INTERCULTURAL AWARENESS WORKSHOP

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INTERCULTURAL AWARENESS WORKSHOP

• Culture
• Communication
• Cross- and Intercultural Communication

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Culture

• What does it mean?
• Culture or civilisation, taken in its wide
  ethnographic sense, is that complex whole which
  includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law,
  custom, and any other capabilities and habits
  acquired by man as a member of society (Tylor
  1871 1)
• Culture is an active process of meaning making
  and contest over definition This then is what I
  mean by arguing that Culture is a verb (Street
  1993 25)
• Culture in all its meanings and with all its
  affiliated concepts, is situational (Blommaert
  1998 n.p.)

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Communication

• What does it mean?
• 1 an act or instance of communicating 2 a verbal
  or written message 3 a process by which
  information is exchanged between individuals
  through a common system of symbols, signs, or
  behaviour (Longman Dictionary of the English
  Language 1991 324)
• an information process going on between at least
  two human communicators (not necessarily two
  persons as long as one can communicate with
  oneself) embedded in a context (Berge 1994
  614)
• Communication is a term used to describe the
  structured dynamic processes relating to the
  interconnectedness of living systems
  (Birdwhistell 1973 93)

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Shannon and Weavers (1949) Model of
Communication Communication as a process of
transmitting information - a common sense
view?
message
medium
received message


information source
transmitter
receiver
destination
noise source
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Strengths and weaknesses of Shannon and Weavers
(1949) model
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Cultures links with communication

• Communication creates culture culture is a means
  of communication. Language carries culture, and
  culture carries, particularly through orature and
  literature, the entire body of values by which we
  come to perceive ourselves and our place in the
  world (Ngugi 1986 15-16).

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Cross- and Intercultural Communication

• What do they mean?
• Cross-Cultural Communication (CCC) tends to
  compare patterns of communication and
  interactions across peoples from different
  cultural backgrounds (an ethnological position)
• Intercultural Communication (ICC) considers
  (interpersonal) communication which has the added
  characteristics of cultural variance between
  those people involved, in one or more areas, such
  as values, beliefs, thought patterns, practices
  (including language) and other habits of
  behaviour. Cultural variance can be salient in
  that it can create differing expectations and
  interpretations of interactions between people.
  See Scollon Scollon (2001 13) for the
  distinction they make between ICC and CCC, as
  well as Gudykunst (2000 314)
• Is all communication intercultural?

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Intercultural Communication

• Examples
• http//uk.youtube.com/watch?vs5S2LNOqezE
• http//uk.youtube.com/watch?vkvZNb_tFodwfeature
  related
• http//www.bbc.co.uk/tribe/tribes/penan/index.shtm
  l

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Recommendations

• Avoid essentialism (i.e. assuming a set of
  properties as common to all members of a group)
• Avoid reductionism (i.e. identifying a single
  property as particular to a whole group)
• The Other is in Us and we are in the Other
  (Kramsch 2001 205)

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• References
• Berge, K. L. (1994). Communication. In R. E.
  Asher, J. M. Y. Simpson (eds) The Encyclopedia
  of Language and Linguistics. Oxford Pergamon,
  pp. 614-620.
• Birdwhistell, R. L. (1973). Kinesics. In
  Argyle, M. (ed.) Social Encounters.
  Harmondsworth Penguin, pp. 93-102.
• Blommaert, J. (1998). Different Approaches to
  Intercultural Communication A Critical Survey.
  Plenary lecture, Lernen und Arbeiten in einer
  international vernetzten und multikulturellen
  Gesellschaft, Expertentagung Universität Bremen,
  Institut für Projektmanagement und
  Witschaftsinformatik (IPMI), 27-28 February.
  http//www.flwi.ugent.be/cie/CIE/blommaert1.htm
• Gudykunst, W. B. (2000). Methodological issues
  in conducting theory-based cross-cultural
  research. In H. Spencer-Oatey (ed.) Culturally
  Speaking. Managing Rapport through Talk across
  Cultures. London Continuum, pp. 293-315.
• Kramsch, C. (2001). Intercultural
  Communication. In R. Carter D. Nunan (eds) The
  Cambridge Guide to Teaching English to Speakers
  of Other Languages. Cambridge Cambridge
  University Press.
• Longman (1991). Longman Dictionary of the
  English Language. London Longman.
• Ngugi wa Thiongo (1986). Decolonising the
  Mind The Politics of Language in African
  Literature. London James Currey.
• Scollon, R. Scollon, S. W. (2001).
  Intercultural Communication A Discourse
  Approach. Oxford Blackwell (2nd edition).
• Shannon, C. Weaver, W. (1949). The
  Mathematical Theory of Communication. Illinois
  University of Illinois Press.
• Street, B. (1993). Culture is a verb. In D.
  Graddol, L. Thompson and M. Byram (eds) Language
  and Culture. Clevedon BAAL and Multilingual
  Matters, pp. 23-43.
• Tylor, E. B. (1871). Primitive Culture
  Researches into the Development of Mythology,
  Philosophy, Religion, Language, Art and Custom.
  New York Henry Holt.