Critical Analysis Of Lisa Davis's 'Where Do We Stand'

An American man that doesn’t really understand cultural differences communicating with a man from Japan can cause him discomfort by being overly friendly. However, the American may not realize that such discomfort is caused because he doesn’t fully understand that a certain distance should be kept and no physical, or direct eye contact should be made when communicating with people from East Asia. Language of space is crucial to be taught and learnt since people of every country and culture communicate at different distances, literally. Writer, Lisa Davis, discussed such issues in her article “Where Do We Stand”. She had a lot to say about different cultures take on communication. This paper attempts to show that people from different countries
She fixated on simple lexical repetition, where certain specific key words were repeated for emphasis. Some of those words being Middle East, American, and space. In addition to simple lexical repetition, she used complex lexical repetition as well. She also used many connecting words, mainly the word and, which created an easy flow for readers. Moreover, Davis used forward and backward references too in order to avoid awkward repetitions of certain nouns, and pronouns. It also contributed to easing the flow of the text for readers. Furthermore, she used a few expressions that enhanced and enriched the text. Finally, Davis wrote her article in the present tense, which allowed readers to feel like they were living in the moment with the
Davis presented many examples in her text. Such examples showed how people from different cultures differ in the way they communicate. The examples she chose were often exaggerated and racist especially in the way she presented Middle Easterners. For instance, in her article Davis quoted Sondra Snowdon’s noticeably racist quote, “Arabians like to conduct business discussions from within spitting distance – literally.” Davis’s choice to use such a quote clarified that she is prejudiced. Any Arab who would read such a thing would feel offended in some way. In the text it was also evident that Davis didn’t really have a clue of what she was talking about. On the last page of her article she made a huge mistake in which she generalized all Arabs to be the same. It is expected from a writer who writes about people’s different ways of communication to at least have enough background information to not generalize a specific ethnicity as a whole. Arabs may share the same language, but not all of them share the same culture and behavior. Nevertheless, there were some strong points in Davis’s article. However, it was obvious that the weak points outweighed the strong