IBN KHALDOUN UNIVERSITY, TIARET 2017/2018

10/ INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION

Objectives: This unit aims to help students be able to:

- Define intercultural communication
- Understand culture, communication and intercultural communication
- Understand the impact of context in intercultural communication
Introduction

Throughout literature, according to Kramsch (1998), researchers and theorists use range
terms to discuss and describe intercultural studies. Different terms such as cross-cultural,
intercultural, or multicultural communication, cross-cultural awareness, cross-cultural
competence, cross-cultural capability, cross-cultural skills, inter-cultural studies,
intercultural communication, intercultural effectiveness, intercultural awareness, and
intercultural communicative competence are referred to in different studies.
What is Intercultural Communication?
As has been discussed in previous units, due to regional, social and individual language
variations, people who live in the same speech community, speaking the same language, but
do not share the same social norms are in need to increase their knowledge about each other
in order to avoid their cultural mistakes and misunderstanding. For example, as seen in
(Unit 2), when taking the Algerian context, some nonverbal features or daily used words in
some regions in Algeria are considered as being rude and even offensive in other regions
even though the same religion and the language code is used. Moreover, a 12 –year - old
teenager does not speak the same way as a 60 – year - old person, and a female does not
speak the same as a male even they belong to the same speech community. The same goes
for people who live in different nationalities. When people of different nationalities speak
the language, there is a great deal of cross-linguistic/cultural influence between them.
In both cases, when two people come into contact, whether between people of the same
nationality, or between people of different nationalities, their cultures come into contact as
well. Therefore, the communication between them is essentially intercultural.
Based on this view, intercultural communication generally refers to interpersonal
communication between individuals or groups who are affiliated with different cultural
groups and/or have been socialized in different cultural (and, in most cases, linguistic)
environments. This includes such cultural differences as age, class, gender, ethnicity,
language, race, nationality and physical/ mental ability.
Therefore, by way of definition, Kramsch (1998, p. 81) defines intercultural communication
as ‘the meeting of two cultures or two languages across the political boundaries of nations-
states [and] within the boundaries of the same national language’. More specifically,
Rogers and Steinfatt (1999) define intercultural communication simply as ‘the exchange of
information between individuals who are unalike culturally’ (p.1).
Nowadays, intercultural interaction may take place in face-to-face encounters, through
written discourse or online (e.g. Skype, Facebook).Intercultural communication very often
 IBN KHALDOUN UNIVERSITY, TIARET 2017/2018

involves a second language, with either one or both interlocutors using a language that is not
a mother tongue (E.g. English).
The Importance of Context for Successful Intercultural Communication

As noted earlier successful intercultural communication requires an understanding of the

context, but the lack of thereof may lead to misunderstanding and communication failure.
According to Riley (1989: 234), intercultural failure can occur when a participant tries to
impose the social rules of their culture on his communicative behavior in a situation where
the social rules of another culture would be more appropriate. The mismatch can lead to
problem in:
- Intention and interpretation
- Limited mutual understanding
- Culture biases
 Observe how pragmatic failure can occur due to the lack of the knowledge of
the cultural context
1. Observe the following conversation between two native English speakers (an
invented example)
A: oh hi, nice to meet you?
B: nice to meet you too.
A: beautiful weather we’re having today, is not it?
B: oh Yeah.
A: very impressive. Anyway, nice to meet you.
B: Ok nice to meet you?

Comment:
Speaker A Friend ‘A’ says nice to meet you for the second time
Speaker B Friend B interpret A’s utterance successfully
Knowledge of • When English speakers say nice to meet you for the second time,
context: they mean that they finish talking and they have to go.
• A is very busy; People need to go to do their daily business
When English
• B understands the meaning, because he understands the cultural
context. So he responds equally ‘ok, nice to meet you’.

2. Now observe the second example. The same conversation, but this time between two
people from different cultures. (A performed act example taken
fromhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4b-ACqKkAMQ,).

The English speaker: oh hi, nice to meet you?

The Asian speaker: nice to meet you too.
The English speaker: beautiful weather we’re having today, is not it?
The Asian speaker: oh Yeah.
The English speaker: very impressive. Anyway, nice to meet you.
The Asian speaker: what course are you doing here?
The English speaker: ooh sorry!!! I have to go now.
 IBN KHALDOUN UNIVERSITY, TIARET 2017/2018

This example shows a failure in intercultural communication. In this example, when the
English speaker says nice to meet you for the second time, he means that he finished talking
and he had to go. But the Asian speaker misunderstood him, violating or flouting ‘the
maxim of quantity and relevance’, by asking other unnecessary questions. Under this
situation, on the one hand, the English speaker may consider the Asian speaker as someone
pushy who does not respect people space and time, and probably tries to avoid him in
future. On the other hand, the Asian speaker may consider the English speaker as being
rude, and probably tries to avoid him too.
This interaction perfectly shows the importance of understanding the situation in which
language happens. So, a person who does not know these social conventions, though his
language is accurate, would be found an outsider because they respond in an unexpected
way; hence ignorance of such conversational conventions could possibly be interpreted as
lacking of politeness, which may imply future language conflict. In order to avoid this, it
matters to consider who is speaking, what, when, and with whom, because language choice
is generally influenced by one or more of these components. Therefore, it is crucial to
understand the situation in which language happens and understand the societal factors
governing its use.

Key Points:
- People interaction always takes an intercultural form
- Each one has his/her own communicative style
- Intercultural communicative competence requires the understanding of cultures,
including the own, and relate this understanding to communicate with people from
other cultures.
- Miscommunication occurs when learners ignore the communicative style
Activity: Explain the intercultural pragmatics communication failure of the following
example. This invented example is based on our cultural background and the British one.
An MA Algerian student in Britain was in queue at a store to pay for his purchases:
The cashier: How are you today?
The student: Very fine thanks, and how about you and the family? It’s a nice store, ahhh.
The cashier: Yeah, OK, that's would be 21 pounds.
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References:
- Kramsch, C. (1993). Context and Culture in Language Teaching. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
- Kramsch, C. (1998). Language and Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
IBN KHALDOUN UNIVERSITY, TIARET 2017/2018

- Riley, P. (1989). Well don't blame me! - On the interpretation of pragmatic errors. In
W. Oleksy (Ed.), Contrastive pragmatics (pp. 231-249). John Benjamins Publishing
Company: Amsterdam.
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