INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATIONS LECTURE IV

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INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATIONSLECTURE IV

• WAYS TO DEVELOP INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION SKILLS

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• Professor Linda Beamer of California State
  University-Los Angeles has developed a model for
  the purpose of describing the process of
  developing cross-cultural communication
  competence.(Learning Intercultural Communication
  Competence, The Journal of Business
  Communication 29, no. 3 (1992)pp. 291-301)

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• The model proposes five levels of learning
  acknowledgement of diversity, organizing
  information according to stereotypes, posing
  questions to challenge the stereotypes, analyzing
  communication episodes, and generating other
  culture messages.
• The intent of the learning process, according to
  professor Beamer, is to develop the ability to
  decode effectively signs that come from members
  of other cultures, within a business context, and
  to encode messages using signs that carry the
  encoders intended meaning to members of other
  cultures.

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Acknowledging Diversity

• At this level of learning, the learner becomes
  aware of cultural differences. He or she
  addresses the initial issue of perception, the
  recognition that formerly unknown and
  unrecognized signs are being sent.
• At this level, definitions of basic concepts for
  discussing diversity are important, such as
  bias, ethnocentricity, stereotype, value,
  and culture.

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Organizing information According to Stereotypes

• At this level, stereotypes that distinguish a
  particular culture and its members are
  identified. Stereotypes are normally simple or
  brief.
• For example, Americans are efficiency oriented
  Latin Americans place the well-being of family
  members and friends ahead of organizational
  efficiency the French are rude to non-French
  speaking visitors.

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• Stereotypes provide some familiarity with a
  culture, and they may be helpful and even
  accurate to some extent, but they are myopic
  insights that reveals only part of the entire
  culture.
• Therefore, knowledge of a cultures stereotype
  does not mean understanding of a culture, and it
  may actually be an obstacle to the development of
  cross-cultural communication competence.

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• Stereotypes fail to challenge the signs within
  their own repository of meanings. They fail to
  ask if some other signified can be associated
  with the signifier.
• One must progress beyond this level of
  intercultural communication.

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Posing Questions to Challenge the Stereotypes

• At this level, stereotype are challenged. The
  learner asks questions about, for instance, how
  members of a business enterprise describe the
  organization, their relationships to one another,
  and to their material environment, and their
  position in relation to the universe.

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• Asking questions is apt to disclose attitudes
  that are crucial for understanding business
  activities, such as individuals attitudes
  towards time, status and role, obligations in
  relationships, responsibility and the
  decision-making processes, the role of law, and
  the role of technology.

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• Basically, questions challenge stereotypes, and
  can be patterned to probe what members of a
  culture value, how they behave in certain
  circumstances because of their values, what their
  attitudes are toward institutions in their
  society and toward events beyond their control.

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• Professor Beamer developed a framework outlining
  several questions that must be answered. The
  questions relate to the cultural differences in
  behavior and attitude that affect business
  communication.
• The framework develops five areas of value
  orientations thinking and knowing, doing and
  achieving, the self, social organization, and the
  universe.

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Analyzing Communication Episodes

• The understanding obtained by challenging
  stereotypes can be utilized to analyze events in
  actual situations. Situations may reveal
  effective communication, or both.
• As the situation is analyzed, new meanings for
  communication behavior can be ascribed. At this
  point of developing cross-cultural communication
  abilities, learning focuses on depth of
  understanding, and application of the
  abstractions in the level of posing questions to
  challenge the stereotypes.

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Generating other culture Messages

• At this level, the communicator becomes
  cross-culturally competent when messages may be
  encoded and directed as if from within the new
  culture and when messages from the new culture
  may be decoded and responded to successfully.
• At this level of cross-cultural competency,
  communicators continually evaluate other
  culture messages against the repository of signs
  they have stored in their mental databases.

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• They possess the ability to modify the database
  or match incoming signs and messages to those
  already known.
• They are able to manipulate information received
  as well as information stored and to make
  linkages between level of understanding.

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CONCLUSIONS

• This independent course has presented the
  communication process in an international/cross-cu
  ltural context. It dealt with how cross-cultural
  communicators (senders) construct ideas to be
  communicated is influenced by the receivers
  culture.
• The same concepts will be perceived differently
  across cultures. Thus, what works in one culture
  will not necessarily work in another, and
  adaptations must be made.

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• The words, gestures, symbols, idioms, jargons,
  and slang a sender uses to communicate an idea
  are also affected by the particular receivers
  culture.
• Different societies use different languages and
  social behaviors to communicate. Therefore, for
  effective communication to take place, the
  appropriate adaptation must be made.

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• The means, that is, written, oral, or nonverbal
  of transmitting the message is also affected by
  the receivers culture.
• Culturally, some people prefer oral
  communication and others prefer written
  communication.
• Some cultures prefer flamboyant, flashy
  presentations, other cultures are offended by
  such presentations.

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• The cross-cultural communicators must use the
  means most fitted to the receivers culture.
• In essence, the sender of the message must know
  and use the words, concepts, and behaviors that
  the receivers will understand.
• This mean that to be effective, a cross-cultural
  communicator must learn to be both a sender and a
  receiver.