MY FAVORITE METAPHORS TO UNDERSTAND CROSS-CULTURAL COMMUNICATION: PEACHES, COCONUTS AND ONIONS.

My favorite metaphors to understand cross-cultural communication: peaches, coconuts and onion.
MY FAVORITE METAPHORS TO UNDERSTAND CROSS-CULTURAL COMMUNICATION: PEACHES, COCONUTS AND ONIONS.
Today I want to share with you my favorite metaphors in cross-cultural communication. You’ve probably heard about different theories in cross-cultural communication that help to understand different cultures and to communicate easier with people from all over the world. I’ve studied a lot of them in the university as well as I read many interesting ones in my free time. But in this video I’ll tell about metaphors that are used in multicultural communication that help to understand differences in behaving and in attitude.
First one is about coconuts and peaches. It says that people from some countries are like coconuts (Russia, Germany, Norway, Check Republic, etc.), it’s difficult to get through their shell, it’s very hard. Those people are not the fans of the small talk, they are not open with strangers and difficult to become friends with. But if you’ve managed to come through the shell, you’ll see that they are soft, friendly and very open-hearted, ready to help and wonderful friends.
People-peaches (the USA, the UK, New Zealand, Australia) are on the contrary soft from the first meeting, very friendly, easy to talk to, they enjoy small-talks. But later you’ll encounter a pit of the peach. That means they won’t tell you about very personal and important for them issues, they would prefer to keep if for themselves only.
And I also like the onion principle that demonstrates the social penetration theory. I especially enjoy “Stranger on the train phenomenon”.
Hope you also like these metaphors!
Have a nice day!