Recently, I observed an intriguing conversation between
my brother and my parents. We were having lunch and my parents had asked my
brother about his army experiences. My brother responded excitedly as he shared his army experiences with my parents and using hand gestures to describe how his training went. For example, he held his hands up with one hand like a hand gun, and the other hand cupped, to imitate himself holding a rifle. I observed that my parents had maintained eye
contact with my brother and had leaned forward to listen to him.They also gave occasional nods to show that they
understood what my brother was saying and that they were in the conversation.
Halfway through the conversation, my brother began to use his phone and
started playing his favourite mobile game. Although my parents were still asking
my brother questions, I could tell that he was already uninterested in the
conversation as his gaze was fixated on his phone. He took a while to reply the questions that my parents had asked
and had turned his back towards my parents. He also gave uninterested replies such
as "um" or "ya" which I thought was rude of my brother to
do so. After a
while, my parents sensed that my brother was not
interested in the conversation anymore and left the dining table looking
disappointed.
Due to the technological revolution, the world is becoming more closely connected through the internet. It has placed a greater divide between generations. In the generation culture of today,children are raised around technology and are closely connected with their friends and family. Parents are now more protective of their child and will defend their child even if he or she is in the wrong. This leads the child to believe that everything he or she does is correct as they have their parent's support. This is why my brother thinks it is okay to be rude to my parents as my parents have always defended him from young.
Hi Anson
ReplyDeleteThis is a lovely example; thanks.
You might want to re-look the last paragraph for coherence. Make sure you link the evaluation to the aspect of culture - and in particular, generation culture (as a subset of culture). You might find these articles useful as a start to thinking about this: http://www.generationmodel.eu/ and http://www.millennialmarketing.com/2010/09/the-generational-culture-gap/
And remember to support your claims about generation culture as a possible influencing factor in this interaction.
If you do revise this post, please do so by Wednesday. Thank you.
After reading your post, I felt that your description for the conversation was enough. Just one small suggestion for you is that you may want to include your own opinion too, so as to enhance the evaluation that you have given further. I hope this will help you.
ReplyDeleteHi Anson,
ReplyDeletethe observation is a good example of one's conversation with another of a different generation. With the close usage of mobile devices in our everyday life, we are often using it and not observing what others has to has. Furthermore, some of our speech and way of speaking has been affected by our messaging and texting style. I myself, am also guilty of this, and i also felt that this has led to a lesser observation in my surroundings and certain non-verbal cues from the speaker.
Your brother may have misunderstood your parents non-verbal cues(nodding and leaning forward) as uninterested in the conversation. due to the use of technology in our life, the current cultural behavior expected some sort of verbal reply from the listener instead of just nodding.
This is a good example for us to look out for when speaking with people, especially to those of a different culture,age or other aspect as we may misunderstand the different non-verbal cues.
Hello Anson, thank you for the great example. It is true that technology affects us greatly. Sometimes I happened to experience this myself, I tend to look away when my parents were talking to me and reply with an "uh" or "yea" afterwards.
ReplyDeleteBack to your evaluation, your evaluation of what happened was detailed enough to me, such as the hand gestures used by your brother and the way your parents listened to him actively by responding.
Although it was a great blog, I think it would be better if you could include the age as a point to discuss in this blog.
You have raised a very valid point on the current technological age, I have made the same observation in many public place and also at times guilty of committing the same mistakes as your brother. It just seems normal for youngsters to be glued on to their portable devices and most parents even promote such behaviors by using these portable devices to capture their attention so their parents can have one less worry on their hands. However, I think such culture should be changed and minimized in future as it makes our future generation less respectful to their elders and also people around them in general.
ReplyDelete