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;
whereas high-context cultures rely heavily on subtle, often nonverbal cues. I explained that the United States is seen as a low-context culture. She explained to me that Lithuania is a low-context culture, who rely on verbals to express ideas and thoughts. In Lithuania they don’t typically use non-verbals, especially gestures. She explained that the people communicate verbally and sometimes speak using a play on words with a unique language they have developed.

Next, I explained the individualistic culture and that their primary responsibility is helping themselves, and the collectivistic culture who feels loyal and obligated to help others in the culture. She explained to me that while family is important, she views the culture as an individualistic culture. The people care about each other and they want to help each other, but typically you take care of yourself and immediate family first before you take care of those in your community. She explained that helping others was common especially living in cities that were smaller where everyone knew each other, but that taking care of a person outside of your immediate family would wait until you and your family was doing well.

I next explained the idea of power distance as the degree to which members of a society accept and unequal distribution of power.
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
a lower power distance. Challenging authority from officials is frowned upon and not widely encouraged while not a major issue in the culture.

We then discussed uncertainty avoidance, I explained that if members of a culture felt threatened by a situation that they may or may not avoid the situation. I explained that the United States is a country that feels relatively unthreatened by change where as countries including Belgium, Greece, and Japan would find new or ambiguous situations to be discomforting. She explained that there was a level of uncertainty avoidance as most people were okay with change, but didn’t find change a necessity. She explained that often in the culture, people find keeping to themselves and letting the government handle any issues or change to be the best option. Kotryna explained that in Lithuania she hasn’t thought of any situations from her time there or speaking with her family who is still there, as a situation that would cause a bit of change or that the country would fight for. People in the culture simply keep away from controversy and major change and let things stay the way they are unless told otherwise by the government.

Lastly, Kotryna and I discussed achievement versus nurturing culture. Kotryna explained that she viewed her culture as a nurturing culture. In the communities, everyone seems to know everyone. Families are important and neighbors and workers are all friends. If something happened to a family member, the members of the family were expected to be there for that family member, and the people in the community would understand and support them. Kotryna explained that this did vary though, because if an outsider were to come in, the communities would not be nurturing towards them or support building a relationship with them, as much as just focus on a task at hand. Outsiders are not trusted until they find a place in the community and make connections with the people in the culture and are seen as a friend to the people.

During the interview, I noticed Kotryna showed the same non-verbals I would expect from an American I would interview.
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
people in the work fields. Throughout talking to her, I found that the Lithuanian culture focused on family and religion quite a bit. While going to church was seen as optional, many of the people find reading the bible and practices a religion, often Russian Eastern Orthodox very fulfilling. Christening/Baptizing babies and young children is seen as a very important step for parents to make sure happens with their young. On Christmas Eve, the people are only allowed to eat fish, and are not ever able to consume other meats. On Christmas there is a huge feast and families get together in large gatherings and celebrate together and focus on each other. Other holidays include a “name day” she explained to me that she enjoys name day as it is the day that a name was originated on. Everyday the name day for a particular name changes, but they focus on celebrating everyone’s names. Each day celebrates about eight names, and people who have those names tend to get small gifts from family, friends, and neighbors on their name day. She still celebrates name day amongst her family and said this past year her name day was March 16. She told me that her culture is becoming very modernized, and drifting towards American things. Technology and fashion are very important in the culture now. Just seven years back, people didn’t find technology a necessity, most didn’t have cell phones and computers, while now the people them just as much as Americans. The fashion trends include wearing one color. The same shade of a color shirt, bottoms, shoes, etc. Also, wearing items (such as shirts) with any American wordage on them (such as a “Hollister” brand shirt that has the name printed across the shirt) is seen as a wonderful thing. Anything “American” is thought of to have high value within the people. Sadly, she explained to me that Lithuania has the highest suicide rates in Europe, and the highest alcohol consumption between all of Europe and the United states.