安娜与国王

同济大学跨文化交际英语作文

Anna and the kind

“Anna and the king” tells a story of an English widow going to Thailand with her son and teaching King’s sons English, based on the background in the middle of the 19th century. Except for love and war, this movie reflects intercultural communication and conflicts in terms of human rights, power distance, Masculinity-femininity dimension and so on.

western people value the value of equality; while eastern usually rank people by their gender and social state. In eastern traditional thoughts, men enjoy higher status than women. As the Chinese ancient philosophers Confucius said,” 君君臣臣父父子子”. In Siam, the kind owns sovereign power, none can look steadily at him but also must kneel down. So Anna didn’t understand why she was called “sir” and so that when she meet the kind for the first time, caused a commotion. And when Anna saw a slave been chained outside, suffering hunger and cold , painful. She decided to request king to release her. In her opinion or in another word, in western people’s view, each human being has the right to enjoy freedom, and slavery should never exist in a modern nation.

The movie also shows the differents between high context culture and the low context culture. In high context, many things are not explained. One say is far less than what he means. Communication is efficient if the words are selected accurately, suitably. As for the low context culture, communicator have to express directly. So what they say is just what they mean. The movie also reflects barriers to communication between two context. For example, Anna prepared the party well, the kind was satisfied and falled in love with Anna. So the kind give Anna a ring with a reason that what Anna did satisfy him. But in fact, the kind implied his love to Anna. Living in a low context culture, Anna didn’t realize the true meaning behind the kind’s words, so she refused the gift. The communication between high and low context culture usually leads to misunderstandings. In order to avoid this situation,we need to have a general knowledge of different clutures.

The movie sets a good example for intercultural exchange, where different values can conflict with each other, learn from each other, and finally reform to be a better one.