Norms

Our sociology teacher was talking about how we need to recognize norms in cross culture communication because what might mean something to us, might mean something completely different to another group of people. Our teacher showed my class pictures of President Bush holding hands with the King of Saudi Arabia and immediately everyone started to laugh. But if we were in Saudi Arabia not one person in the class would be laughing because its normal there. To us it looks funny but we need to watch out because if we don't acknowledge the differences, we could offend a culture.