not be classified into categories
After the dominant mindset of each research group for each theme word had been devised, further analysis was carried out to compare and contrast the groups’ schemata for the theme word, illustrated by a semantograph of weighted score distributions of the theme word’s categories of meaning and word clouds made by word appearance frequency Then, a comprehensive evaluation is offered to pinpoint the unique characteristics of each group regarding given concepts, thus creating awareness about possible deviations in the way certain groups perceive the same concept, which may help infer the underlying cultural values that each group have
In AGA, each theme word (“stimulus word”, Kelly, 1985) is regarded as the unit of analysis It can also be viewed as a trigger for research participants to think about the concept before working out its associations
AGA is commented to be “an unstructured method of research used to reconstruct people’s subjective images from the spontaneous distributions of their free associations” (Linowes et al., 2000) The research takes on AGA approach as it emphasizes the shared aspects of each group’s schema for the concept, given by spontaneous associations, thus are more likely to be honest and/or precise than answers for traditional surveys (Ryan, 2010) Those tools are heavily based on the assumption that respondents answer the questions honestly with confidence and understanding about their own capacity, as well as the ability to grade themselves accurately This proves to be unattainable in most cases, which leads to inaccuracy in one way or another in assessment results According to Ryan (2006), this methodology “offers a more in-depth content analysis of the overall data than that of survey instruments alone”.
FINDINGS AND ANALYSIS
Main features of the three groups’ responses for the theme “Graduation” 15 3.2 Main features of the three groups’ responses for the theme “(A) Good Job”
Figure 1.1: Semantograph for the theme “Graduation”
The responses of the three groups in regards to the theme word “Graduation” are classified into ten categories, among which the six most significant (accounting for noticeably larger percentage of the response weight compared to the other four) are the categories of education (diploma, learning, college, etc.), feelings towards the event of graduation (relieved, exciting, independent, etc.), employment (job, salary, career), transition (adulthood, future, finished, etc.), accomplishments
(achievement, success, goal, etc.) and celebration (ceremony, cap, walk, etc.)
Among those, the categories of education, celebration and transition are the three
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% unclassified relationship evaluation time employment feelings accomplishment celebration transition education
VNHNKsUS most prominent for American respondents, earning respectively 18, 17 and 17 % of the total weighted score, while those for Hanoikids members are the feelings towards the event of graduation, employment and education (31, 28, and 19% respectively) This is also the case for the Vietnamese group, but with different ratio
(10, 17 and 59% respectively), and thus, different standings in prominence as well
The differences between the vocabulary used by the American group and the Hanoikids group is also illustrated in the word clouds below
Word cloud 1.1 & 1.2: Word clouds for the theme “Graduation” from
Hanoikids (left) and American respondents (right)
The word clouds are generated using the frequency of the words appearing in the response lists of the two groups The more a word appears in the response list, the bigger it is in the word cloud Only two word clouds from the American group and the Hanoikids group are created, as those are in English while the responses from the Vietnamese group are in Vietnamese, thus creating potential cross-language discrepancy, making the comparison among word clouds irrelevant
In the Hanoikids respondents’ word cloud, the most prominent words are job, freedom and money, and in its counterpart, college, success and completion Those for the Vietnamese group are translated to be distinction, credit and job
The semantograph and the word clouds indicate the different associative traits of the respondents, the event of graduation means a turning point in life, and getting through college itself is an accomplishment worth celebrating; to the Hanoikids respondents, finishing college is more or less a medium to find a job in order to earn money, grow up and enjoy their freedom (most likely) from the influence of their families
It seems intuitive to assume that the Hanoikids respondents and the other Vietnamese respondents, who do not enjoy as much international exposure, would share the same associations as they are from the same country – however, the survey results show that the Vietnamese group actually view the very same item (Graduation) under a strikingly different perspective While finding a job appears to be also quite important to this group, graduation is most essentially equal to earning a diploma
The differences within each category of the three groups are also noteworthy
Within the category of education, the one earning a discernible percentage in weighted score for all three groups, while for the American respondents, there is only one term indicating achievements made by graduating from college, which is diploma, and this one item weights only six points and 9% of total weighted score for education; there are seven such items in the Hanoikids’ response list comprising forty-seven points in weighted score, occupying 62% of total This is definitely notable since the two groups demonstrate about the same extent of association to education from the theme word “Graduation”, but in different senses: the American group tend to link it with the act of schooling (75% of total weighted score, including college, high school, school and education), while the Hanoikids group appears to favor the achievements (62% - degree, certificate, scholarship, etc.) This seems-to-be-cultural difference is further deepened in the third group, as these Vietnamese only link the aspect of education in “Graduation” with achievements, earning an overwhelmingly high weighted score of 183 The difference might be explained by the commonly acknowledged distinctive set of values in the two societies: while the American society seems to appreciate the act of learning in itself, the Vietnamese society puts much importance on degrees
However, it is not always the case that Hanoikids members share the same statistics with their Vietnamese counterparts in the research For example, they demonstrate substantially more negative feelings (49 points – 39% in total weighted score for the category of feelings) towards the event of graduation in comparison versus positive feelings (58 – 46%) than both the American groups (15% vs 83%) and the
Vietnamese group (17% vs 83%) They also somehow associate graduation with celebration, even with low weighted score (15), which has not been mentioned in the Vietnamese responses, but appears to be quite significant to the American respondents (65 in weighted score)
It is observable that there is no quite noticeable resemblance in association pattern among the three groups In other words, the three groups have three evidently distinctive schemata for the same concept of “Graduation”
3.2 Main features of the three groups’ responses for the theme “(A) Good Job”
The responses of the three groups in regards to the theme word “A Good Job” are classified into twelve categories The four most salient ones are benefits (financial gain, benefit, holiday, etc.), emotional gains (joy, satisfaction, praise, etc.), career
(work, professional, teaching, etc.) and working conditions/attributes of the job
(security, stability, flexible, etc.) Among those, the three top concerns for both American respondents and Hanoikids’ are emotional gains, working conditions and benefits, though differing in order of concern, as emotional gains come first for the Americans (23% total weighted score), then benefits and working conditions respectively (17 and 16% total weighted score), while benefits top for
Hanoikids respondents (26%), followed by working conditions (21%) and mindedness between these two research groups, the case is hardly the same for the third group, the Vietnamese one The three most significant categories for this group include contributions a worker makes towards others (24% total weighted score), then career (21%) and judgments toward having a good job (14%)
Figure 2.1: Semantograph for the theme “A Good Job”
From the categorical weighted score distribution illustrated by the semantograph, it can be observed that all three groups seem to share very little as regards to the association of the theme word In fact, they appear to picture the concept in dissimilar perspectives
0 0.05 0.1 0.15 0.2 0.25 0.3 unclassified contributions relationships feelings towards the job judgments advancement achievement attributes career working conditions benefits emotional gains
Word cloud 2.1 & 2.2: Word clouds for the theme “A Good Job” from
Hanoikids (left) and American respondents (right)
The word clouds also demonstrate the differences, though it sheds on a different light Salary, money, colleagues and environment are the most outstanding terms in Hanoikids’ word clouds, indicating the high degree of concern for the materialistic aspect of a job, as well as the exterior environments where they work Those for the American respondents are happiness, money and success, which seem to highlight more the inner feeling of satisfaction a person acquires when doing a job The most prominent items in frequency for the last groups are quite different: those are charity, (offering) help, happy, wonderful and teacher While the notable high frequency of the word teacher can be accounted for by the fact that the surveyed group comes from a college specialized in education, and the two terms happy and wonderful demonstrate the expected positive reaction to the theme word, which also appear in the other word lists; the two terms charity and help are peculiar to this word list only Whereas help is a relatively vague term that can be interpreted whether as the help one receives to get a good job (which happens fairly regularly in the Vietnamese society), or as the help from colleagues, or the help one lends to others; charity introduces a concept totally absent in the remaining two lists – which is the contribution, more or less frequently seen as an act of returning the favor, one should make to the society as the “lucky” person who has a good job which allows
Main features of the three groups’ responses for the theme “Ambition”
The words associated with the theme word “Ambition” are sorted into ten categories Among those, there are four categories with notably higher weighted scores than the rest, which are gains that people yearn to acquire (or put another way: their ambitions, including words such as power, money, accomplishments, etc.), the personal attributes of an ambitious person (eagerness, strong will, competitiveness, etc.), the judgments towards the act of having ambitions/an ambitious person (challenge, important, dislike, etc.) and motivation (drive, aspiration, dream, etc.)
Figure 3.1: Semantograph for the theme “Ambition”
The distribution patterns of weighted score are more or less different for each group
0% 20% 40% 60% 80% unclassified feelings advance(ment) actions career effort judgments motivation personal attributes gain
VNHNKsUS with the highest categorical scores belong to the items of gains and personal attributes (21% each), and motivation (18%) The Hanoikids group’s distribution pattern is comparatively similar to the American’s, with also gains (28%) hitting the top, then judgments and personal attributes (16% and 15% respectively), and actions (14%) The last group, the Vietnamese one, has a much higher dispersion of categorical weighted scores, though gains still top the list (but with an overwhelming 72% categorical weighted score), then judgments (with a much lower percentage of 10%)
Word cloud 3.1 & 3.2: Word clouds for the theme “Ambition” from Hanoikids
(left) and American respondents (right)
It is interesting to note that from the ten categories, if we exclude the unclassified one as well as the two categories particular to only one of three groups, those are feelings (Hanoikids) and efforts (Americans); then we are left with only seven items, among those, four have Hanoikids as the middle value in the three groups’ weighted scores
The frequency of the words appearing in each response list also offers noteworthy insights For Hanoikids, there seems little uniformity in terms of vocab, as the most frequent item is success(ful), which appears only six times, followed by rich, money and dream (four times each) Those for the United States respondents are drive
(eight times), goal (seven times) and succeed (five times) Lastly, money tops the list for the Vietnamese group with thirteen appearances in the response list, outweighing all other items
From the semantograph and the word clouds, it can be observed that the three groups seem to have a relatively similar schema of the theme word “Ambition” It is often associated with specific achievements and gains, possibly because it signals people to think about what they want to achieve, or what they think other people want to achieve – in other words, their/others’ “ambitions”
However, the interpretation of the theme words still differs This shows clearly in the less salient categories and also in the subcategories of the list Take for example, the group of U.S residents Their weighted score for the category of motivation is sixty-two (18% of total weighted score), which is substantially more than the other groups (36 – 8% for Hanoikids and 6 – 3% for Vietnamese) They also mention effort (effort, dedication, struggle, etc.) in their responses (28 weighted score, 8%), which is particular to their group only In the category of gains with three subcategories namely accomplishments, financial gains and others, they also favor the first the most (82% categorical weighted score), while the Vietnamese’s first concern is financial gains (72%), and Hanoikids shares between financial gains
(32%) and others (42%) This combined with the visualized word clouds can be interpreted as the tendency for American respondents to associate “ambition” with the will to work hard to reach a certain goal in general
The group of Hanoikids does not appear to share much of this perspective They highlight more the aspect of feelings (alive, excitements, stress, etc.) that having an ambition brings about (8% total weighted score) Also, as observed, in the category of gains, apart from financial gains, they also show interest in other kinds of reward, such as social status, relationship, power and position – mostly the kind of social recognition They also have the tendency to associate ambition with actions (14% total weighted score), most of those are related to the act of changing and moving
American respondents (actions takes 8% total weighted score) and totally foreign to the Vietnamese group This last group’s top concern is financial gains (111 in weighted score), and in the others group in the category of gains, they demonstrate particular care to family life (family, many children, happy family) and having a comfortable life
The analysis leads to the following conclusion: 1, for the theme word “Ambition”, there seems to be little difference in the research groups’ schemata; 2, the most notable differences is that the American group appear to have their mind on the process more, while the two other groups emphasize the end results, though with different priorities.
Main features of the three groups’ responses for the theme “Moving out” 25 3.5 Main features of the three groups’ responses for the theme “Parents”
Figure 4.1: Semantograph for the theme “Moving out”
Issues Moving process Requirements Judgments Feelings Significations
Except for the unclassified items, the terms associated with the act of “Moving out” are categorized into eight categories: what this act stands for, or its significations
(new life, moving on, grown-up, etc.), the feelings it brings (alone, eager, worrisome, etc.), the judgments towards the act (good, interesting, inevitable, etc.), the requirements for it (income, job, work, etc.), the moving process (pack, door, go, etc.), the issues one faces as he/she moves out (meal, cooking, cleaning,etc.), accommodation (space, apartment, house, etc.) and relationships (family, parents, boyfriend, etc.)
One notable feature of this semantograph is that the weighted score order of Hanoikids descends as that of the American group descends In other words, the two groups share the same categorical weighted score order The three most salient items for both groups are significations (50% total weighted score for the U.S and 43% for Hanoikids), feelings (Americans’: 24%, Hanoikids: 14%) and judgments
(8% and 13% respectively) in that order Except for the categories of feelings, the differences between the same category’s weighted scores of the two groups do not exceed 5% They also share the moving process category, which does not appear in the Vietnamese’s responses This suggests a certain degree of similarity in the mindset of the two groups regarding to the theme word “Moving out” The last group, however, does not share the same mindset Their three most prominent categories are significations (34%), judgments (28%) and accomodation (15%), and their weighted score order also proves different
The similarity between the American group and the Hanoikids one is also illustrated by the word clouds They show independent to be the most frequent response when people in these two groups are asked to find words to be associated with the act of moving out (eleven times for the U.S.’s respondents and twenty times for Hanoikids members)
Word cloud 4.1 & 4.2: Word clouds for the theme “Moving out” from
Hanoikids (left) and American respondents (right)
That aside, the word clouds also indicate the differences between the two groups clearly While the other significant terms, except for independent, for Hanoikids are freedom (thirteen times) and money (six times), indicating a very strong sense of freedom and independence that the act of moving out signifies for Hanoikids; those for the Americans are something new/new things (seven times), adulthood, growing
(up), excitement and adventure (five times), demonstrating the idea of moving out being a milestone that marks a phase in life This is also showed in the subcategorical weighted score distributions in the significations category of the two groups: the percentages of subcategory freedom versus transition for the American group and the Hanoikids group are 29% (weighted score: 53) versus 66% (121) and 69% (125) versus 16% (30) respectively What is more, as regard to the subcategorical differences, in the category of feelings, Hanoikids demonstrate substantially more negative feelings than their American counterparts (71%, 44 versus 42%, 38) and less positive feelings (29%, 18 versus 53%, 48) As for judgments, they also highlight the aspect of hardship, challenges and difficulty in the act of moving out (weighted score: 26, 48% of overall judgments weighted score), while their counterparts do not even mention those The category of issues also marks the difference, as Hanoikids list out eleven items, weighing twenty-one seems that even though the two groups have common schema to a degree, Hanoikids find moving out more problematic and stressful than the U.S residents do
For the Vietnamese group, the most frequent responses are freedom (fifteen times), normal (eight times) and (having his/her) own house (six times) Unlike the other two groups, the ordering of categories in this group has an entirely different pattern
This group also assign weight to freedom rather than independent (65 versus 18 in weighted score), which means they think more about the aspect of being able to do what they want free of their family’s control (freedom) rather than the aspect of having to deal with problems on their own without their family’s surveillance (independent) Likewise, this group appears to have the idea that moving out is an inevitable act that you have to do at some points in your life (normal), and at that time you should own a house – while the concept of owning your own house is unpopular with the other two groups
Even though this last group appears to have a different schema to the other two, they do share one category with Hanoikids that the Americans do not mention, which is the relationship that may be involved in the act of moving out While Hanoikids’ responses in this category are boyfriend, lover, partner and parents,
Vietnamese’s are husband and wife, co-habitation and family, which are more strictly related to family relationship
3.5 Main features of the three groups’ responses for the theme “Parents”
There are five categories for the theme word “Parents”, except for the unclassified category, which are personal attributes (caring, loving, supportive, etc.) of the parents, feelings (love, respect, irreplaceable, etc.) people have towards their parents, family (home, family, mom, dad, etc.), the values (support, sacrifice, pride, etc.) they have taken from their family and the roles (teacher, friend, stranger, etc.) personal attributes (38% total weighted score), family and feelings (19% each)
The case is more or less similar for Hanoikids group, with personal attributes at the top (47% total weighted score) succeeded by feelings (21%) The last group, the Vietnamese one, associates the theme word with mostly terms about family (52%) and personal attributes (24%) Among five categories, the Vietnamese responses are only distributed into three
Figure 5.1: Semantograph for the theme “Parents”
The semantograph illustrates a certain degree of similarity shared among the associations of the three groups towards the theme word “parents” It is expectable, since this theme word mentions specific subjects – those who are very close to us, people would understandably associate it with what their parents are, or have relations to (the family and roles items), how their parents are (their personal attributes), how they feel about their parents (the feelings category), and what it means to them (the values they take from their parents) The slight alterations in the categorical weighted scores for each group show the different degree of concern these groups display for each category For example, the Vietnamese group seems to go for the family items, which are the closest and most obvious kind of
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% unclassified roles values taken from family feelings towards personal attributes
VNHNKsUS association, while does not mention in the slightest the categories of values and roles, those needing further association
Word cloud 5.1 & 5.2: Word clouds for the theme “Parents” from Hanoikids
(left) and American respondents (right)
The word clouds also show the similarity between the two groups in terms of word frequency The most frequent word in Hanoikids’ response list is love with seventeen appearances, followed by caring (eight times in total) Love also tops the list for U.S respondents with eleven appearances, and supportive follows closely
(ten times in total) Those for the Vietnamese group are translated to be father and mother (thirteen times), succeeded by love (six times), an item that is not too obvious an association as a family member in this case One more point to be noted is that for this group, in all the six times that love appears in the responses, it is put in the first position, showing an apparently strong degree of readiness to come to the mind of the respondents
One slight difference can be found on the subcategorical weighted score of the personal attributes category While the American respondents do not mention the negative traits which belong to their parents, the other two groups distribute certain percentage in their categorical weighted score doing so (21% for Hanoikids and 15% for Vietnamese) Some words in this subcategory are cold, nosy and cynical
However, such differences as the aforementioned are slight It could be said that the three groups demonstrate uniformity in the association of the theme word “Parents”.
Main features of the three groups’ responses for the theme “Happiness”
Figure 6.1: Semantograph for the theme “Happiness”
The concepts associated with the theme “Happiness” are categorized into eleven groups Among those, the U.S respondents’ most salient categories in terms of weighted scores are actions (smile, dancing, singing, etc.) that make one happy/show that one is happy (29% total weighted score), the feelings (content, satisfied, bliss, etc.) that associate with happiness (18% total weighted score), the states of being (free, simplicity, peaceful, etc.) (12%) and different kinds of relationships (family, friends, parenthood, etc.) that brings happiness (10%) Such
Unclassified Materials Attributes Animals Yearnings Achievements Judgments Environments Relationships States of being Feelings Actions
VNHNKsUS from Hanoikids are similar, yet with slight order alterations: first is also actions
(31%), then relationships (16%), feelings (12%) and states of being (9%) These two groups share a quite similar pattern, as can be observed from the semantograph, while the last one is apparently different Its peak is relationship with an overwhelming percentage of 74% total weighted score
Word cloud 6.1 & 6.2: Word clouds for the theme “Happiness” from
Hanoikids (left) and American respondents (right)
The two word clouds show the word frequencies in the replies from Hanoikids and Americans For Hanoikids, the most repeated replies are love (ten times) and family (nine times), while those are smile (eleven times) and also love (eight times) for their counterparts The word love is totally absent in the Vietnamese’s list Instead, the most frequent word is near the beloved ones (ở gần người thân), which makes ten appearances in the list, while the second place is a much less noticeable three times for the word at home (ở nhà)
From the semantograph and the word clouds, we can assume that, among other things, Hanoikids members strictly associate happiness with the family relationship
This can also be seen in their relationships vocabulary: family, husband, children, wife, parenthood, home, which account for 61% of the relationships’ category weighted score, compared to the 42% from the American group, while for Hanoikids this category weighs more in total weighted score percentage This trait dedicated to the category of relationships, including near the beloved ones, at home, marry my love, family, a small family, husband and wife, and friends (the last one only weighted 4 in 99 points for this group nevertheless)
It is harder to make assumptions regarding the American group From its word clouds, the biggest words are smile, love and laughter, which all belong to the category of actions that bring/show the sign of happiness This group also shows some differences compared to the other two Firstly, they have two categories that are particular to their own, which are animals (3% total weighted score) and achievements (4%) In addition, the category of materials (house, rich, money, etc.) does not show up in their replies, while it takes up certain percentages in the other two groups (8% for Hanoikids and 4% for Vietnamese).
Main features of the three groups’ responses for the theme “Freedom”
For the theme “Freedom”, the most frequently associated categories for the US are politics (43% total weighted score), states of being (13%) and judgments (11%)
Those for the Hanoikids group are actions (25%), states of being (19%), judgments and attributes (12% each) For the Vietnamese group, the top categories are states of being (58%), judgments (19%) and actions (13%) As can be observed, the most prominent associations are states of being (relaxation, state of mind, efficiency, etc.), politics (USA, human rights, movement, etc.), actions (fly, run, play, adventure, etc.) and judgments (privilege, important, lucky, etc.) This is understandable since freedom can be gained from doing certain actions or being in certain states, while judgments is a popular category that appears in most other theme words’ response lists
Figure 7.1: Semantograph for the theme “Freedom”
However, the overwhelming dominance of the category politics for the American group compared to substantially lower percentages for the other two (43% versus 7% and 0%) indicates the significantly distinctive schema of this group regarding the theme word “Freedom” It appears that this group considers freedom to be a justified human right (this subcategory earns fifty-six points, 38% of politics category weighted score) to be earned through struggles (forty points, 27%), and the symbol for freedom is the United States (thirty-five points), and to some degrees, freedom means freedom of choice (twenty-six points, 7% total weighted score)
This also shows in the response list of Hanoikids, but with notably lower significance (7% for politics and 3% for choice), and makes no appearances in the last group’s responses
Unclassified Nature Yearnings Relationships Attributes Choice Emotional associations
Actions Judgments States of being
The differences are also illustrated in the below word clouds
Word cloud 7.1 & 7.2: Word clouds for the theme “Freedom” from Hanoikids
(left) and American respondents (right)
The most frequent response for the American group is America/USA/the U.S with seven appearances, succeeded by independent (six times) That for Hanoikids is independent (eight times) and for Vietnamese is on my own (một mình) with thirteen appearances
One notable subcategorical difference is that in the category of judgments, the
Hanoikids group shows a clear tendency to indicate that freedom is particularly hard to be earned (luxury, challenge, uncontrolled, etc.) This subcategory takes up
42% of its judgments category’s weighted score, while for the Americans the number is 16%, and for the Vietnamese it is 0% This group also indicates nature as a source for freedom (6% total weighted score), while the other two groups show no sign of this trait In short, Hanoikids seem to regard freedom as a state of being gained by certain actions, or by not being dependent on others, and this state is hard to be earned
The Vietnamese group seem to share the same mindset, except that they highlight the aspect of privacy (on my own, privacy) rather than independence They also express higher yearnings to achieve freedom than the other two groups, as this category takes up 7% of their total weighted score, while makes no appearances in the other two.
Main features of the three groups’ responses for the theme “LGBT”
Figure 8.1: Semantograph for the theme “LGBT”
As shown in the semantograph, for the theme “LGBT”, Hanoikids and American groups’ responses display significant similarity in terms of categorical weighted scores Indeed, except for the group of attitudes towards the LGBT community
(unsure, indifferent, supportive, etc.), in which Hanoikids scores 8% higher than their American counterparts (17% and 9% respectively), in other categories, they go hand-in-hand with only slight differences not exceeding 2% each Thus, it is no surprise that their top categories are also similar: the supposed-to-be identity
(regular, normal, queer, etc.) of the LGBT community comes first with 25% for the U.S respondents and 27% for Hanoikids members, then the attributes observed
Love Societal factors Relationships Attitudes Challenges Political Attributes Identity
Hanoikids group also shows the same degree of association towards the attitudes – 17% total weighted score The last group, the Vietnamese one, demonstrates the same concern for attitudes and identity, only with markedly higher degree: 54% and 44% total weighted score respectively
Among other things, this group has only one other category, attributes, which takes up a humbling 3%, meaning it is only concerned with surface associations for this theme words, leaving out further , more insightful associations such as societal factors that affect the LGBT community, the challenges they face or the freedom of choice This aspect, along with the fact that this group’s response list only contains thirteen different terms, indicates certain uniformity among its respondents
Word cloud 8.1 & 8.2: Word clouds for the theme “LGBT” from Hanoikids
(left) and American respondents (right)
From the semantograph and the word clouds, it is safe to say that the groups of Americans and Hanoikids share a more or less similar schema on the concept of
“LGBT” In the above word clouds, it can be noted that both groups strongly associate the concept of LGBT with love and rights, along with identity words like human, normal or regular, indicating the line of thinking being LGBTs are regular human beings, deserving of the rights to love whomever they choose to
Nevertheless, in consideration to subcategorical differences, the most notable would be that in the identity category Apart from most responses demonstrating the view that LGBTs are regular people, the American group’s remaining responses fall into the subcategory of different (different, queer, new) – 25% category weighted score, whereas Hanoikids describe them as being weird (weird, abnormal, eccentric, strange) – 20% While the words does not instill a sense of hatred, they still show prejudice of some sorts regarding the LGBT group
Notwithstanding, the prejudice is stronger still with the Vietnamese group While they do not state any such words within the identity group, their attitudes category is filled with negative remarks (occupying 50% of this category’s weighted score) such as no, never, disgusting, terrible, unbearable or not – if too cheesy, with only a hint of being supportive (agree – four points) The other groups’ responses show no such remarks.
Main features of the three groups’ responses for the theme “Travel Around
As shown in the semantograph, the three groups demonstrate remarkably distinctive concerns regarding the theme “Travel around the world” For the U.S respondents, the top association categories are experiences (airplane, culture, food, etc.) – 20% total weighted score, learn - explore (learn, adventure, exposure, etc.) – 18%, feelings (exciting, fun, happy, etc.) and judgments (everyone should, essential, ultimately, etc.)– 17% each Those for Hanoikids are learn – explore – 17%, experiences – 16% and yearning (wish, desire, dream, etc.) – 13% The last group shows most concerns for their feelings – 33% and the places – 29% They also pay attention to the category of concerns (money, well-off, honeymoon) regarding travelling – 15%
Figure 9.1: Semantograph for the theme “Travel Around the World”
In terms of categorical differences, while the American respondents show attention to the aspect of global – international (7% total weighted score), the other two demonstrate none Another note is that in the categories of love and freedom,
Vietnamese is the only group which does not have replies belonging to those categories Subcategory-wise, in the group of concerns, the Hanoikids and
Vietnamese groups display considerably larger concerns for finance (eight points –
44% categorical weighted score for the U.S., forty-two – 84%, and twenty-nine – 88% for Hanoikids and Vietnamese respectively)
Unclassified Love Places Relationships Yearning Freedom Concerns Global/international
Feelings Judgments Learn - Explore Experiences
Word cloud 9.1 & 9.2: Word clouds for the theme “Travel Around the World” from Hanoikids (left) and American respondents (right)
The word clouds give us another perspective While the top replies for Hanoikids are money (nine times), free and dream (six times each), the Americans’ are exciting as well as learn(ing) (six times each), and Vietnamese’s are go abroad (ten times) and fun (nine times)
From the above analysis, we can conclude that the three groups view the act of travelling around the world under different lights The U.S residents in this research appear to consider it to be an exciting experience to learn and explore, as well as enjoy freedom Hanoikids members also share this mindset, but with more worry about financial matters regarding the trip, as well as stronger yearning to go The Vietnamese surveyed just express their excitement to go abroad, away from their regular residence.
Finding Summary and Discussion
For all nine themes, the weighted score per respondent order does not change:
Hanoikids’ takes the top, succeeded by the Americans’, and the Vietnamese’s takes the last place
Table 1.1: Numbers of words and total weighted scores of the three groups for each theme word
One notable feature of the table is that the weighted score per respondent of both groups of Hanoikids and the Americans do not have a large fluctuation range (for Americans: 10.9 to 12.2, for Hanoikids: 12.5 to 13.5, both not exceeding 1.3 points), whereas the last group does (4.2 to 9.9: 5.7 points) This means that the level of association varies for the Vietnamese group more than it does for the other two To be more exact, this group scores higher in less abstract items (“Parents”,
“Graducation” and “A good job”) while substantially lower in more abstract items (“Happiness”, “Freedom”, “Ambition”) or relatively foreign/recently introduced
Ambition U.S HNKs VN Graduation U.S HNKs VN A good job U.S HNKs VN
Number of words 61 93 22 Number of words 57 82 18 Number of words 62 60 25
Parents U.S HNKs VN Happiness U.S HNKs VN Freedom U.S HNKs VN
Number of words 63 80 28 Number of words 56 87 16 Number of words 60 99 18
U.S HNKs VN LGBT U.S HNKs VN Moving out U.S HNKs VN
Number of words 63 76 24 Number of words 58 79 13 Number of words 44 80 20
11.6 13.4 7.7 concepts, at least to the Vietnam society (“LGBT”, “Moving out” and “Travel around the world”), while the same pattern does not seem to occur to the two remaining groups
The degree of vocabulary diversity also differs for each group To be precise, the order is the same with that of the weighted score per respondent: Hanoikids’ answers are remarkably diverse in terms of vocabulary (averagely 81.8 words/terms per theme), followed by the Americans’ (58.2), whereas the Vietnamese group’s is considerably lesser (20.4) This suggests a greater degree of uniformity in association for the Vietnamese group However, this could well be a result of the different survey collection method: while the other groups completed the survey by means of an online survey form, which confirms their individuality in answering the survey; the Vietnamese group completed the paper form in close proximity with each other, which means they could have copied each other’s answer
As regard to the nine proposed themes, each of the three groups does show distinctive traits The U.S residents in this survey demonstrate the tendency to relate to the aspect of achievements and advancements in their associations
Hanoikids are more for the materialistic aspects: words like money, rich, expensive appear in almost all themes, not to mention they occupy quite some space in the word clouds The last group – the Vietnamese, displays inclination to mention family relationship, even in theme words not directly linked to this kind of relationship like “A good job” The aforementioned three traits do appear in other groups but to a much lesser degree This can be interpreted as the differentiating priority/readiness to come to mind of each group
As has been stated in the detailed analysis of each theme word, there is almost no clear resemblance in the association patterns of the three groups Even in items where Hanoikid’s seems to resemble that of the Americans or the Vietnamese, the degree of association (judged by weighted scores and percentages) is not entirely factors To illustrate this point, among the similar concerns they share with the Vietnamese groups and not the Americans are family relationship (theme “Moving out”) and the concern for a degree (theme “Graduation”) The similarity here can be accounted for by the fact that the age groups of the two’s respondents are closer two each other (averagely 19.41 for Vietnamese, 23.12 for Hanoikids compared to 32.63 of the Americans), both belonging to the group of adolescences bordering on young adults This is the age in which most people are still in college or have just finished it, thus explains the concern for degrees The same goes for the association of family relationship – these young people are still more or less dependent on their parents for their living, therefore might have closer bonds with their families than the older, more independent Americans This might also be the case for the American – Hanoikids similarities: rather than cultural influences, there may be another factor interfering with the results For instance, these two groups share a supportive stand regarding the LGBT community, however, it does not necessary mean an influence of the American culture on Hanoikids members One feasible explanation is that because Hanoikids acquire better English skills and/or live in a big city, where lots of activities and movements surge, leading to first, the access of more LGBT supportive materials, which is not abundant in Vietnamese and second, the exposure to the LGBT community itself via movies, music or direct contact (not necessarily from the U.S.) that the Vietnamese group, being much less of urbanists, does not enjoy The influence on the supportive viewpoint of Americans could be totally different: the U.S has been rather accepting and sympathetic towards the LGBT community for quite some time, dating back to the hippie movements of the 70s
Still, such similarities are slight and unsystematic There is no clear indication of Hanoikids being a transition between the American and the Vietnamese groups: as has been explained, any group-to-group similarities are more demographical rather than cultural, and are rare and not quite significant (Hanoikids does score a middle value in some categories, but most of those are the general ones like “judgments”,
“attributes” or “feelings”, which means that while the significance of association is indeed in the middle, the association itself can be contradicting to the other groups, as both positive and negative associations are branded under the same category)
Indeed, Hanoikids, as noted above, has their own priorities and associations particular to their group – hence, they are not really a transition between the other two groups, but a distinctive, unique group with their own characteristics, which cannot be linearly inferred by matching the other two and assigned the midpoint
Putting aside the group-to-group comparisons, in-group responses to each theme also prove diverse, or even opposing In most response pools, there could be negative and positive judgments in the same group’s responses Take the theme
“Happiness” for example: in Americans’ responses there are both positive judgments like good or essential, and negative ones like overrated or commercialized Even within the group of highest uniformity, the Vietnamese one, there are dividing opinions, such as the attitude and judgments regarding the LGBT community: not discriminate or agree versus disgusting, terrible
All in all, whilst the analysis relies on the idea of common schemata for each research group, it shows just the opposite: the complexity and diversity in the mindset of the individuals It is a commonly accepted assumption that people from a certain culture should think and behave in a certain way, which pictures culture as a single-colored, irresistible force with absolute power on individuals The result suggests just the opposite While culture unarguably exerts a powerful impact on people, it is only one among many factors that affect an individual’s mindset, way of thinking, beliefs, behaviors and priorities Exposure to international, and thus, intercultural experiences does not essentially make homogeneous impacts on different individuals – the outcome depends on various individual and environmental factors Hence, it is more accurate to say that rather than belonging to a country, or a certain geographical unit, cultures vary according to different experiences, which interplay with each other to create different outcomes Each person takes up more than one set of cultural values at once, and these manifest differently in each individual.
CONCLUSION
Findings
The data collected and analyzed by the AGA method offers insights into the problems raised in the first section of the thesis, which are culture, identity and the impact of intercultural exposure
Firstly, from the case of two groups from Vietnam, namely the Hanoikids group and the Vietnamese group, where their association patterns differ greatly despite their shared nationality, and as often inferred, shared culture While a national culture is still possible, this suggests that cultures might not be bordered by nations only This contradicts the generalization previous studies often made, that is the result of studying a group might be employed to draw the inferences for all people in the same culture, not to mention the same country In fact, people from the same country, even with the same intake of culturally specific materials, still have diverse backgrounds and experiences, thus unique interpretations of the materials, which might explain the differences demonstrated in this study
On the same line of thoughts, the striking oppositions of responses in the same group also disprove of the idea that a specific culture would exclusively define individuals’ values, beliefs and mindsets It is safer to say that culture is just one
Intercultural exposure is also one of the mentioned factors Its degree of impact might be said to not be linear to its frequency: the Hanoikids group, who enjoys a significantly greater degree of intercultural exposure than its Vietnamese counterpart, does not demonstrate any clear inclination to resemble the Vietnamese group’s priority in terms of associations, nor does it to the foreign group of Americans One might argue that Hanoikids could have been exposed to other cultures which affect their responses as well, and that would explain the deviation from both remaining groups – however, if that is the case, then it proves even more that intercultural exposure’s impact is volatile and unpredictable, rather than definite, as even with relatively equal degree of exposure, any two persons could hardly experience the same intercultural situations, leading to possibly erratically different results
To conclude, to judge a person based on his or her nationality or culture could possibly bring great misconceptions, since cultures as we define belong to groups, and each person can belong to various groups and develop his or her own unique set of personal values which are not quite encapsulated in any single culture In other words, one of the key characteristics of culture should be individuality.
Implications
Culture plays an important part in our time of globalization While it cannot be denied that cultural assumptions might work to some degree, such assumptions might as well prove to be incorrect in specific contexts, as they do not apply to every individual from that culture They should only serve as a source of reference rather than confirmed truths.
Limitations
There are several limitations to the study due to the researcher’s limited resources
First, as has been stated in the methodology section, the different methods of data collection (online surveys and printed forms) as well as the different languages used in the questionnaires (English and Vietnamese) could affect the results Ryan (2010) points out that a word or phrase in a language might not be entirely translatable to other languages due to the possibility of it carrying unique nuance In addition, the Hanoikids group has to answer the survey in English, which is not their native language – this might lead to misunderstandings and limitations in vocabulary choices English is also not the native language of the researcher, thus, occasional misinterpretations are unavoidable
Another notable point is that the implication that associations represent underlying cultural schemata could prove to be faulty under certain circumstances As the meaning of a word can vary in different contexts, a respondent, at the point of writing the responses, could possibly be under the influence of a specific event that temporarily changes the way his or her normally would picture the given concept (Bovasso et al., 1993) This and the phenomenon of polysemy would also lead to questionable validity of the categorizing of words, especially in case of ambiguous denotations.
Suggestions for further studies
As the research is only limited to two small groups of Vietnamese and one groups of the U.S residents, further researches may investigate more groups and diversify their background and level of intercultural exposure for a more conclusive results
The number of theme words may also be increased to emphasize the distinctive trends of associations, and thus, underlying cultural assumption traits of each group
It is also advisable that further researches should include specific contexts and theme for the whole study, i.e., the theme words should belong to a certain theme and the participants should also possess a degree of understandings about the theme
This would allow the researchers to make sense of the responses and categorize them with higher accuracy
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Is English your first language? Yes/No Nationality:
Have you ever had any international experiences? (International experiences/situations count as any kind of interaction you exchange with a person from another culture/country (exchanging conversations, working, befriending etc.)
If the answer to the above question is yes, please estimate the frequency of which you get exposed to international situations (as defined above) in the last five years, or as of recently
Only one or twice in total About once or twice in a year About once or twice a quarter About once or twice a month More often than all options above Other:
Please list out the first words (about THREE - FIVE single words) you think of when you hear/read each of the word below
Please do not change your answers once they have been typed out
[given word] Animal cat, cute, friendly, pet, feed, etc
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender (LGBT):
Tiếng Việt có phải là ngôn ngữ mẹ đẻ của anh/chị không? Có/Không
Nếu như câu trả lời cho câu hỏi trên là có, anh chị có thể giao tiếp (nghe - nói) ít nhất ở mức cơ bản bằng tiếng Anh không? Có/Không
Thành phố anh/chị đang sống:
Giới tính: Nam/Nữ/Khác:
Anh/chị đã từng có trải nghiệm liên văn hóa nào chưa?
Trải nghiệm quốc tế/liên văn hóa được tính là tất cả các hoạt động tương tác với người đến từ một quốc gia hay nền văn hóa khác (nói chuyện, làm việc, kết bạn, vân vân)
Nếu câu trả lời cho câu hỏi trên là có, thì mức độ thường xuyên của tương tác liên văn hóa mà anh/chị trải nghiệm trong năm năm nay, hoặc thời gian gần đây, là bao nhiêu?
Tổng cộng chỉ một - hai lần Một - hai lần một năm Một - hai lần một quý Một - hai lần một tháng