After reading this article you will learn about Cross-Cultural Communication:- 1. Meaning and Origin of Cross Cultural Communication 2. Interdisciplinary Orientation 3. Global Rise 4. Incorporation into College Programs 5. Aspects.
Contents:
- Meaning and Origin of Cross Cultural Communication
- Interdisciplinary Orientation of Cross Cultural Communication
- Global Rise of Cross Cultural Communication
- Incorporation of Cross Cultural Communication into College Programs
- Aspects of Cross Cultural Communication
1. Meaning and Origin of Cross Cultural Communication:
Cross-cultural communication (also frequently referred to as intercultural communication, which is also used in a different sense, though) is a field of study that looks at how people from differing cultural backgrounds communicate, in similar and different ways among themselves, and how they endeavor to communicate across cultures.
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The Cold War, the United States economy was largely self-contained because the world was polarized into two separate and competing powers: the east and west. However, changes and advancements in economic relationships, political systems, and technological options began to break down old cultural barriers.
Business transformed from individual-country capitalism to global capitalism. Thus, the study of cross-cultural communication was originally found within businesses and the government both seeking to expand globally. Businesses began to offer language training to their employees. Businesses found that their employees were ill equipped for overseas work in the globalizing market.
Programs were developed to train employees to understand how to act when abroad. With this also came the development of the Foreign Service Institute, or FSI, through the Foreign Service Act of 1946, where government employees received trainings and prepared for overseas posts. There began also implementation of a “world view” perspective in the curriculum of higher education.
In 1974, the International Progress Organization, with the support of UNESCO and under the auspices of Senegalese President Leopold Sedar Senghor, held an international conference on “The Cultural Self-comprehension of Nations” (Innsbruck. Austria. 27-29 July 1974) which called upon United Nations member states “to organize systematic and global comparative research on the different cultures of the world” and “to make all possible efforts for a more intensive training of diplomats in the field of international cultural co-operation … and to develop the cultural aspects of their foreign policy.”
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In the past decade, there has become an increasing pressure for universities across the world to incorporate intercultural and international understanding and knowledge into the education of their students. International literacy and cross-cultural understanding have become critical to a country’s cultural, technological, economic, and political health.
It has become essential for universities to educate, or more importantly, “transform”, to function effectively and comfortably in a world characterized by close; multi-faceted relationships and permeable borders.
Students must possess a certain level of global competence to understand the world they live in and how they fit into this world. This level of global competence starts at ground level-the university and its faculty- with how they generate and transmit cross-cultural knowledge and information to students.
2. Interdisciplinary Orientation of Cross Cultural Communication:
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Cross-cultural communication tries to bring together such relatively unrelated areas as cultural anthropology and established areas of communication. Its core is to establish and understand how people from different cultures communicate with each other. Its charge is to also produce some guidelines with which people from different cultures can better communicate with each other.
Cross-cultural communication, as in many scholarly fields, is a combination of many other fields. These fields include anthropology, cultural studies, psychology and communication.
The field has also moved both toward the treatment of inter-ethnic relations, and toward the study of communication strategies used by co-cultural populations, i.e., communication strategies used to deal with majority or mainstream populations.
The study of languages other than one’s own cannot only serve to help us understand what we as human beings have in common, but also assist us in understanding the diversity which underlies not only our languages, but also our ways of constructing and organizing knowledge, and the many different realities in which we all live and interact.
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Such understanding has profound implications with respect to developing a critical awareness of social relationships. Understanding social relationships and the way other cultures work is the groundwork of successful globalization business efforts.
Language socialization can be broadly defined as “an investigation of how language both presupposes and creates anew, social relations in cultural context”. It is imperative that the speaker understands the grammar of a language, as well as how elements of language are socially situated in order to reach communicative competence.
Human experience is culturally relevant, so elements of language are also culturally relevant. One must carefully consider semiotics and the evaluation of sign systems to compare cross-cultural norms of communication. There are several potential problems that come with language socialization, however. Sometimes people can over-generalize or label cultures with stereotypical and subjective characterizations.
Another primary concern with documenting alternative cultural norms revolves around the fact that no social actor uses language in ways that perfectly match normative characterizations.
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A methodology for investigating how an individual uses language and other semiotic activity to create and use new models of conduct and how this varies from the cultural norm should be incorporated into the study of language socialization.
3. Global Rise of Cross Cultural Communication:
Effective communication with people of different cultures is especially challenging. Cultures provide people with ways of thinking-ways of seeing, hearing, and interpreting the world.
Thus, the same words can mean different things to people from different cultures, even when they talk the “same” language. When the languages are different, and translation has to be used to communicate, the potential for misunderstandings increases.
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The study of cross-cultural communication is fast becoming a global research area. As a result, cultural differences in the study of cross-cultural communication can already be found. For example, cross-cultural communication is generally considered to fall within the larger field of communication studies in the US, but it is emerging as a sub-field of applied linguistics in the UK.
As the application of cross-cultural communication theory to foreign language education is increasingly appreciated around the world, cross-cultural communication classes can be found within foreign language departments of some universities, while other schools are placing cross-cultural communication programs in their departments of education.
4. Incorporation of Cross Cultural Communication into College Programs:
With the increasing pressures and opportunities of globalization, the incorporation of international networking alliances has become an “essential mechanism for the internationalization of higher education”. Many universities from around the world have taken great strides to increase intercultural understanding through processes of organizational change and innovations.
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In general, university processes revolve around four major dimensions which include: organizational change, curriculum innovation, staff development, and student mobility. Ellingboe emphasizes these four major dimensions with his own specifications for the internationalization process.
His specifications include:
(a) College leadership;
(b) Faculty members’ international involvement in activities with colleagues, research sites, and institutions worldwide
(c) The availability, affordability accessibility, and transferability of study abroad programs for students
(d) The presence and integration of international students, scholars, and visiting faculty into campus life and
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(e) International co-curricular units (residence halls, conference planning centers, student unions, career centers, cultural immersion and language houses, student activities, and student organizations).
Above all, universities need to make sure that they are open and responsive to changes in the outside environment. In order for internationalization to be fully effective, the university (including all staff, students, curriculum, and activities) needs to be current with cultural changes, and willing to adapt to these changes.
As stated by Ellingboe, internationalization “is an ongoing, future-oriented, multidimensional, interdisciplinary, leadership-driven vision that involves many stakeholders working to change the internal dynamics of an institution to respond and adapt appropriately to an increasingly diverse, globally focused, ever-changing external environment”.
New distance learning technologies, such as interactive teleconferencing, enable students located thousands of miles apart to communicate and interact in a virtual classroom.
The main theories for cross-cultural communication are based on the work done looking at value differences between different cultures, especially the works of Edward T. Hall, Richard D. Lewis, Geert Hofstede, and Fons Trompenaars. Clifford Geertz was also a contributor to this field. Also Jussi V. Koivisto’s model on cultural crossing in internationally operating organisations elaborates from this base of research.
These theories have been applied to a variety of different communication theories and settings, including general business and management (Fons Trompenaars and Charles Hampden-Turner) and marketing (Marieke de Mooij, Stephan Dahl). There have also been several successful educational projects which concentrate on the practical applications of these theories in cross-cultural situations.
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These theories have also been criticised mainly by management scholars (e.g., Nigel Holden) for being based on the culture concept derived from 19th century cultural anthropology and emphasizing on culture-as-difference and culture-as-essence. Another criticism has been the uncritical way Hofstede’s dimensions are served up in textbooks as facts (Peter W. Cardon).
There is a move to focus on ‘cross-cultural interdependence’ instead of the traditional views of comparative differences and similarities between cultures. Cross-cultural management is increasingly seen as a form of knowledge management. Cross cultural communication gives opportunities to share ideas, experiences, and different perspectives and perception by interacting with local people.
5. Aspects of Cross Cultural Communication:
There are several parameters that may be perceived differently by people of different cultures.
These may include:
i. Perception of Time:
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In some countries like China and Japan, punctuality is considered important and being late would be considered as an insult. However, in countries such as those of South America and the Middle East, being on time does not carry the same sense of urgency.
ii. Perception of Space:
The concept of “personal space” also varies from country to country. In certain countries it is considered respectful to maintain a distance while interacting. However, in other countries, this is not so important.
iii. Non-verbal Communication:
Cultures may be either Low-context or High-context: Low-context cultures rely more on content rather than on context. They give value to the written word rather than oral statements. High-context cultures infer information from message context, rather than from content. They rely heavily on nonverbal signs and prefer indirectness, politeness & ambiguity.
All communication is cultural – It draws on ways we have learned to speak and give nonverbal messages. We do not always communicate the same way from day to day, since factors like context, individual personality, and mood interact with the variety of cultural influences we have internalized that influence our choices.
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Communication is interactive, so an important influence on its effectiveness is our relationship with others. Do they hear and understand what we are trying to say? Are they listening well? Are we listening well in response? Do their responses show that they understand the words and the meanings behind the words we have chosen? Is the mood positive and receptive?
Is there trust between them and us? Are there differences that relate to ineffective communication, divergent goals or interests, or fundamentally different ways of seeing the world? The answers to these questions will give us some clues about the effectiveness of our communication and the ease with which we may be able to move through conflict.
The challenge is that even with all the good will in the world, miscommunication is likely to happen, especially when there are significant cultural differences between communicators. Miscommunication may lead to conflict, or aggravate conflict that already exists.
We make — whether it is clear to us or not – quite different meaning of the world, our places in it, and our relationships with others.