Communication in multicultural society

Last week, I was in the grocery store and I happened to notice an interesting interaction going on between people of different cultures. They were an associate of the store and two customers. The associate was a young girl who looked like a Native American while the other two were old Asian couple who had problems interacting in English. The couple seemed to be looking for some sort of coffee and they asked the associate for the location of coffee. The associate asked them if they were looking for coffee grains or prepared coffee. The couple, not understanding what she said, kept on repeating the word coffee. The associate walked them to the aisle where coffee was located. They shook their heads and said ‘No, no’. Hence, the girl took them to the coffee machine and yet, again, the couple discussed about something in their own language and shook their heads. The girl did not try to enquire further as she could not interpret what they were saying. It seemed that the couple could not find what they were looking for, so they sadly left the store. The above case reflected communication in multicultural society where cultural or language differences complicate communication process (Seiler & Beall, 2011, p. 10-11). In the above scenario, language acted as a barrier between the associate and the customers due to which the couple could not relay the message properly and the associate could not understand the message. The young girl, thinking that she would never know what they wanted, did not have enough patience to try to understand them further. She could have understood it, if the couple had explained her by different hand gestures. Moreover, it would have helped the customer if the girl had known how to communicate with people of different cultures. Thus, it is important in a multicultural society to learn to communicate between people of different