Cross-Code Communication

Answers to the questions :

1)  In the code of dignity the nature of person is unique and the inner qualities are of considerable importance. Code of honor, on the other hand, shows us a person as a member of society, surrounded by a set of rules and obligations. The attitude towards you depends from the quality of your past conduct.

2) A code of dignity is preferably used in relationship because it implies supportive and flexible communication which is indispensable for maintaining close relations with each other. Code of honor somewhat neglects such called “open communication”, what usually leads to failed marriage.

3) A code of honor can be easily exemplified in situation when the person changes his or her home environment. A code of honor expresses an idea that social thoughts and norms have a significant impact on the development of the personality. That’s why a student who was grown up in a city of Teamsterville feels stupid in university at first because his speech greatly differs from the typical one in his neighborhood.

4) A code of dignity we can notice when a woman gets married. “A surname links a person to a family history and to particular parents” which is a unique peculiarity of everyone. A married woman somewhat “loses” her essential identity with taking her husband’s name. “She sheds an old identity with a particular meaning in her social world and she takes on another identity with its own meaning in that world.”

Dialog

RD: Joanna, I just don’t get it. How could a woman like you abandon her child? What, did your husband beat you or something?

JK: Well, I’m not striving to justify myself, but … you know, it’s very complicated.

RD: So tell me Joanna, please. Maybe I could help you. What on earth did push you on such crime against your own child?

JK: I simply couldn’t deal with this anymore. My life turned into hell … and Jack (husband)…I simply couldn’t bring up my child there.

RD: So he beat you, right?

JK: No, he never touched me at all. My husband is not like that. When we got married everything seemed to be almost perfect, but then… he joined a bad company. Soon after that I found out he had started to take drugs.

RD: And what? Is that a reason to leave your child?

JK: You can’t understand. You’ve never been in my shoes.

RD: Joanna, you could ask for help. Our town is a little one, everyone knows each other, we could collect some money for you or necessary stuff for the baby. But you are so proud.

JK: I just wanted some support… To talk with somebody, to lean towards my husband, to make some plans for the future, to talk about our son… my dear child, I loved him so much and …

RD: Stop this, please. Stop talking how you loved your child because you refused to take care of him, you abandoned him!

JK: I wanted to do best for him. My son deserves better life which I can’t effort. His foster parents are a real miracle, they were so nice to me, always supported us when all my relatives, friends and all town simply forgot about our existence. They are very successful too, they have own little shop and…

RD: But Joanna, money isn’t the most important thing in life.

JK: Yes, that’s true, but only imagine. You are seating in an empty room. There is no furniture, only a crib, because your husband has sold everything to give back debts. You haven’t seen him for a couple of days, because he is injecting drugs somewhere in the street. But it doesn’t matter now … Now my child is starving, because I can’t find anything eatable in the house. He is crying and crying and everything you can do is thinking how to find a bottle of milk!

RD: But…