CAPS #6

I like to think that I have experienced a lot of different types of intercultural relationships throughout my life. I have befriended many different people with many different lifestyles, ethnicities, religions, occupations, etc. There have been many people come into my life that have influenced it in many different ways. But, the person that I would like to talk about for this blog is not all that different from myself. We have the same religion, ethnicity, and even the same family. My intercultural relationship is going to focus on my father. 

Now, I know that this may not be a very original intercultural relationship to write about, but I cannot think of a person that has influenced my life more than "my old man." My relationship with him starts about 23 years ago in a hospital room in Yankton, SD. I had a pretty normal childhood, grew up with 2 older sisters and a couple dogs. The only thing that might be a little different about my childhood would be that my dad owned his own trucking company and was gone at least 2 or 3 days a week driving his semi around the Midwest. But, when my Dad was home, we were a pretty normal family. 

My dad and I back when I was tiny and innocent.

Like most people, as I got older I started to act out against both of my parents. I went through the typical teenager phase of "rebellion" and had my fair share of arguments and situations where my father and I did not see eye to eye. Overall, there were not a whole lot of challenges between my dad and I as I was growing up. The one thing that was a bit of a challenge was the fact that he was gone periodically throughout the week and wasn't always there to help me out in those situations where I couldn't talk to my mom. (like about girls and other manly stuff like cars and guns :) )

Our assignment asks us to describe a couple dialects we see within our intercultural relationships. The first one that I wanted to talk about was the similarity principle. According to Martin and Nakayama (2012) the similarity principle is "a principal of relational attraction suggesting that individuals tend to be attracted to people they perceive to be similar to themselves."(p. 398) I feel that this fits very well with my blog because of the fact that a majority of my characteristics and actions are based upon what I have learned from my Dad. A lot of the things that I enjoy doing today, such as hunting, fishing, camping, etc, I have learned from my Dad and expanded on since that time. I choose who I associate with because of the actions and lessons I have learned from growing up in the situation I did.

The second dialect that Martin and Nakayama discuss that I wanted to talk about is the "Privilege-Disadvantage Dialect.(p. 399) I grew up in a lot different setting that my Dad did. My father grew up with 6 brothers, 2 sisters and 1 half sister, compared to myself where I grew up with 2 sisters. My dad grew up in a family that have 8 mouths to feed compared to me growing up where there was only 3. My dad grew up in a lot more of a disadvantage than I did. For instance, my father was lucky to graduate from high school when he was growing up. In between working for his Dad and working other jobs, he was lucky to graduate. Compared to me, I started working for my Dad when I was about 15 and only during the summer or on weekends and I didn't have my own part time job until the summer of my senior year of high school. And once I was finished with high school, I didn't really have much of a choice, I was going to college. I grew up in a more privileged setting than my Dad did because he wanted it to be that way, he wanted his kids to have a better childhood than he had. 

My dad with a couple of his brothers and my grandpa. My Dad is the mustached fellow on the far left.

There are a list of other people that I could have written this blog about but my father is probably the person that has had the most impact on my life to this point and our intercultural relationship is the one that I cherish the most. I think that a quote by Jim Butcher says it the best, "When everything goes to hell, the people who stand by you without flinching...they are your family." 

Sources:

Martin, J.N. & Nakayama T.K. (2012). Intercultural Communication in Contexts (6th ed.) Boston, MA: Mcgraw Hill