Chapter 5: Culture and Context
CASE: Target Urina
See Teacher Notes
ACTIVITY: Direct and Indirect Exercise
Direct/Indirect Exercises
Source: Stella Ting-Toomey and Leeva Chung, Summer Institute for Intercultural Communication.
Practice taking direct statements and turning them into indirect statements and vice-versa.
Direct Statements:
2. Your office seems very sparse.
4. Your management style is very laissez faire, which doesn’t encourage growth in your
subordinates.
6. If you don’t get your homework done, you will not complete this class.
8. You have difficulty arriving on time, don’t you?
Indirect Statements:
1. When I worked in the Finance Department, they allowed us to establish our own deadlines.
2. The early bird gets the worm.
3. My father used to tell me that it was important to listen to the whole story before making
decisions.
ACTIVITY: YouTube videos regarding space
Watch these video clips to discuss the anthropology of traffic.
People in crowded cities such as New York must accept and defend their right to personal space.
Personal space is critical to the individual, but most New Yorkers understand that most people live their
lives in public. It’s a paradox—people want personal space, but they live their lives in public. In other
cities, such as Hong Kong or New Delhi, public space is more natural to people who don’t mind being
squished together.
• New York Times on space in NYC: