Analysis of My Big Fat Greek Wedding

During the movie, My Big fatty Greek Wedding, there was a lot of positive and negative dialogue that influenced the main characters purport decisions. The story is about a young womilitary personnel, named Toula, that is of Greek decent who is fearful of being stuck in the life she is now living. She is a frumpy girl that works in her familys restaurant because she has not been adequate to find a Greek man to marry, and because of this, her family claims that she is old and has failed in life. She is allowed to attend college, which in turn, gives her new confidence and she is subject to fall in love with a non-Greek man that is named, Ian.During the movie she struggles to yield her family to accept him as the man she loves, and she similarly finally comes to terms with her inheritance and cultural identity. At the end of the movie, Ian is accepted into the family, he becomes a call Greek, agrees to marry in the Greek Orthodox Church and participate in the Greek culture. Desp ite the happy ending of the movie, Toula struggled to follow the rules and values of her culture, serious nonverbal communication with Ian, and received empathy from her mformer(a) while Ian had to deal with a language bulwark of English and Greek.Toula has a hard time evaluate the culture of her family. From the movie, it seems as though the Greek culture is a lofty context culture. High context cultures carry a strong soul of tradition and fib, and they do not diversity much over time. In the beginning of the movie, Toula states that her family expects her to marry a Greek boy, make Greek babies, and run through everyone in the family till the day she dies. Since she has not been married she is stuck working in the family restaurant until she does. She breaks tradition when she starts dating and then marries, Ian, because he is not a Greek boy, and not from a Greek family. She also does the unthinkable since she marryed Ian and changes the history and tradition of the cu lture, as high context cultures do not change over time. It is also a tradition for the Greeks to redeem big families Toula explains to Ian that she has cardinal first cousins and Ian seems to be very interested in what she is telling him because he hardly has cardinal cousins. Ians family is Ameri after part and they are the opposite of Toulas family, they are part of the low context culture, like many other American families.One of the biggest differences is that Toulas family is loud, big and always to stomachher and Ians family is small, quite, and only see each other on special occasions. Toula and Ian practiced disparate forms of nonverbal communication during the movie. Nonverbal communication means messages expressed by nonlinguistic means. Ian and Toula have both utilise face and eyes as a form of nonverbal communication. When Toula was still working as a waitress in her family restaurant, the dancing Zorbas, she was caught staring at Ian by Ian and his friend.Her st aring suggests that she was very interested in Ian and design that he was handsome scarcely Ians friend assumed that she was crazy because of how she was staring at Ian. Toula also caught Ian staring at her in the window of the travel agency that her aunty owns. Ians staring at Toula suggested that he was interested in her and thought that she was pretty. Ian used substituting, a form of nonverbal communication, to say hi to Toula in the window of the travel agency by waving and smiling at her. There were no words spoken to each other during this scene.Toula used body orientation to hide from Ian in her familys restaurant lav the counter as he was leaving. She did this because she may have been embarrassed for get caught staring at him and she may have also been shy. The same function also happened in the travel agency when Toula hid behind the water dispenser when Ian dour his back to her to talk with his friend. When he turned back around he could not find her and he walked off. Before Ian ran into the older lady on the street in front of the travel agency, he was using the apparent movement of possibly a duck, to get Toulas attention and to make her laugh.This gesticulate made her laugh and smile and it was able to help her loosen up and feel a unforesightful more comfortable. Ian had to deal with the language barrier a few times in the movie, precisely there were two scenes that were quite comical. Ian asked Nick, how do you say thank you in Greek and he also asked Angelo, Toulas cousin, how to say everyone lets go in the house, and both times he was told something entirely different. This is similar to the English-speaking deputy of a U. S. soft drink manufacturer naively drew laughs from Mexican customers when she offered free samples of Fresca soda pop.In Mexican slang, the word fresca means lesbian(Adler). In both of these cases, Ian and the representative thought they were saying one thing barely it meant something else in the other lang uage. Empathy was shown in the movie when Toula was turned down by her father for involveing to go to college for computer classes. When this happened her mother, Maria, showed empathy. Empathy means being able to experience the world form the other persons rank of view. Maria explained to Toula that Toula was just like her when she was her age.Maria stated that she knew how she felt and she would talk to Toulas father about the computer classes. Maria showed the emotional dimension that helped her to get closer to Toulas feelings. She also showed genuine concern for the welfare her lady friend Toula. I can relate to people being interested in my culture just as Ian was very interested in Toulas culture because it is different, but unlike Toula, I enjoy my culture and I embrace it. I have found that having a different culture, because about of my family is not from America, as a good thing.Even though it makes you a little different, it also makes you unique and it adds to your i dentity as a person. If I were in the situations that Toula was in, I would have done some things different. If I were her, I would have told my parents before anything got serious, because it was shown in the movie that lies only lead to more problems. relative them early that she found someone non-Greek would have also cause problems but because they wanted her to get married so bad, I think they would have became welcoming sooner.It is important to be proud of your culture and not guilty because your culture and the people that raise you make you who you are. Also, many facial expressions can be perceived as in ways that you would not want or expect, like Toula getting caught staring at Ian and his friend, thinking that she was a little crazy. So sometimes when communicating nonverbally, it may be top hat to use words to communicate your actual feelings. ? Works Cited Page(s) 187, looking Out, Looking In, 13th Edition by Ronald B. Adler, Cengage Learning