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mass media, military, or religious. Regardless of the source of power tools, certain people in each culture
will have and exercise disproportionate influence, and that influence will be transferred into how other
members of the culture form their lives (Samovar, Porter, McDaniel, and Roy, 2017).

Women as housewife’s always maintain the cleanliness of the house and the environment, can
create a calm, cool, and peaceful household, are good at managing and utilizing time efficiently, are good
at frugality, lead a simple life and adopt cost effective budget, prepare tasty and nutritious food (Notopuro,
1984). Co-cultures in intercultural marriages may share many qualities with the dominant culture, but their
members may also exhibit distinct and distinctive communication patterns. As narrated by Verderber and
Verderber (1995), co-culture is a culture that co-exists with the dominant culture and is made up of a
smaller number of people that share the same values, attitudes, beliefs, and orientations as the dominant
culture. Based on those categories, French culture can be considered the dominating culture in this study,
whereas Javanese culture is the co-culture. Using nonverbal symbols, languages, and views, JWs interacted
and communicated about Masak values with French locals and French society (Charon, 1979). The JWs
then decoded their intention by picking the appropriate word or non-verbal gesture (Ting-Toomey and
Dorjee, 2018). Furthermore, based on the concept of symbolic interaction, French locals encoded the
message that is exchanged by translating words, nonverbal gestures, or indications into a comprehensible
meaning (Mead, 1972; Blumer, 1962). There were communication barriers in intercultural communication
between JWs and French locals (Barna, 1997), which affected JWs and French locals’ attitudes toward
Masak values.

It is the wife's role in Javanese society to take care of the kitchen and housework. According to
JWs, French locals frequently cooked and did not mind assisting their wives with domestic tasks, especially
those tasks that demand the use of a man's hand, such as vacuuming or putting quilts on the blankets, but
it was JWs who took the initiative to take over the task. The distribution of roles in Javanese households is
that the husband was obligated to be the head of the family who earned a living and defended his family,
but not obligated to assist his wives with her domestic duties (Uyun, 2002). Additionally, they had a joint
account for their everyday needs, which is normally replenished by their spouses. This explained why and
when a Javanese woman is married, she was supposed to undertake all kinds of household chores.

The cooked menu did not always have to include rice, and it is frequently combined with Javanese
and French cuisine, limiting the use of chili because French locals dislike spicy foods. The French locals
purposefully purchased traditional Javanese artifacts, which were then displayed in the living room to
demonstrate the presence of a woman from the Javanese tribe. Family is not only a basic unit of society,
but also provides everyone with their most essential social identity (Lee, 1984). Assimilation of culture
encouraged personal growth and reduced ethnocentrism so that people not only had the experience of
other cultures through their partner/spouses but were also able to see other cultures with an open mind.
The JWs were overjoyed that their spouses had recognized them and granted them equal privileges.
According to Cheng (2010) there was a substantial positive association between marital satisfaction and
the management of integration and compromise. In Masak values, JWs and French locals were more self-
aware, have an open-minded attitude, and have conceptual assimilation to help with communication
barriers. Mutual regard for one another has led JWs and French locals to believe that ethnic differences
do not have the potential to harm family connections, allowing them to adjust to their psychological
degree of cultural awareness.

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