Interculture Communication paper no.-12
Name :- Gohil Devangiba A.
Roll No. :- 14
M.A Sem. :- 3
Paper No. : - 12 ELT
Topic :- Interculture Communication
Submitted to Department of English Maharaja Krisnakumarsinhji
Bhavnagar University
Interculture Communication
Intercultural communication is defined as situated
communication between individuals or groups of different linguistic and
cultural origins. This is derived from the following fundamental definitions:
communication is the active relationship established between people through
language, and intercultural means that this communicative relationship is
between people of different cultures, where culture is the structured
manifestation of human behavior in social life within specific national and
local contexts, e.g. political, linguistic, economic, institutional, and
professional. Intercultural communication is identified as both a concept and a
competence. Intercultural competence is the active possession by individuals of
qualities which contribute to effective intercultural communication and can be
defined in terms of three primary attributes: knowledge, skills and attitudes.
In the context of this document, the acquisition of skills and human attributes
likely to enhance intercultural communication is viewed exclusively as a
component of language programmes, i.e. as an accompaniment to the practical
acquisition of language itself.
Intercultural communication is the verbal and nonverbal interaction
between people from different cultural backgrounds. Basically, 'inter-' is a
prefix that means 'between' and cultural means… well, from a culture, so
intercultural communication is the communication between cultures. Sometimes,
this is used to describe a single person trying to interact in a foreign
environment but more often, it is a two-way street, where people from both
cultures are trying to improve their communication.
Intercultural communication is
a form of communication that aims to share information across different
cultures and social groups. It is used to describe the wide range of
communication processes and problems that naturally appear within an
organization or social context made up of individuals from different religious,
social, ethnic, and educational backgrounds.
IMPORTANCE OF INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION
Intercultural communication or cross cultural communication is important
because it helps us understand other cultures. With this understanding we are better
able to trade and do business with different countries.
Learning about other cultures by communicating with someone from that culture leads towards understanding and acceptance. So much tolerance would be gained if we all communicated and learned from each other.
Interculture communication describes communication between at least two people who are different in significant ways culturally. For instance, a conversation between a man who grew up in Nepal and a woman who grew up in Micronesia would probably be an intercultural conversation because we could study how the different cultural backgrounds of the two people affect their communication strategies towards each other.
Intercultural communication in the European Higher Education
Area
Intercultural communication is an implicit element of most language courses
or features as an autonomous subject in other disciplinary fields. Where
intercultural communication features as an autonomous subject the content is
theoretically grounded in a specific discipline, e.g. anthropology,
linguistics, philosophy and sociology. Alternatively, it is frequently linked
to subjects like business studies, economics and tourism with the aim of
providing students with the competence to operate in the professional sector
concerned. In some cases it is taught not only as knowledge and a skill but
also with the aim of promoting an appropriate attitude / awareness as an
integrated part of language learning. Intercultural communication is sometimes
associated with translation or with intercultural knowledge dissemination. In
some business schools it is taught as part of business language degrees. In
general, foreign language degree programmes do not offer courses in intercultural
communication as such. Business schools and the business / economics faculties
of universities offer a variety of courses on cultural theory and behaviour but
many of these have no direct connection to languages at all. In the context of
language learning the emphasis will be on the integration of intercultural
communication and language learning.
What are the biggest challenges of intercultural
communication?
- Being
able to build rapport and find common grounds and
interests, when you don't share the same childhood references, popular
topics, historical events.
- Being
able to communicate effectively in a foreign language,
which requires understanding slang, sarcasm, sense of humor, linguistics
and jargon.
- Being tolerant
about people's values and understand etiquette. Values
prioritization varies tremendously among people, including among peers.
- Being
able to have intimate conversations with people without
arguing about topics that involve differences in values (eg. marriage,
social relationships, gender roles, interactions, social justice,
power struggles...)
- And
last but not least, being aware of our bias as everything
we believe fits in our identity (like onion layers of age, gender,
education level, values, nationality, ethnicity, culture, knowledge,
emotional intelligence etc.)
What are barriers of intercultural
communication?
Communication plays a key role in expressing ones emotions and feelings.
This can take form as Verbal or Non-Verbal.
Culture provides us a
foundation for language; that is, elements such as Vocabulary, Grammar and
Phonology are acquired by the human mind in the growing years
with respect to the culture to which the person belongs to. This is how culture
provides us with rules for the usage of language and how to derive meaning of
the interaction, depending on your situation. Gradually a person embodies the
very essence of culture through language.
It is kind of obvious when we say that culture influences “Spoken”
languages, but how does it influence “Non-Verbal” communication? Non-Verbal
communication generally includes, Hand gestures, facial expressions, Gaze,
touch etc. Most of us assume that simple things like facial expressions don’t
really matter, but they do!
Now lets address the elephant in the room. How does a simple conversation turn out to be a disaster? Communication is indeed a very complicated process which could be understood as a message which is encoded into a certain verbal word or maybe a non verbal behavior, which is sent through channels (hand movement, facial expression etc) and which is then decoded by the recipient.
Having been mentioned earlier that culture influences the way one
perceives things, it is needless to say that it affects the way we
encode or decode the messages. As we grow, interpreting messages and
understanding of these signals become more inclined towards culture, as culture
dictates on as to how communications are “ought to be”.
Where does the problem creep in ? When people communicate outside the
boundaries of their own culture; as, in such cases, the focus shifts from what the
message was, to how the message was sent. This might lead to a
conflicting situation, as either the sender or the recipient might be labeled
as “Inappropriate” or “rude". Potential obstacles to an effective
intercultural communication are: Naïve assumptions, Non verbal
misinterpretations, Preconceptions and stereotypes and Uncertainty and
ambiguity.
So what is the solution to this? Through
Mindfulness and Uncertainty reduction. This requires respect for worldviews,
diversity and sensitivity towards high and low context communication; lastly by
dealing with situations in a more holistic manner.
What is the future
of Intercultural Communication?
The fact is that intercultural communication permeates everything we do as human beings. From the moment we are born, we all carry a whole range of identities within us that are the product of our own characters and their interaction with the outside world and we are all members of groups which carry their own identities. Hence, every time we remotely think about doing anything we are in the realm of intercultural communication. It is something that has existed since well before the moment when you could point to a primate and say “that is human behaviour” and will be with us until the moment we either wipe ourselves out or morph into something demonstrably different. In short, it will never leave us and it is ever-present.
So, the more immediate question is therefore ‘What Can We Do Improve
Intercultural Communication?’
For this, we need to pan back and consider:
1. What ‘Culture’ means?
2. Which ‘Cultures’ we want to talk about interacting with each other –
think ‘dimensions’ here, e.g. national, professional, social, associative etc?
Some of these are very dislocated physically but still strongly cohesive these
days
3. What can we realistically expect in terms of success? E.g. how do we
deal with those who have no interest in thinking of their relationship with
others in anything but their own terms?
4. Who is best to mediate and work out What Good Looks Like (the UN,
professional negotiators, independent consultants and business gurus, everyone
at their own level taking grass-roots responsibility?).
There is a whole academic field that has grown up since the Second World
War to tackle these enormous questions, Intercultural Studies, which remains
woefully under-appreciated, including by many who would hugely benefit from it.
But the techniques – and most importantly, the mindset – it espouses is,
thankfully, used by pretty much anyone seeking to do good and reaching out to
our fellow human beings in a positive way every day on this planet.
It is one of the great, lesser-known, forces that can and will shape our
world.
To gain the prominence it deserves however, I’d argue what it really needs
is to do is:
(i) Ensure its covering the full spectrum of cultural dimensions, not just
the national which preoccupied it for the first decades of its development
(ii) Demonstrate its benefits beyond its current focus on values and
diversity, both of which are not only static but divisive, and move to a
standpoint of addressing motivations, which you have a far greater chance of
working with dynamically and - hence - fruitfully
(iii) Do a better job of communicating its fundamental importance to
everything we do, not just in theory but in everyday practice……again, well
beyond just the national differences which has been the mainstay of
intercultural for so long: These are absolutely critical business, social and
human skills.
click here to evaluate my assignment
click here to evaluate my assignment
citation :-
Comments
Post a Comment