UNIT 2

INTERCULTURAL AND GLOBAL COMMUNICATION

Lesson 1 – Thinking about Culture
We usually think of a culture or society as basically geographical or ethnic – the
East and the West, the majority and the minority. Significant differences, of course, exist
between societies in different parts of the world, and it is true that they speak different
languages; dress differently; and use different nonverbal systems.
A better way to see the relationship between culture and language is that “culture
does not create different communication but different communication creates culture.”
Culture, therefore, in relation to communication cannot be viewed as something
represented by a particular group of people from a specific region or location that has
exclusive rituals, lifestyles, attitudes, beliefs and customs.
From this standpoint, doing or speaking different cultures can happen even within
the same nation because “communication creates communities and cultures, and many
subgroups of people have identifiable ways of communicating differently from other
people in a nation.”
Cultures are created through communication; that is communication is the means
of human interaction through which cultural characteristics, whether customs, roles, rules,
rituals, laws or other patterns are created and shared.
To understand the implications of this communication-culture relationship, it is
necessary to think in terms of ongoing communication processes rather than a single
communication event. Think culture as something that other people have-unusual
clothes, strange foods, or odd customs like wearing French berets or Japanese geisha
clothing, doing strange things with coconuts or tulips, and featuring typical building
(bamboo huts, Roman temples, Chinese pagodas) or landscapes (deserts, swamps, the
bush).
Believing that your culture is the benchmark of all others is called “ethnocentric
bias:”: Your own cultural way of acting is right and normal, and all other ways of acting
are only variants of the only really good way to act (yours!).

Culture as Geography or Ethnicity

Cross-cultural communication generally compares the communication styles
and patterns of people from very different cultural/social structures, such as nation-states,
while intercultural communication deals with how people from these cultural/social
structures speak to another and what difficulties or differences they encounter, over and
above the different languages they speak (Gudykunst & Kim, 1984.) For example, Seki,
Matsumoto, and Imahori (2002) looked at the differences in intimacy expression in cythe
United States and Japan. They found, contrary to earlier ethnocentrically biased research
that the Japanese tended to think of intimacy with same-sex friends in relation to such
expressive concepts as “consideration/love” and “expressiveness” more than did the
Americans. The Japanese placed more stress than the Americans on directly verbalizing
their feelings when considering intimacy with mother, father, and same-sex best friend.
On the other hand, Americans placed more value than the Japanese on indirectly
verbalizing their feelings for each other.

Transacting Culture
What does it mean to belong to a culture? The defining element is that you belong
to a set of people who share meanings and styles of speaking, system of beliefs and
customs. You live your life in the context of a communicating set of individuals who
transact a universe of thought and behavior that makes possible certain ways of treating
other people. For example, goths;’ punks,’ and emos’ use of symbols like hairstyles, body
piercing, cutting and self-harm along with a relevant music genre and vocabulary
transacts their identity and collectively forms the goth, punk and emo culture. In part,
these groups come together and are recognized once they are labelled and some
consistency is observed in their behavior and communication.
The structure and discipline of society exert their force through communication and
impose beliefs on people through collective values-not in an abstract way but rather by
everyday communication and being constantly reminded of those values by your contacts
with other people (society’s/culture’s secret agents). Your conformity with society’s and
culture’s beliefs and practices is constantly and almost invisibly reinforced in the daily talk
that happens informally in the interactions with such agents as your friends, your family,
your co-workers and even strangers. From this point of view, “society” is a way of talking
about, a coded system of meaning, not just a structured bureaucratic machine but a set
of beliefs, a heritage, and a way of being that is transacted in communication.
The nature of culture and your connection to society is conducted through the
specific relationships you have with other individuals whom you meet fairly frequently and
with whom you interact daily. From this point of view, then, you can think of “culture” as
a system of norms, rituals, and beliefs, any group with a system of shared meaning is a
culture, so even a friendship or romance could be a “culture”.
Drivers and public transport operators in an organization, athletes, or members of
business organizations could all be considered members of a unique culture. Students
and instructors could even be considered two interacting and integrated but separate
cultural groups.
Viewing societies and cultures as unique meaning systems provides an
opportunity to go beyond traditional structural views of cultures. Although these
conventional views can still provide a great deal of valuable information, they tend to
overlook numerous, distinct meaning systems within larger structure-based labels such
as nation-states. You cannot legitimately maintain that everyone in America or everyone
in India communicates the same way for example.
Just to identify societies and cultures with nations or races, regions, religions, or
ethnicity, unthinking or incautiously, is clearly a mistake. (Bermudo, P.J.et al., 2018)