LECTURE 1 AND 2

COMMUNICATION
BEYOND BOUNDARIES
Introducing the world of culture and
communication, beyond boundaries

Dr Payal Mehra MBA PhD

ASSIGNMENTS
■ GROUP
– Case presentation (7
groups @ 5 students)
AND
– Be a Video Jockey
presentation ( remaining 7
groups @ 5 students) 20%
– Final Presentation based
on one movie in the list
shared with you (12 groups
@ 6 students in the last
three sessions)
30%
■ SOLO
– Class Participation in activities,
simulations, and management
games 20%
– Initiate an ONLINE ONLY
conversation with ONE
FOREIGNER regarding their
perception about your country,
experiences if any, two culture
shock instances, food habits,
music, beliefs, superstition,
business environment, political
environment . THE INTERACTION
MUST BE FOR AT LEAST THREE
WEEKS, DURING THIS COURSE ONLY
– Submit a FIVE page report at the
end to the instructor with the
transcript and analysis of that
culture and communication 30%
SESSION 1 AND 2 KEY CONCEPTS TO BE DISCUSSED IN OUR SESSIONS

 Importance of studying intercultural communication

 Terms to understand-cross cultural, intercultural and international communication
 Origins and the four blocks of understanding
 Culture
i. Many definitions of culture
ii. The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
iii. The Iceberg model of culture
iv. Culture shock
v. Brief intro on the theories of intercultural communication
WHY IS IT IMPORTANT TO STUDY CROSS
deal
CULTURAL COMMUNICATION increasingly
■ phenomenal growth in the volume of international trade with
foreigners
■ foreign direct investment has risen dramatically around the globe.
■ global business, technology, and the Internet.
■ the workforce of the future within their own national borders is growing more
and more diverse, ethnically and culturally.
– French and Flemish Belgians
– Francophone and Anglophone Canadians
– Ibo, Hausa and Yoruba Nigerians
– Chinese, Malay, and Indians in Malaysia
– India ( at 780) has the world's second highest number of languages ;
3,000 Jatis; government-recognized cultural and linguistic groups in India
– Immigration
– Expats
■ In 1974, the International Progress Organization, with the support of UNESCO and
under the auspices of Senegalese President Léopold Sédar Senghor, held an
international conference on "The Cultural Self-comprehension of Nations"
(Innsbruck, Austria, 27–29 July 1974) which called upon United Nations member
states "to organize systematic and global comparative research on the different
cultures of the world" and "to make all possible efforts for a more intensive training
of diplomats in the field of international cultural co-operation ... and to develop the
cultural aspects of their foreign policy.
TERMS TO UNDERSTAND
Cross cultural Communication
CROSS-CULTURAL means a comparison and contrast between two cultural groups.

Inter-cultural Communication
Intercultural refers to what happens when people from these two groups come together, interact

International or transnational
communication
Between countries-formal, at the government level

Multicultural
Multicultural — relating to or containing several cultural or ethnic groups within a society
Intercultural communication
■ Intercultural communication is a scientific field whose object of
interest is the interaction between individuals and groups from
different cultures, and which examines the influence of culture
on who people are, how they act, feel, think and, evidently,
speak and listen (DODD, 1991).
■ As described by VILA (2005), intercultural communication may
be defined as a communicative process involving individuals
from reference cultures which are sufficiently different to be
perceived as such, with certain personal and/or contextual
barriers having to be overcome in order to achieve effective
communication.
ORIGINS…
■ Edward T. HALL (1959) was the first to use the term itself.
■ Most of the work which was carried out in the 1960s and
1970s was very much under HALL's influence, together with
that of KLUCKHOHN and STRODTBECK (1961).
■ During the 1970s the field flourished, and the most notable
works were possibly that of CONDON and YOUSEF (1977),
as well as SAMOVAR, PORTER and JAIN (1981) who were the
first researchers to systematize the area of investigation.
■ During the 1980s and 1990s publications were focused on
deepening the outreach of theory and on refining the
applied methodology (CHEN & STAROSTA, 1998).
The main theories for cross-cultural
communication
■ The main theories for cross-cultural communication are based on the work done
looking at value differences between different cultures,
– Edward T. Hall,
– Richard D. Lewis,
– Geert Hofstede,
– Fons Trompenaars.
– Clifford Geertz
– Jussi V. Koivisto's model on cultural crossing in internationally operating
organizations
– Ting-Toomey
Four blocks (LOMAS, OSORIO and
TUSÓN,1993)
■ the analysis of the communicative process—among the most significant
contributions here are the work of GUDYKUNST (1989, 1992,
1993,1994), KIM (1977, 1988, 1992) and CASMIR (1991,1993,
1999);
■ the role of language in intercultural communication—here the work of
WITTGENSTEIN (1953) and DODD (1991) are seminal;
■ the cognitive organization of the communication process—stimulated by
CHOMSKY (1957,1968), FODOR (1986) and VYGOTSKY (1977, 1979);
and
■ the development of interpersonal relations, which includes
contributions from authors like ALTMAN and TAYLOR (1973) and TING-
TOOMEY (1984, 1999; 2000-2015); OETZEL (2008)
 CULTURE AND COMMUNICATION
■ There have been numerous attempts to define the meaning of the
term culture following the classic proposal of TAYLOR in 1871.
■ But, as GUDYKUNST and TING-TOOMEY (1988, p.27) point out, "no
consensus has been achieved when it comes to formulating an
interdisciplinary definition which can be accepted across the diverse
fields of study."
■ The sociologist PEDERSEN (1997) also illustrated the difficulty in
defining culture when he states "[p]eople use culture in the same
way as scientists use paradigms (...) to organize and normalize their
activity (...), the elements of culture are used, modified or discarded
depending on their utility in organizing reality."
Anthropological approach
■ KEESING (1974), using an anthropological approach, was able
to distinguish between two main currents:
– culture as an adaptive system
– culture as a symbolic system.

■ ADLER (1975), KIM (1988) and PEDERSEN (1994) have

proposed the use of an interactive approach wherein they
define culture as the universe of information that configures
the patterns of life in any given society.
Iceberg Model
■ FRENCH and BELL (1979) in their classic "Iceberg Model"
identify the behavioral, cognitive and emotional components
of culture, and these include values, conceptual systems,
behave or and both material and symbolic artefacts.
■ On this base, ANEAS (2003, p.120) synthesized as a
definition of culture "the set of knowledge, values, emotional
heritage, behaviour and artefacts which a social group share,
and which enable them to functionally adapt to their
surroundings."
■ Thus culture affects us in the way we interact with our
environment, influencing both how we construct it, and how
we understand it.
Few more cultural terms that influence
communication…
■ Rules and norms
■ Acculturation-how expats adjust to another culture
■ Frontstage and Backstage culture
■ Ethnocentrism
■ Culture-Sub culture--Sub groups
■ Cultural Intelligence: linguistic, spatial, intrapersonal and interpersonal intelligence
■ Ethnocentric management –Polycentric management-Geocentric management
TING: TO LISTEN

Mind
 The word culture
CONCEPTS OF
might also mean
CULTURE
one of the following:

National/ethic
Leitkultur
culture

Secondary or
Melting pot
subgroup culture

Culture in the
Monoculturalism anthropological
sense

Salad bowl High society

John Bodley (1994): Diverse Definitions of Culture

Culture consists of everything on a list of topics, or categories, such as

Topical:
social organization, religion, or economy
Culture is social heritage, or tradition, that is passed on to future
Historical:
generations
Behavioral: Culture is shared, learned human behavior, a way of life
Normative: Culture is ideals, values, or rules for living
Culture is the way humans solve problems of adapting to the
Functional:
environment or living together
Culture is a complex of ideas, or learned habits, that inhibit impulses
Mental:
and distinguish people from animals
Culture consists of patterned and interrelated ideas, symbols, or
Structural:
behaviors
Culture is based on arbitrarily assigned meanings that are shared by a
Symbolic:
society
Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

■Sapir (1921): “Human beings do not live in

the objective world alone, nor alone in the world
of social activity as ordinarily understood, but
are very much at the mercy of the particular
language which has become the medium of
expression in that society.” The strong version says that
language determines thought, and that linguistic categories limit
and determine cognitive categories, whereas the weak version says
that linguistic categories and usage only influence thought and
decisions.

Want to read more? Visit: http://www.blutner.de/color/Sapir-Whorf.pdf

 Milton Bennett, an American interculturalist and the
founder (with his wife Janet) of the Intercultural
Communication Institute in Portland, Oregon
■ It is crucial to remember that culture is learned, not something “in one’s blood”. Thus culture is
learned through interaction, and shared by the people interacting. In this definition there is the
suggestion of an ongoing process, of culture as a group creation rather than a solidified object.
■ Definitions that compare culture to an iceberg or to an onion are somewhat misleading, despite
their obvious pedagogical appeal.
■ With this intercultural definition, it becomes clear that all human beings “have culture”, no matter
what their level of formal education.
■ Primatologists have even discovered that groups of chimpanzees share rudimentary culture,
developing and then teaching each other specific methods
■ Bennett uses the term “big C Culture” for the above aspects of culture, and “little c culture” for
aspects of behavior that are learned more implicitly.
■ Edward T. Hall, in his seminal work The Silent Language, says that culture is “out of awareness”,
which is precisely why we tend not to realize that we “have”, or belong to, a culture. We have picked
up certain beliefs and behaviors through every succeeding moment of our existence
We can, however, identify two main
approaches to the use of the term
■ a traditional conception, which embodies a more popular
and static approach and identifies culture with a group of
"products" (knowledge, skills, ...) that a community has
generated historically, (the "expressive" culture), and
■ an extensive and instrumental conception (the way of being
of a community, the conceptual model in which the world is
interpreted and the culture is situated) which incorporates a
more dynamic use of the term.
Culture with a group of "products"
(knowledge, skills, ...)
■ The first conception leads back to a series of concepts which have a
more "quantitative" interpretation, in that they serve as a synonym for
acquired knowledge.
■ Tacitly this leads us back to the idea of culture as something that
people "possess," and to considering it as a static "given" whose
development is seen as linear and progressive, with outputs which can
be expressed in terms of accumulation.
■ Such conceptualization can lead to a process of stereotyping of cultural
traits where the "other" is characterized in terms of the most trivial and
superficial elements. From this cumulative and static perspective a
hierarchic conception of the relation between cultures (based, for
example, on social prestige and/or power) is sometimes deduced.
Conception (the way of being of a
community, the conceptual model…
■ The second conception could be described as being more complex
given that it incorporates more dimensions.
■ It understands the term culture as the instrument by means of which
we relate to the world and interpret it.
■ According to this view, culture is not something which we "possess";
rather cultures form an inherent part of the person, and it is culture
which bestows individual and collective identity: a complex identity
which is articulated across multiple social belongings.
■ It is, then, a mechanism for understanding and interpreting the world
which acquires instrumental, adaptive and regulatory meaning
Culture shock

■ Culture shock, studies show, would be increasingly

experienced (Oetzel et al., 2000) in a globalized
world.
■ The stress of trying to make both psychological and
physical adjustments in a foreign land, culture shock
and its symptoms are expected to increase in cross
cultural immersion experiences (Beamer and Varner,
2011).
Kalervo Oberg (1960) U-curve framework of
culture shock

■ Euphoria
■ Disillusionment
■ Hostility
■ Adaptation
■ Assimilation.