Intercultural Communication Theories

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Intercultural Communication Theories
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Cultures in Society

• Culture shapes experience and communication
• Increasingly important in a shrinking world
• World economy, international interdependence
• Global reach of media to bring/send info
• Important in US with cultural diversity heritage
• Originally called a melting pot of assimilation
• Now called a multicultural salad retaining
  culture
• Now, minority enthnicities becoming majority

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Culture affects our views of reality

• Difficult to see own culture
• Too familiar, too ubiquitous to recognize
• Cultural assumptions often hidden
• More apparent when you have contrast
• More visible when encounter foreigners here
• More visible when visit other cultures

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• Important to understand role of culture
• When encountering those of different cultures
• When encountering our cultures subgroups
• Communication is key throughout
• Makes differences apparent
• A means to understand/bridge differences

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• Important to understand role of culture
• When encountering those of different cultures
• When encountering our cultures subgroups
• Communication is key throughout
• Makes cultural differences apparent
• Also a way to understand/bridge differences

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Defining culture

• Many formal definitions
• System of shared meanings, sensemaking,
  understandings
• Sum of shared values, traditions, beliefs,
  products
• Common understandings among members
• Not the same as country boundaries
• Cultures created, sustained, evolved through
  communication!

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Cultures have subcultures

• American subcultures?
• Age older vs. younger
• Income richer vs. poorer
• Education educated vs. non-educated
• Ethnicity recent immigrant vs. established
  immigrant
• Geography East vs. West North vs. South
• Sex males vs. females
• Religion Christian vs. Muslim vs. Jew vs.
  Buddhist vs. paganism vs. atheism, etc.

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Many key cultural divides

• Power distance
• Acceptance that power distributed unevenly
• US low Japan moderate
• Sex roles
• Sex roles clearly defined and one sexs values
  dominate
• US high masculinity Japan extremely high
  masculinity
• Uncertainty avoidance
• People work to avoid ambiguity
• US low Japan extremely high

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Many key cultural divides

• Individualism/collectivism
• Culture values group or individual
• US high in individualism Japan high in
  collectivism
• High/low context
• Information contained in context or message
• US low context Japan high context they
  rely on context/tradition/environmental cues

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Standpoint Theory

• Focus on differing roles/groups/standings within
  a culture
• A culture is not homogeneous
• Groupings organized hierarchically
• Differing levels of power, status, opportunities,
  wealth
• Differences shape perspective, how view reality
• Groups formed, sustained through communication

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• Knowledge based on your perspective
• Standing shape what counts as knowledge
• Different standing, different knowledges
• Lower status have accurate views on reality
• Motivated to understand powerful to cope
• No interest in maintaining status quo
• Powerful only seek to maintain power

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• Highlights why groups see world differently
• May help clarify source of misunderstandings and
  conflict between groups

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Are Computers Male or Female?

• Five reasons to believe computers are female
• No one but their creator understands their
  internal logic.
• Smallest mistakes are immediately committed to
  memory.
• The native language used to communicate with
  other computers is incomprehensible to anyone
  else.
• Message "bad command or file name" about as
  useful as, "If you don't know whats wrong, I'm
  not going to tell you.
• As soon as you make a commitment to one, you find
  yourself spending half your paycheck on
  accessories for it.

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Are Computers Male or Female?

• Five reasons to believe computers are male
• They have a lot of data but are still clueless.
• A better model is right around the corner.
• They look attractive -- until you take them home.
  
• Big power surges knock them out for the rest of
  the night.
• In order to get their attention, you have to turn
  them on.