Intercultural Communication

1
Intercultural Communication

• Social Psychological Influences

2
Intergroup Relations

• Ingroup The social group to which an individual
  perceives herself or himself as belonging (us).
• Outgroup Any group other than the one to which
  individuals perceive themselves as belonging
  (them).

3
Intergroup Relations

• 3 Factors Suggested to Explain the Psychological
  Importance of Ethnicity (Phinney, 1996)
• Cultural values, attitudes, and behaviours that
  distinguish ethnic groups
• Subjective sense of group membership (i.e.,
  ethnic identity)
• Experiences associated with minority status
  (e.g., powerlessness, prejudice)

4
Social Identity Theory(Tajfel, 1978)

• Tajfel, 1978
• Social categorization
• Social identity
• Social comparison
• Psychological group distinctiveness

5
Social Identity Theory, cont.

• Social categorization
• The cognitive tendency to divide the social world
  into categories (i.e., social groups). This
  categorical differentiation has the effect of
  sharpening the distinctions between the
  categories and blurs the differences within them.

6
Social Identity Theory, cont.

• Social identity
• That part of the individuals self-concept which
  derives from knowledge of his or her membership
  in a social group, together with the value and
  emotional significance associated to that
  membership.

7
Social Identity Theory, cont.

• Social comparison
• The process through which characteristics of the
  ingroup are compared to those of the outgroup.

8
Social Identity Theory, cont.

• Psychological Group Distinctiveness
• The state desired by individuals in which the
  ingroup has an identity that is perceived by the
  group members as being both distinct and positive
  vis-à-vis relevant comparison groups.

9
Reactions of Minority Groups

• Social mobility
• Exit from the disadvantaged group and join a more
  positively evaluated group.
• Social creativity
• Look for new dimensions of comparison, redefine
  the current dimension of comparison, or compare
  with a different outgroup.
• Social competition
• Directly challenge the position of the relatively
  positively evaluated group.

10
Communication Accommodation Strategies

• Convergence
• Moderation of a speech style, whether in terms of
  lexical diversity, rate, accent, language, and/or
  some other linguistic feature, to become more
  similar to the interactant
• Divergence
• Accentuation of a difference between
  interlocutors on one or a number of linguistic
  features.
• Maintenance
• Refusal to alter communication style

11
Communication Accommodation Theory

• Social Exchange Theory
• Similarity-Attraction Hypothesis
• Causal Attributions
• Psychological Group Distinctiveness