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Incident 1:
Mona is a Nepalese young girl who is working as a housekeeper at a hotel in Cyprus. Her goal is to maintain a job to earn enough money to support her family. One day, a guest started talking loudly in his own language and gesturing toward her, pointing his finger at the bed. She was scared and puzzled as she thought he was not happy with the cleanliness of the room. She tried to do her best to understand what the guest was asking for, but she did not succeed because of the language barrier. As time went by, his aggressive behaviour was increasing and she became more frustrated. In the end, she was forced to call the front office. Mona’s colleagues happen to understand guest’s language and explained to her that the guest was just asking for clean sheets.
Not being able to communicate in a common language aggravated the situation. The guest became frustrated, as he was not able to pass the right message to the housekeeper.
Language is an obvious obstacle to intercultural communication because people from different cultural backgrounds tend to misinterpret each other’s meanings. Even when cultures use the same language, there are still differences in the meanings of body language cues or behaviours. Even if not so serious, and even though it was solved without any severe consequence, this misunderstanding due to language issues creates a tense atmosphere, leaving both the guest and the housekeeper with unpleasant feelings and putting them in a bad mood.
Due to the lack of a common language, a hotel guest and the Nepalese housekeeper were unable to understand each other. The inability to communicate over a simple task led to frustration for both of them.
Communication is a social interaction process and one of the most essential aspects of human life, and language is the medium through which humans share information and express emotions. It is an essential part of our daily life for sharing information, ideas, opinions, feelings, facts. This cannot be the case between speakers of different languages since little and ineffective communication occurs unless one or both of them learn a new language, since most people in the world do not speak the same language, or even if they do they may speak a different dialect or use words in a different context. Communication between people of different countries becomes difficult if neither of the speakers has a common language to communicate. Language barrier obstructs the formation of interpersonal relationships and can cause misunderstanding, misinterpretation, miscommunication and prevents comprehension that lead to confusion, frustration, conflict, offense and wasting time. In this case, language can be a barrier since it separates people from each other and messages cannot be conveyed from the sender to the receiver.
The frustration between the hotel guest and the housekeeper could have been avoided if both were calmer and try to use body language. In addition, if the employer provided the hotel staff a crash English course during initial job training in order to partially communicate with the hotel guests using simple phrases, could help avert this situation at some extent.
Buarqoub, I. A. S. (2013). Language barriers to effective communication. Utopía y Praxis Latinoamericana, 24 (6), 64-77.
Spencer-Rodgers J., McGovern T. (2002). Attitudes toward the culturally different: The role of intercultural communication barriers, affective responses, consensual stereotypes, and perceived threat. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 26 (6), 609–631.
Incident 2:
Jumila is Persian and wears a turban during her work as housekeeping staff. Most of the other staff in her department come from the Far East. Jumila, is a brilliant employee as she is fast and efficient, but she is socially isolated because she looks and behaves differently. Her Sikh background does not allow her to take off her turban and she never engages in any type of small talk or gossip conversation. One day, one of her colleagues called her “turbo towelhead”, a comment that sparked a round of giggles among her other colleagues. She blushed and ran off the scene, feeling offended.
Wearing a turban has always been in the Sikh tradition. The turban is viewed as a symbol of confidence, respect, and a sense of pride, valour, spirituality, and devotion in Sikh culture. It also houses and protects the uncut hair (Kesh) coiled on the top of the head.
Cultural diversity is a set of manifold ways in which the cultures of groups and societies find expression. These expressions are passed on within and among groups and societies from generation to generation. Conflict is triggered when these cultural differences are not understood and respected. On the contrary, they are misinterpreted as being an expression of superiority and differentiation.
Jumila, a Sikh Persian, was made fun by her colleagues due to her wearing a turban. Their colleagues do not understand why she is wearing it or what it symbolises due to their different cultural backgrounds, different ideas as well as cultural expressions.
Cultural diversity is synonymous with multiculturalism and is the quality of diverse or different cultures. Humanity has inhabited the world for centuries and developed distinctive cultures, creating a rich and colourful mosaic. Cultural diversity includes race, ethnicity, religion, language, gender, sexual orientation, age, disability, socioeconomic status. Around the world, there are people who have different beliefs, religions, traditions, and ways of living. Cultural diversity benefits everyone since our differences can pave the way compassion, empathy, learning and approaching an issue from various perspectives. Cultural diversity is important since the world consist of various cultural, racial and ethnic groups. People need to understanding about each other in order to be able to cooperate, collaborate and dispel biases and negative stereotypes about people coming from different groups. In addition, understanding of cultural diversity helps people of one culture to respect people of a different culture, to trust, respect, and build bridges. Furthermore, this diversity makes the world a more interesting place to live, as people from diverse cultures contribute language skills, new knowledge, and different experiences.
Diversity training is necessary if you want to create cultural competency within diverse teams. Training on cultural differences will give your team the understanding they need to effectively collaborate with their co-workers and do their best work. Making a joke or assumptions about someone’s culture is wrong and should be avoided at all times.
Fearon J. (2003). Ethnic and cultural diversity by country. Journal of Economic Growth. 8 (2), 195-222.
Tierney S. (2013), Accommodating cultural diversity, USA: Ashgate Publishing.
Incident 3:
The new summer season is just about to start! Due to the seasonality of the ‘sun and sand’ tourism in Cyprus, the hotel has been closed for the whole winter, and now everyone has to work hard to get things on track fast. The hotel manager decides to employ personnel from third world countries. Most of the new staff members enrolled in housekeeping do not speak the official language nor the English language. The housekeeping manager struggles with the new staff members, who have limited knowledge of the language. It is hard for them to understand what is required of them in their duties on a day-to-day basis. She feels upset every time they tell her, that they understand her guidelines when they do not fully comprehend them. She thinks that they should ask questions when they do not fully understand, but they do not. Then they breach a policy with the excuse that they did not fully understand. The housekeeping manager decides that she has no other solution than to develop a system of colours to differentiate tools and jobs. She designates certain colours to certain tasks, and then to bring it a step further, she colour-coordinates the tasks with the corresponding tools to be used. She also uses videos that are strictly visual with no narration to help them as much as she can.
In many European countries, staff in housekeeping do not speak the official language of the country, nor English. Language differences affect both managers and staff on both group and personal levels, due to feelings of incompetence and frustration.
Language barriers can cause a variety of challenges in the hospitality sector, where communication is key. Given labour shortages in the global economy, it is becoming increasingly difficult for hotels to find adequate staffing.
The hospitality sector faces communication issues since they tend to employ personnel that does not speak the official language nor the English language, leading to misunderstandings due to the language barriers. This results in frustration on both sides due to the lack of communication.
Language is one of the main channels people use to communicate thoughts and ideas; but if they language used is not comprehend by everyone then they are unable to understand what others are saying. A language barrier is the obstacle to communication between people who do not speak the same language, any linguistic limitation that creates confusion, misunderstandings, frustration or prevents comprehension and the free flow of information. A barrier could refer to language but may also include specialized knowledge or speech impairments, articulation disorder and hearing loss. When people do not share a common language, they must develop techniques to clarify their ideas and ensure others are on the same page. Both speakers need to slow down and share ideas in short sentences using simple words in order to be able to understand each other and avoid idioms, as well as be patient and use gestures. Using jargon or esoteric vocabulary only creates the opportunity for miscommunication and makes people feel bad they cannot understand what you are saying.
The employers need to provide both the hotel manager and their personnel with training in order to be able to find ways to communicate between them and by teaching them basic words and phrases in order to be able to perform their everyday duties. This will help for a better collaboration between the maintenance team and be more punctual.
Buarqoub, I. A. S. (2013). Language barriers to effective communication. Utopía y Praxis Latinoamericana, 24 (6), 64-77.
Broen, L. E., Yeung, S. A., Lee, F. K. C. (2012). Communication and language: Surmounting barriers to cross-cultural understanding, educational equity, and social justice, Charlotte, North Carolina: Information Age Publishing Inc.
Incident 1:
Mona is a Nepalese young girl who is working as a housekeeper at a hotel in Cyprus. Her goal is to maintain a job to earn enough money to support her family. One day, a guest started talking loudly in his own language and gesturing toward her, pointing his finger at the bed. She was scared and puzzled as she thought he was not happy with the cleanliness of the room. She tried to do her best to understand what the guest was asking for, but she did not succeed because of the language barrier. As time went by, his aggressive behaviour was increasing and she became more frustrated. In the end, she was forced to call the front office. Mona’s colleagues happen to understand guest’s language and explained to her that the guest was just asking for clean sheets.
Not being able to communicate in a common language aggravated the situation. The guest became frustrated, as he was not able to pass the right message to the housekeeper.
Language is an obvious obstacle to intercultural communication because people from different cultural backgrounds tend to misinterpret each other’s meanings. Even when cultures use the same language, there are still differences in the meanings of body language cues or behaviours. Even if not so serious, and even though it was solved without any severe consequence, this misunderstanding due to language issues creates a tense atmosphere, leaving both the guest and the housekeeper with unpleasant feelings and putting them in a bad mood.
Due to the lack of a common language, a hotel guest and the Nepalese housekeeper were unable to understand each other. The inability to communicate over a simple task led to frustration for both of them.
Communication is a social interaction process and one of the most essential aspects of human life, and language is the medium through which humans share information and express emotions. It is an essential part of our daily life for sharing information, ideas, opinions, feelings, facts. This cannot be the case between speakers of different languages since little and ineffective communication occurs unless one or both of them learn a new language, since most people in the world do not speak the same language, or even if they do they may speak a different dialect or use words in a different context. Communication between people of different countries becomes difficult if neither of the speakers has a common language to communicate. Language barrier obstructs the formation of interpersonal relationships and can cause misunderstanding, misinterpretation, miscommunication and prevents comprehension that lead to confusion, frustration, conflict, offense and wasting time. In this case, language can be a barrier since it separates people from each other and messages cannot be conveyed from the sender to the receiver.
The frustration between the hotel guest and the housekeeper could have been avoided if both were calmer and try to use body language. In addition, if the employer provided the hotel staff a crash English course during initial job training in order to partially communicate with the hotel guests using simple phrases, could help avert this situation at some extent.
Buarqoub, I. A. S. (2013). Language barriers to effective communication. Utopía y Praxis Latinoamericana, 24 (6), 64-77.
Spencer-Rodgers J., McGovern T. (2002). Attitudes toward the culturally different: The role of intercultural communication barriers, affective responses, consensual stereotypes, and perceived threat. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 26 (6), 609–631.
Incident 2:
Jumila is Persian and wears a turban during her work as housekeeping staff. Most of the other staff in her department come from the Far East. Jumila, is a brilliant employee as she is fast and efficient, but she is socially isolated because she looks and behaves differently. Her Sikh background does not allow her to take off her turban and she never engages in any type of small talk or gossip conversation. One day, one of her colleagues called her “turbo towelhead”, a comment that sparked a round of giggles among her other colleagues. She blushed and ran off the scene, feeling offended.
Wearing a turban has always been in the Sikh tradition. The turban is viewed as a symbol of confidence, respect, and a sense of pride, valour, spirituality, and devotion in Sikh culture. It also houses and protects the uncut hair (Kesh) coiled on the top of the head.
Cultural diversity is a set of manifold ways in which the cultures of groups and societies find expression. These expressions are passed on within and among groups and societies from generation to generation. Conflict is triggered when these cultural differences are not understood and respected. On the contrary, they are misinterpreted as being an expression of superiority and differentiation.
Jumila, a Sikh Persian, was made fun by her colleagues due to her wearing a turban. Their colleagues do not understand why she is wearing it or what it symbolises due to their different cultural backgrounds, different ideas as well as cultural expressions.
Cultural diversity is synonymous with multiculturalism and is the quality of diverse or different cultures. Humanity has inhabited the world for centuries and developed distinctive cultures, creating a rich and colourful mosaic. Cultural diversity includes race, ethnicity, religion, language, gender, sexual orientation, age, disability, socioeconomic status. Around the world, there are people who have different beliefs, religions, traditions, and ways of living. Cultural diversity benefits everyone since our differences can pave the way compassion, empathy, learning and approaching an issue from various perspectives. Cultural diversity is important since the world consist of various cultural, racial and ethnic groups. People need to understanding about each other in order to be able to cooperate, collaborate and dispel biases and negative stereotypes about people coming from different groups. In addition, understanding of cultural diversity helps people of one culture to respect people of a different culture, to trust, respect, and build bridges. Furthermore, this diversity makes the world a more interesting place to live, as people from diverse cultures contribute language skills, new knowledge, and different experiences.
Diversity training is necessary if you want to create cultural competency within diverse teams. Training on cultural differences will give your team the understanding they need to effectively collaborate with their co-workers and do their best work. Making a joke or assumptions about someone’s culture is wrong and should be avoided at all times.
Fearon J. (2003). Ethnic and cultural diversity by country. Journal of Economic Growth. 8 (2), 195-222.
Tierney S. (2013), Accommodating cultural diversity, USA: Ashgate Publishing.
Incident 3:
The new summer season is just about to start! Due to the seasonality of the ‘sun and sand’ tourism in Cyprus, the hotel has been closed for the whole winter, and now everyone has to work hard to get things on track fast. The hotel manager decides to employ personnel from third world countries. Most of the new staff members enrolled in housekeeping do not speak the official language nor the English language. The housekeeping manager struggles with the new staff members, who have limited knowledge of the language. It is hard for them to understand what is required of them in their duties on a day-to-day basis. She feels upset every time they tell her, that they understand her guidelines when they do not fully comprehend them. She thinks that they should ask questions when they do not fully understand, but they do not. Then they breach a policy with the excuse that they did not fully understand. The housekeeping manager decides that she has no other solution than to develop a system of colours to differentiate tools and jobs. She designates certain colours to certain tasks, and then to bring it a step further, she colour-coordinates the tasks with the corresponding tools to be used. She also uses videos that are strictly visual with no narration to help them as much as she can.
In many European countries, staff in housekeeping do not speak the official language of the country, nor English. Language differences affect both managers and staff on both group and personal levels, due to feelings of incompetence and frustration.
Language barriers can cause a variety of challenges in the hospitality sector, where communication is key. Given labour shortages in the global economy, it is becoming increasingly difficult for hotels to find adequate staffing.
The hospitality sector faces communication issues since they tend to employ personnel that does not speak the official language nor the English language, leading to misunderstandings due to the language barriers. This results in frustration on both sides due to the lack of communication.
Language is one of the main channels people use to communicate thoughts and ideas; but if they language used is not comprehend by everyone then they are unable to understand what others are saying. A language barrier is the obstacle to communication between people who do not speak the same language, any linguistic limitation that creates confusion, misunderstandings, frustration or prevents comprehension and the free flow of information. A barrier could refer to language but may also include specialized knowledge or speech impairments, articulation disorder and hearing loss. When people do not share a common language, they must develop techniques to clarify their ideas and ensure others are on the same page. Both speakers need to slow down and share ideas in short sentences using simple words in order to be able to understand each other and avoid idioms, as well as be patient and use gestures. Using jargon or esoteric vocabulary only creates the opportunity for miscommunication and makes people feel bad they cannot understand what you are saying.
The employers need to provide both the hotel manager and their personnel with training in order to be able to find ways to communicate between them and by teaching them basic words and phrases in order to be able to perform their everyday duties. This will help for a better collaboration between the maintenance team and be more punctual.
Buarqoub, I. A. S. (2013). Language barriers to effective communication. Utopía y Praxis Latinoamericana, 24 (6), 64-77.
Broen, L. E., Yeung, S. A., Lee, F. K. C. (2012). Communication and language: Surmounting barriers to cross-cultural understanding, educational equity, and social justice, Charlotte, North Carolina: Information Age Publishing Inc.