A Lawyer's Guide to Cross-Cultural Depositions
Copyright © 2003 by Nina Ivanichvili, CEO, All Language Alliance, Inc.
Strive to Be More Culturally Relative
Lawyers involved in cross-cultural depositions are likely to create communication misunderstandings if they view or treat people from different cultures as being "generally more similar to themselves than dissimilar."23 This behavior is termed "assumed similarity."24 Assumptions about the meaning of similarities may cause a deposing attorney to stereotype and misjudge a deponent. Consider the following hypothetical.
An American attorney is deposing a well-dressed, middle-aged, non-English-speaking woman in a civil lawsuit. The woman is originally from a small, male-dominated village. She states that she has held several jobs since moving to the United States. However, she does not know what her articles of clothing cost because her husband makes all the purchasing decisions in the family. Because the deponent is employed, the attorney may assume some similarities between the deponent and her American counterparts. Nonetheless, her working status does not make her independent-financially or otherwise-from her husband, who continues to make all of the important decisions.
While deposing a non-English speaking witness, lawyers likely will benefit from being more "culturally relative,"25 which is the opposite of ethnocentric. Instead of viewing the whole world through the prism of the American cultural archetypes, it helps to remember that more than one meaning may exist for verbal messages communicated between people from different cultures. Thus, in the above-mentioned example, in the deponent's cultural worldview, it is common for a woman to have a job and still let her husband make all of the financial decisions for her. In the American deposing attorney's cultural worldview, however, this is not a consideration.
Acknowledge Cultural Taboos—But Ask the Question
"The potential for misunderstandings, confusion, and hostility increases in the intercultural exchange."26 During cross-cultural depositions, it is easy to inadvertently delve into areas of cultural taboos, which represent beliefs that make discussion of certain topics forbidden or discouraged. For example, most American attorneys might not anticipate that questions related to loss of consortium in a personal injury case are likely to arouse animosity in Russian-speaking deponents of either gender. Only a decade ago, in Russia, discussing one's sex life in public amounted to expressing a cultural taboo. Deponents from many cultures would find questions embarrassing if they pertain to intimacy, certain medical conditions, human anatomy, and bodily functions. Attorneys should be aware of this possibility and prepare the deponent prior to verbalizing a sensitive question by saying, for instance, "I know that it may be uncomfortable for you to answer questions like the one I am going to ask, but I need to ask it."
