Chapter Three:- Intercultural

Communication
• Communication between different cultures – intercultural
communication, also known as cross-cultural communication.
COMMUNICATING ACROSS SOCIAL BOUNDARIES
 Researchers (who have adopted what is known as the social identity
approach) argue that most of the time people think, feel and act as
the members of some sort of group.
 In other words, we do not necessarily act towards another
individual in terms of their unique personality characteristics; we
consider (perhaps subconsciously) them as our own group
memberships then we decide to act towards them in a
particular way.
 From this point of view, many face-to-face meetings between
individuals are really experienced as examples of what
psychologists have called intergroup communication
(communication between groups) rather than just communication
between individuals.
There are a number of important practical issues which follow from
this perspective:
- Research on intergroup communication has shown that there may be
predictable negative consequences unless the group members work
very hard on their communication.
Research on intergroup communication
Much of this research has examined situations where two groups are
in competition or in conflict. Typical processes include the following
(for more detail, see Hartley, 1997, ch. 9).
-Individual perceptions become biased and discriminatory. Group
members tend to develop biased perceptions within each group. For
example, they will exaggerate the value of their own efforts in
comparison to those of the other group.
-Group processes change to ‘gear themselves up’ for conflict. For
example, there will be more emphasis on conformity to group norms,
and a more authoritarian leadership style is likely to emerge.
-Discriminatory and antagonistic behaviour will lead to growth of
conflict. The groups will actually discriminate against one another at
every available opportunity.
Stereotyping
•A stereotype is a generalization (just the guess) about a group of
people based upon their group membership:
•‘To stereotype is to assign identical characteristics to any person in a
group, regardless of the actual variation among members of that group’
(Aronson, 1999, p. 307).
•Early research suggested that ‘stereotypical beliefs are rigid,
unresponsive to reality, and generally resistant to change’.
•However, more recent studies have shown how the specific context
influences whether or how far people make stereotyped judgements
(Oakes et al., 1999, p. 64).
Stereotype’s link to communication (How stereotypes can damage
communication)
Jandit (1998) suggests four ways in which stereotypes can damage
communication:
1. They can make us assume that a widely held belief is true when it is not.
This can be important when stereotypes are continually reinforced by the
media.
2. If we accept a stereotype, then we may believe that every individual in
that group conform to the stereotype.
3. Stereotypes can lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you are labelling
someone according to the stereotype, then you will behave towards that
person according to that label. They may well respond in ways which react
to the labelling, rather than their genuine character.
4. We can interpret others’ behaviour according to the stereotype,
and ignore other possible interpretations of their behaviour.
ANALYSING CULTURES: BASIC CONCEPTS
• Culture is defined as a historically transmitted system of
symbols, meaning and norms. (Collier, 1997)
• Culture is the ‘system of knowledge’ that is shared by a large
group of people. (Gudykunst, 1991, p. 44)
• An ensemble (collection) of social experiences, thought
structures, expectations, and practices of action, which has the
quality of a mental apparatus/tools. (Clyne, 1994, p. 3)
Cultural relativism (relativity)
• cultures can be evaluated only in terms of their own values and
institutions
• the concepts used by people can be interpreted only in the context of
their own way of life
Ethnocentrism
• Ethnocentrism is a view which presupposes that one’s own culture is the
standard against which all other cultures must be judged.
• It is almost always used in a negative sense to describe attitudes that
refuse to recognize the validity of values that differ from their own.
• It is difficult to avoid some measure of ethnocentrism as many cultural
values are considered to be universal values or truths.
ANALYSING AND COMPARING CULTURAL DIFFERENCES
• One way of examining cultural difference is to look for the
fundamental characteristics of different communities, in terms of
their norms, beliefs and attitudes.
Norms:
• A norm is a rule, standard or pattern for action. Unfortunately, the
term can be used in two different ways, with very different
interpretations:
1. to describe what is normal or usual behaviour in some community
or culture;
2. to set out an ideal or standard (to which, it is thought, behaviour
ought to conform/accept any kinds of things).
Attitude: State of mind
• Attitudes are mental states, and not directly observable, we
can determine someone’s attitudes only from their own
statements or from their behaviour.
• In psychology, an attitude is an expression of favor or
disfavor toward a person, place, thing, or event (the
attitude object).
• An attitude can be as a positive or negative evaluation of
people, objects, events, activities, and ideas. It could be
concrete, abstract or just about anything in your
environment
• An attitude is our emotional state that influences the given
task
• Attitude can be changed over time. The following are the
types of attitude:
a. Cognitive( how an individual perceives an idea)
b. Affective (feelings and emotions)
c. Evaluative(positive or negative orientation towards an
object)
d. Behavioral (intensions or desires regarding the task)
Beliefs
Beliefs also are like the attitudes which are usually
considered to have three components:
• a knowledge component, i.e. something that is true
or false;
• an emotive component, i.e. something which
arouses feelings;
• a behavioural component, i.e. something that
influences you to act in a certain way.
Dimensions of culture:
One of the most widely quoted studies of cultural differences suggests
that culture varies along four main dimensions.
• individualism–collectivism;
• power distance;
• uncertainty avoidance;
• masculinity–femininity.
1. Individualism–collectivism
• An individualist culture values individual effort and ability.
• A collectivist culture values the group over the individual. There is likely to be
a strong emphasis on maintaining and achieving good group relationships.
• If there is a conflict between your individual feelings and the group needs,
then you will be expected to meet the group requirements.
• In Individualism-collectivism, there are high context and low context
communication.
• a high-context communication is one where most of the message is
rooted/fixed in the situation and it is not made explicit in what is said. For
example, Japanese business people find it very difficult to say ‘no’ directly
because of their cultural norms.
• In a low-context message, you spell things out very clearly and directly – you
say very directly and explicitly what you mean.
2. Power distance (how people use and respond the power
difference)
• In a culture where there is high power distance, the more
powerful people are easily obeyed. They are not argued
with, even in a public situation.
• Where there is low power distance, powerful people are
expected to defend their ideas. Ideas are accepted if they
are convincing, regardless of who produces them.
3. Uncertainty avoidance
• Hofstede (1994, p. 113) defines uncertainty avoidance as ‘the extent
to which the members of a culture feel threatened by uncertain or
unknown situations’.
• In a society with strong or high uncertainty avoidance, you are likely
to find many rules and regulations which ensure that people ‘know
exactly what to do’ in as many situations as possible.
• Where the rules do not seem to apply or where others make
requests which are ‘outside the rules’, then members of such a
culture can become very uncomfortable.
4. Masculinity–femininity
• Men and women are expected to behave very differently in different
cultures.
• However, this dimension is not just about sex roles. High masculinity
culture values aggressive, ambitious and competitive behaviour.
• A low-masculinity culture has friendly and compassionate behaviour
where conflict is resolved by compromise and negotiation.
Classifying cultures by dimensions
• Some examples of cultural differences using these dimensions are the
following:
English-speaking and northern European cultures tend to show low
power distance and low uncertainty avoidance. Japanese culture has
high power distance and high uncertainty avoidance
German-speaking, Caribbean and Latin American cultures show high
masculinity, with English-speaking cultures in the middle, and
northern European cultures low on this dimension.
DIFFERENCES IN CULTURAL BACKGROUND: EFFECTS ON
COMMUNICATION IN THE WORKPLACE
There are many aspects of culture which affect business and which
may not be understood and accepted by the entire workforce. These
include:
• history;
• experience with and attitudes towards institutions;
• traditions and customs;
• experience with and attitudes towards technology and the
workplace;
• arts and religion;
• patterns of recreation and use of time.
Communication codes:
1. Language
2. Differences in punctuation
3. Code-switching (use language in systematic way)
4. Different norms for turn-taking (conversation moves from one to
another)
5. Different norms for format (different forms of writing letter)
6. Grammatical differences
7. Style differences
8. Dialect and accent
9. Written and spoken language differences
10. Phonological aspects
11. Paralinguistic
12. Other non-verbal codes
HOW INTERCULTURAL BARRIERS CAN BE OVERCOME:
• To provide a complete framework for analysing and understanding
intercultural communication, Michael Clyne (1994) suggests that we need:
• general, global description of each culture in terms of its rules for
communication. In detail, this would include the rules which govern how
writing is organized in business, which communication media are used in
which situations, and the rules for linguistic creativity – that is, how you
express humour and irony in that culture;
• general description of the values which influence how people interact in
that culture;
• full description of how that culture manages turn-taking in a conversation;
• full description of how the different cultures involved deal with the same
action.
We suggest that solutions to the problems lie in five main
areas:
• awareness of the problem;
• realistic evaluation of the problem;
• developing positive and constructive attitudes;
• developing a corporate culture;
• managing cultural diversity in an organization.
MANAGEMENT RESPONSIBILITY FOR INTERCULTURAL
COMMUNICATION (activities of extending management responsibility)
• Improving intercultural communication is a management
responsibility which extends over a range of activities listed below.
These are just some of the areas in a business which may have
cultural assumptions built into them, including:
• company policy and working conditions;
• training;
• industrial relations and the work of the personnel or human resources
department;
• the house journal and other publications;
• customer relations.
 SUMMARY
• Organizations are becoming more multicultural and we must review
the factors which create difficulties in intercultural communication.
• National cultures differ in terms of fundamental dimensions which
have implications for communication.
• The communication codes discussed in Chapter 2 do have particular
implications for intercultural communication.
• Problems in intercultural communication can be overcome if we
know enough about the underlying factors.
• Improving intercultural communication is a management
responsibility which needs careful and genuine attention.