Introduction to intercultural communication. Communication and culture

УО «Белорусский государственный экономический университет»

Факультет международных бизнес-коммуникаций

Кафедра делового английского языка

КОНСПЕКТ ЛЕКЦИЙ

ПО ДИСЦИПЛИНЕ

«ТЕОРИЯ МЕЖКУЛЬТУРНОЙ КОММУНИКАЦИИ»

Для студентов 2 курса ФМБК

Минск 2009

CONTENTS

LECTURE 1. INTRODUCTION TO INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION…………………………....3

LECTURE 2. COMMUNICATION AND CULTURE…………………………………………………………..8

LECTURE 3. CULTURAL DIVERSITY IN PERCEPTION………………………………………………….13

LECTURE 4. A DIALECTICAL APPROACH TO CULTURE AND COMMUNICATION……………….32

LECTURE 5.  IDENTITY………………………………………………………………………………………...39

LECTURE 6.  LANGUAGE AND INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION ………………………………44

LECTURE 7.  CULTURE, COMMUNICATION AND CONFLICT ………………………………………….54

LECTURE 8.  INTERCULTURAL TRANSITIONS …………………………………………………………...60

LECTURE 9.  CULTURE, COMMUNICATION AND INTERCULTURAL RELATIONSHIPS…………...67

LECTURE 10.  ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS AND INTERCULTURAL ETHIC. THE OUTLOOK FOR INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION. ………………………………………………………………………76

LECTURE ONE

INTRODUCTION TO INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION

* The importance of intercultural communication (IC) * Points of contact (international, domestic) * Imperatives for studying IC (technological, demographic, economic, peace,  ethical) * Problems on the way to successful IC

Human beings draw close to one another by their common nature, but habits and customs keep them apart.

Confucian saying

Key words:

Alien (n, adj.), acquisition, challenge (n, v), clash (n, v), co-culture, cultural blending, cultural background, demographic trends, disharmony, disproportionate (amount of influence), diversity, ethics, ethical judgment, ethnic identity, ethnocentrism, finite natural resources, global village, homogeneous, heterogeneous, Internet access, merger, mobility, multidimensional culture, new technology, non-citizens, nonverbal behavior, objectivity, perception, persecution, priority, recognition, refugees, uniqueness, universality vs. relativity (of ethical principles).

INTRODUCTION

Intercultural communication is the circumstance in which people from diverse cultural backgrounds are engaged in communication. You might wonder what is special or unique about this. The answer is that the diversity of backgrounds, experience and assumptions resident in communicators due to their culture has the potential to make communication very difficult—and in some instances essentially impossible.

The crucial element in this form of communication is culture and the impact it has on your communicative behavior. Culture helps determine your beliefs, values, and world views; your use of language; your nonverbal behavior; and how you relate to others. It shapes your relationships with your family and friends, teaches you how to raise your children, and provides you with prescriptions for forms of communication appropriate to a variety of social situations. As you can see, culture is elaborate, multidimensional, and all pervasive; it constitutes a complete pattern of living. Aspects of culture are acted out each time members of different cultures come together to share ideas and information.

Your intercultural communication will have two major points of contact: international and domestic. International contacts are those between people from different countries and cultures. Cultural differences between Chinese and Israelis, for instance, are easy to identify. It is also at the international level that the greatest cultural diversity will be found. Also important is for you to understand that within each culture there are numerous co-cultures and specialized cultures. These provide the opportunity for domestic points of intercultural contact. In this situation we are referring to communication between people of diverse cultural backgrounds that live within a societal group.

Intercultural communication, as you might suspect, is not a new human endeavor. Since the dim beginnings of civilization when the first humans formed tribal groups, intercultural contact occurred whenever people from one tribe encountered others and found them to be different. Later, as civilization developed, religious missionaries and conquerors also encountered alien people different from themselves. Alien differences have long been recognized, but in the absence of accompanying cultural knowledge a reaction to aliens — to those who are physically or socially different — was mostly negative. It was well expressed over two thousand years ago by the Greek playwright Aeschylus who wrote, "Everyone is quick to blame the alien."

From a historical perspective, successful intercultural communication has been the exception rather than the rule. The history of humankind details an ongoing antipathy and hostility toward those who are different. The twentieth century, for instance, witnessed two world wars that saw the introduction and use of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons with the potential to destroy humankind. The world also witness the Holocaust (catastrophe, genocide of Jews during World War II), various smaller scale conflicts such as Korea, Vietnam, Kuwait, Rwanda Bosnia, and Kosovo, as well as numberless ongoing religious, ethnic and tribal clashes that seem to be without resolution.

Perhaps as a reaction to these events, the latter third of the twentieth century spawned the systematic study of intercultural communication. Although a recognition and understanding of the dynamics of culture