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Thai vs Western Culture

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Thai vs Western Culture
Many countries have different religions and cultures. Culture is a form of human intellectual achievements. It is like learning a human’s behavior pattern. It does not matter what background you have or which part of the world you are from, everybody has a culture in them in some way. It involves interactions between people, for example verbal communication, non verbal communication and or facial expressions. For verbal communication people tend to greet each other in the politest way using common phrases such as, ‘Hi, how are you?’ or ‘How have you been? ‘. Non-verbal communication is where people use hands or bodily gestures to greet others. For facial expressions people usually express emotions such as a smile for happiness or frowns for sadness. People that have different backgrounds and religions usually have different kind of cultures. Different cultures have different rules and expectations. Sometime people need to have a good understanding of various rituals and cultures due to the differences in religion and beliefs. Argyle & Trower (1979, p.104) that ‘Rituals are standardized pattern of social behavior which are symbolic rather than instrumental’. By not adapting to other cultures and rituals, there might be some difficulties in communication and acceptance of a person with a different culture. There are some similarities and differences between western culture and eastern culture. This essay will compare and contrast the differences between Thai cultures and Western’s culture (British, Americans etc.) and some similarities between them.

Western countries such as Britain and America have their own ways of greeting. Normally they greet each other by saying ‘Good morning’, ‘Good afternoon’ or ‘Good evening’ but when they say ‘Goodbye’ it normally means to farewell. (englishwilleasy.com 2011).
Bodily language is considered to have an important role in western culture. Due to (Argyle & Trower 1979, p.104) “People in the street do not



Bibliography: Adler, R.B 1980, p.95-96, Interplay The process of interpersonal communication, Holt, Rinehart & Winston, U.S.A Argyle, M 1975, p.219, Bodily CommunicationI, Methuen & com. Ltd, London, England. Argyle, M & Trower, P 1979, p.104, Person to person: ways of communicating, Thomson Nelson, Holland Beare, K 2011, understanding of American English, http://esl.about.com/od/britishamerican/a/american_english.htm viewed 1 July 2011 Hopkins, D 2011, Daily word of God Group, http://www.dailywordofgodgroup.com/why-go-to-church.htm viewed 28 June 2011 Kim 2011, History of the handshake, http://blog.myheritage.com/2010/08/history-of-the-handshake/ viewed 1 July 2011 (Unknown author), 2006,Thailand Culture and the People of Thailand http://www.horizonmuaythai.com/Thailand/culture.html#sawadi viewed 9 July 2011

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