You have decided to apply for a job as a movie reviewer for your local university paper. You believe that your expertise in intercultural communication will bring a unique advantage and perspective to this role. The newspaper editor is very interested and has asked you to send a sample analysis of a movie of your choice. You decide to choose a live-action movie that has characters who clearly come from different cultural backgrounds.
Part 1: Your first goal is to make the point that character interactions and behaviors in movies illustrate principles of communication. You decide to review the eight principles of interpersonal communication and keep these principles in mind as you watch the movie. Then you choose a scene or interaction in which you can identify how the character or characters’ interactions or behavior illustrates one of the eight principles of interpersonal communication, and
Describe the interaction or behavior in the movie and the principle of interpersonal communication you chose
Analyze how the interaction or behavior illustrates this principle of communication.
Part 2: For the next part of your movie analysis, you decide to identify a scene or interaction in the movie where the language is being used in a powerful way that 1) labels others or expresses unsupportive messages; 2) demonstrates clear, cultural bias related to race, gender, age, sexual orientation, or ability through language; and/or 3) expresses a lack of inclusive language. Then,
Describe the scene or interaction briefly.
Explain how the scene or interaction illustrates the powerful way(s) language can be used.
Explain how the scene or interaction seemed to affect the relationship between the communicators.
Part 3: Next, you choose a scene or interaction in which you observe a character’s lack of cultural awareness influencing his or her communication with someone of a different culture.
Describe the scene or interaction briefly.
Describe the culture of the characters and the cultural context.
Explain how you can tell the character lacks cultural awareness and analyze how this lack of cultural awareness affected his or her communication with the other characters in the scene.
Part 4: Finally, you decide to choose a scene or interaction in which you observe one of the “isms” in action (sexism, ableism, ageism, heterosexism, or racism).
Describe the scene or interaction briefly.
Describe how the “ism” you observed was communicated between the characters in the scene. In other words, what did they say or do that made you aware they were portraying that type of bias or stereotype against another character?
Analyze the effect the behavior or attitude most likely had on the communication and explain your reasoning.
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