Intercultural Communication

Lecture_223.02.2015

Dispute Over Defining Culture

• Genetic evidence suggests that all people alive today share ancestry from one group in Africa

• Evidence suggests that the world’s languages can be traced to Africa

• Migrations out of Africa have resulted in geographical and political separations changing cultures to an us versus them worldview

• Today, we live in an interconnected global economy

© 2012, SAGE Publications, Inc

• Culture is a regulator of human life and identity.

• In the 19th century, the term culture was commonly used as a synonym for Western civilization.

• Today, a culture refers to the following:

- A community or population sufficiently large enough to be self-sustaining.

- The totality of that group’s thought, experiences, and patterns of behavior and its concepts, values, and assumptions about life that guide behavior and how those evolve with contact with other cultures.

• Hofstede (1994) classified the elements of culture into four categories: symbols, rituals, values, and heroes. – Symbols refer to verbal and nonverbal language. – Rituals are the socially essential collective activities

within a culture. – Values are the feelings not open for discussion within

a culture about what is good or bad, beautiful or ugly, normal or abnormal.

– Heroes are the real or imaginary people who serve as behavior models within a culture.

• We can have no direct knowledge of a culture other than our own.

• To understand a culture, you need to understand all the experiences that guide its individual members through life.

• Culture is not a genetic trait.

• There are cultures within cultures.• Complex societies such as the United States

are made up of a large number of groups with which people identify and from which are derived distinctive values and norms and rules for behavior.

• The terms subculture, ethnicity, and co-culture as attempts to identify groups that are cultures but that exist within another culture.

– A subculture resembles a culture in that it usually encompasses a relatively large number of people and represents the accumulation of generations of human striving.

– Subcultures exist within dominant cultures and are often based on economic or social class, ethnicity, or geographic region.

Fanzine: Fan Magazine

• Socioeconomic status or social class can be the basis for a subculture (Brislin, 1988). – Social class has traditionally been defined as a position in a

society’s hierarchy based on income, education, occupation, and neighborhood.

– Kohn (1977) has shown that middle-class and working-class parents emphasize different values when raising children.

– Although the United States does have social classes, many people in the United States believe that these barriers of social class are easier to transcend in the United States than in other countries.

– The word co-culture is suggested to convey the idea that no one culture is inherently superior to other coexisting cultures (Orbe, 1998).

• Some define subculture as meaning “a part of the whole.”

• Other scholars reject the use of the prefix sub as applied to the term culture because it seems to imply being under or beneath and being inferior or secondary.

• Race is defined as a biological concept and as a socio-historical concept.

• It was popularly believed that differences between peoples were biological or racial.

• The biologically based definition is said to derive from Carolus Linnaeus, who said in 1735 that humans are classified into four types: Africanus, Americanus, Asiaticus, and Europeaeus.

• Race became seen as biologically natural and based on visible physical characteristics such as skin color and other facial and bodily features.

• Another way to define race is as a socio-historical concept, which explains how racial categories have varied over time and between cultures.

• Twentieth-century scientists studying genetics found no single race-defining gene.

• The meaning of race has been debated in societies, and as a consequence, new categories have been formed and others transformed.

Globalization Reactions

• Growing strength of ethnic identity throughout the world

• Growth of interethnic hatred– Suicide bombings– Attacks on World Trade Center

• Increasing concerns about inequality, threats to culture, threats to the environment– Environmental sustainability meets the needs of the

present without compromising the ability of the future– Income-dependent problems with climate change already

affecting the poorest communities

© 2012, SAGE Publications, Inc

Migration in the 21st Century

• Immigration is a concern in poor and rich

countries• Large majorities believe there should be a greater

restriction on immigration• Europe and the United States record population

growth through immigration• Studies show the greater the diversity in the

community, the less civic engagement it shows

• Challenge is to create broader definitions of “we” in immigrant societies– India example of pluralism: All groups, faiths, and

ideologies are to participate in the new system

• Ongoing struggle in negotiating identity© 2012, SAGE Publications, Inc

Culture Defined

• A community or population sufficiently large enough to be self-sustaining

• Totality of that group’s thoughts, experiences, and patterns of behavior, concepts, values, and assumptions about life that guide behavior

• The transmission of these thoughts and behaviors from birth over the course of generations

• Group membership identification

© 2012, SAGE Publications, Inc

Categories of Elements of Culture (Hofstede, 1994)

• Symbols: verbal and nonverbal language

• Rituals: socially essential collective activities within a culture

• Values: feelings not open for discussion within a culture about what is good or bad

• Heroes: real or imaginary people who serve as behavior models within a culture– Expressed in myths which can be subject of novels and

literature

© 2012, SAGE Publications, Inc

Improving Intercultural Communication

• Your effectiveness as an intercultural communicator is in part a function of your knowledge of other people and their cultures

• You learn more about yourself when you study other cultures, which results in increased tolerance for diversity

© 2012, SAGE Publications, Inc

Cultures Within Cultures

• Subculture: resembles a culture in that it usually encompasses a relatively large number of people; exists within dominant culture and is often a subdivision based on economic or social class, ethnicity, race, or geographic region

• Co-culture: suggests that no one culture is inherently superior to the other coexisting culture; mutuality may not be easily established

© 2012, SAGE Publications, Inc

Ethnicity

• Another basis of subcultures

• Can refer to a group of people of the same descent and heritage who share a common and distinctive culture passed on through generations

• Distinguishing characteristics can be language, accent, physical features, family names, customs, and religion

© 2012, SAGE Publications, Inc

Subgroup

• Membership groups• Like cultures, subgroups provide members with

relatively complete sets of values and patterns of behavior and in many ways pose similar communication problems as cultures

• Exists within a dominant culture and dependent on that culture

• Occupation is one important subgroup• Membership can be temporary

– Reference group is the group someone wants to belong to creating “wanna be” behavior

© 2012, SAGE Publications, Inc

Race and Skin Color

• Race refers to a large body of people characterized by similarity of descent; may include some physical characteristics or characteristics of heredity

• A sociohistorical concept, which is why categories have varied over time

• Skin color alone does not define race

• Racial categorization is prevalent even in multiracial societies– White Privilege: how a dominant culture empowers

some, while denying others© 2012, SAGE Publications, Inc

Intercultural Communication

focuses on differences in language and behavior patterns

the theory of intercultural communication encourages the understanding of the differences between two speakers from unique national cultures

Iben Jensen’s model for intercultural communication

(1998)

Positions ofexperiences

Positions ofexperiences

Fix-points

Culturalself-perception

Culturalpresuppositions

Culturalself-perception

Culturalpresuppositions

• Positions of experiences• The concept of ‘Positions of experiences’ refers

to the fact that all interpretations are bounded in individual experiences, but although the experiences are subjective, they are related to the social position of a person.

• Cultural presuppositions• ‘Cultural presuppositions’ refers to knowledge,

experience, feelings and opinions we have towards categories of people that we do not regard as members of the cultural communities that we identify ourselves with.

• The intention of the concept of ‘Cultural presuppositions’ is to create awareness about the ordinary process that people outside our own social community often are characterised (negatively) on the basis of our own values.

• This explains why ‘they’ (very often) are described as ‘the inadequate others’ while our own culture is idealised.

• Cultural self-perception• ‘Cultural self-perception’ is the ways in which

an actor expresses a cultural community as the one he or she identifies with.

• Cultural self-perception is strongly connected with cultural presuppositions, as it is through the construction of ‘the others’ we construct narratives about ourselves.

• Cultural fix points• ‘Cultural fix points’ are the focal points that

arise in the communication between two actors who both feel they represent a certain topic.

• For a topic to be seen as a ‘Cultural fix point’ it requires that both actors identify with this topic, and that they position themselves in a discussion. Cultural fix points are not entirely arbitrary, but they relate to societal structures.

Intercultural Verbal Communication Advice

Speak slowly Repeat as necessary Be sincere and empathetic Keep it simple and short Show and demonstrate by using

examples /illustrations

Intercultural Verbal Communication Advice

Check the other person's understanding by asking, “What do you understand?” not “Do you understand?”

Be patient, use encouragement and praise sincerely

Watch for body language cues to understand real meaning in communication

Communication

Verbal(words)

Non-verbal(gestures, glances, changes in the tone

of voice, etc. )(= paralanguage)