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Therefore, because of Chinese values, traditions and social structure, Chinese people do not have a strong awareness of privacy. For thousands of years, a vast majority of Chinese people are living in rural areas, and several generations of a family living together, thus, Chinese people are very familiar with each other and nearly share everything. So it is natural for them to greet with topics about family, salary or other personal problems.
Westin (1967), a leading scholar in the privacy domain, defined privacy as the claim of inpiduals, groups, or institutions to determine for themselves when, how, and to what extent information about them is communicated to others. In his seminal work on privacy, he identified four types of privacy: (1) solitude, being free from observation by others; (2) anonymity, being unknown, even a word; (3) reserve, using psychological barriers to control unwanted intrusion and (4) intimacy, being with another person but free from the outside world. Schoeman (1984) points out that the question of whether or not privacy is culturally relative can be interpreted in two ways. One question is whether privacy is deemed valuable to all peoples or whether its value is relative to cultural differences. A second question is whether or not there are any aspects of life that are inherently private and not just conventionally so. Allen (1988) is especially sensitive to the ways obligations from different cultures affect perceptions of privacy. There has been far less agreement on the second question. Some argue that matters relating to one’s innermost self are inherently private, but characterizing this realm more succinctly and less vaguely has remained an elusive task. Smith (2000), editor of the Privacy Journal, defined privacy as the desire by each of us for physical space where we can be free from interruption, intrusion, embarrassment, or accountability and the attempt to control the time and manner of disclosures of personal information about ourselves.
Through these definition and explanation, it is easy to conclude that, in American people’s eyes, privacy means having their own thought and space. They can do whatever they want in the certain personal space and don’t need to worry about other people would interfere in.
2.5 Importance of Privacy in Intercultural Communication
Everyone has his or her privacy, and everyone has the secret that does not want to be known by others. Privacy is the most intimate thing that related to us. Different people have different attitudes to privacy. As long as people have the attitude to hide something from others, privacy would be formed. Thus, privacy is important and close to each of person.
Modern studies of privacy have nonetheless shown that a sense of privacy is a basic characteristic of all mankind, but its manifestations differ from place to place, over time, and according to differences in age, gender, and other circumstances.
We have seen many cases of invasion of privacy in our life. Since privacy attitudes differ with age, gender or other factors, it is not rare to see the occurrences of privacy invasion. One of such cases was reported in newspaper several years ago. It happened in a super-market. The infrared susceptor was warning when a female customer was walking through the gate by the counter. A male security guard insisted on searching the lady. In fact, the lady had not stolen anything in the super-market. Naturally, it so aroused her fury that she refused to be searched by the male security guard. But as a compromise, she agreed to be searched by a female one. However, it ended up with the male security guard having searched her. This case is typically a huge violation of human rights, among which privacy is one of the most important human rights. It can be inferred that different privacy concepts may arouse problems in social life.
In intercultural communication, such problems are even more common occurrences. For example, A is an overseas student in the United States, and B is a native American. They are such good friends that A assumes B is surely glad to share his notes with him before the examination. But just when A attempts to read the notes without asking B for permission, B grabs it back rather angrily, for he feels his privacy has been invaded. It is his privacy of the page. Such intercultural conflict shows that different attitudes towards privacy contribute a lot to intercultural misunderstandings. The attitude towards privacy plays a crucial role in our social life when we interact with others.