Say Anything to Anyone, Anywhere: 5 Keys To Successful Cross-Cultural Communication

Chapter 2

Understanding the “Cultural Layer Cake”

We All Have Layers in Our Cakes

In this day and age, very few people can claim to be from only one culture. Most of us are like a slice of cultural layer cake, with several cultures blended one on top of the other. In addition to our ancestry, these cultural layers are shaped by a variety of factors. Everything from our race and gender to events and politics contributes to their composition. Anything that has had a strong impact on us, from birth on, is a part of those layers. The influences of our parents, family, friends, neighbors, and teachers have had a hand in creating our cultural makeup.

Think, for example, about a favorite teacher, coach, or boss who may have inspired you in a particular way. Someone like this who had a strong influence on you added to your existing layers—or may have even created a new one.

I remember one university professor in particular who significantly affected my life direction and clearly helped create one of my most important layers. As a typical floundering university freshman, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. My SAT scores indicated that I had an aptitude for Russian literature. How that was derived I don’t know; however, I do know that it didn’t really pique my interest at that point in time!

Everything changed in my second semester, when I took a humanities class from a new professor who forever changed my view of the world. Even after the first class, I knew that humanities ...