Paper Example on Culture Shock: Struggles and Disorientation in a New Environment

Moving to a new place or country with a culture that differs from one's culture makes a person experience a culture shock, which entails having personal disorientation to the new culture. The major cultural elements of culture shock include social relations, social roles, religion, dressing, foods, and language (Rider University, n.d.). The new culture shock imparts the new person with personal disorientation, anxiety, and struggle to fit in the new society through accepting the new culture.

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The most common culture shock is a new language that the new person does not understand and faces difficulty in communicating with the members of the new society (Cupsa, 2018). There may also be distinct greetings language and procedures which the new person has never experienced or heard of ever before. The language influences other social relations such as greetings, which imparts the new person with pressure to learn the new language to socialize and communicate with the eloquence and with the required language standards.

Moreover, some religious cultures may oppose the new person's home culture, forcing them to adopt new religious practices and be part of the new society. The religion profoundly influences most types of dressing cultures in the new country, making a person have to change their dressing to the accepted dressing, such as wearing hijabs or body covering clothes (Cupsa, 2018). Also, some cultures may have distinct gender roles and relations, whereby women are excluded from performing specific tasks like working or going to worship centers.

Conclusion

Finally, most cultures have certain food dishes only, making a new person face a hard time looking for familiar dishes or being forced to try new foods. Some cultures have foods and eating habits that may appear inappropriate and weird to the new person, such as eating some animals like snakes. The food culture shock makes a person feel not fit for the new society despite the residents appreciating such cultures (Rider University, n.d.). If a person experiencing the elements causing culture shock fails to go through the phases of accepting the new culture, they may feel isolated, rejected, depressed, and seen as a rebel of the new culture.

References

Cupsa, I. (2018). Culture shock and identity. Transactional Analysis Journal, 48(2), 181-191. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03621537.2018.1431467

Rider University. (n.d.). Culture shock.