Intercultural Interview

Intercultural Paper

I interviewed Kotryna Klizentyte, who is from Lithuania. Kotryna’s family is from Lithuania, where she was born. Unfortunately, when Kotryna was young, her parents separated and got divorced, her mom went to America with $50 and made it and was able to save enough and start a new life bringing Kotryna and her sister over to America. Kotryna was about three years old when she came to America. Though she has lived in America for the majority of her life, she feels attached to her culture and still feels apart of the culture, she often feels like a part of two worlds being American and Lithuanian.

I explained to her that low-context cultures use language to express thoughts, feelings, and ideas as directly as possible;
I explained that a culture with a low power distance would believe in minimizing distinctions in social classes, as well as believe challenging authority is acceptable. She explained to me that Lithuania had a power distance somewhere in the middle, but leaning more towards high power distance. Kotryna explained that there are three main cities and in these cities people generally know each other and are very friendly, most people are considered equal. In these cities, the middle class and upper class live and work in nice conditions. There are other rural areas where the poor farmers live and work, as well as places where people who have power such as government officials live. Kotryna explained there is a definite difference between power distance in the cities where everyone is similar in social classes compared to the poor farmer areas. People of the city visiting the rural, poor farms is very rare, but if that were to happen, the poor farmer would not be the equal, there would be a high power distance to which the people in higher social classes were seen as better and more powerful, and the farmer would not be able to question these people much. She said generally the power distance would be situational and in the situations experienced on an everyday basis, people would stick to their respective cities and among the cities would be
Kotryna has lived here for the majority of her life but is very knowledgeable about her culture and still practices the traditions and speaks in Lithuanian often. She explained to me that when she is working on school work, and focusing on academic readings and papers, she is better using English as her language since her English vocabulary is larger. On the other hand, when speaking in conversation (she explained that this happened during the interview as well as many situations), she found herself translating the other person’s English words to Lithuanian to better understand. Kotryna finds verbally communicating in Lithuanian easier. She explained that when she is mad she only speaks in Lithuanian. I found it interesting that after all her years in the United States and speaking English, Kotryna says that sometimes if she speaks English quite a bit, her mouth hurts from the differences in forming words in the languages, she will often call her mom and speak to her in Lithuanian to feel better physically as well as feel connected to her culture during these times. I found it very interesting when she explained to me that often her dreams are in Lithuanian and she feels more comfortable thinking and speaking in this language. English is viewed to her (and many in her culture) as a language for academics and to be able to get jobs talking to American