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Description
Intercultural marriage has been a widely explored topic across many disciplines. Prior research on intercultural marriage has focused on challenges, conflicts, child-raising practices, etc., but the findings of such research are inconclusive (Tili & Barker, 2015). Therefore, the present study aims to understand how people perceive “cultural distance” as a reason for compromise in intercultural marriage.
Two cases of intercultural marriage between a Japanese female and an Indian male are explored. Through semi-structured interviews with the Japanese women involved, their perspectives on the adjustments they have made within their relationships, families, and wider society are studied.
Japanese women experienced familial pressures in following customs, maintaining regular communication with extended family members, and participating in family events. They experienced sociocultural differences with people in Indian society in terms of their values and style of communication. Notably, the perceived cultural distance was more pronounced in familial and societal matters than within their marital relationship. Cognitive and behavioral changes in response to the perceived disfluencies were also identified through interview analysis.
The results of this study can be applied to other intercultural studies to understand the difference between an actual cultural gap and a perceived one, and their impact on intercultural communication.
