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Summary and lecture notes of Intercultural communication
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This document includes a full summary of chapters 1-10 & 13 of the book, and all lecture notes.
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Introducing intercultural communicationChapter 1: Challenges of living in a global community
Global village: a future world in which communication technology, such as television, radio and news
services, brings news and information to the most remote parts of the world. (McLuhan, 1962)
Contributors to cultural diversity
Globalization: the process of increasing interconnectedness between societies and people at the
economic, political and cultural levels.
Globalization in business: the increase of trade around the world, especially by large companies
producing or trading goods in many different countries.
Contributors to cultural diversity:
Advanced communication technology and transportation: Think of email, social media,
satellites and smartphones, and the fact that it’s easier to travel.
Globalized economy and business: global transformation, international expansion and
diverse workforce.
Mass migration and international exchange.
Cultural home: an individual’s sense of belonging to an ethnic, racial or geographic community with
shared traditions and practices.
Ethnic enclave: an area where relatively large numbers of people from the same ethnic or racial
background live in their host country.
Challenges from cultural diversity and multiculturalism
Multiculturalism: can be described in a descriptive level or as an attitude:
Descriptive level: multiculturalism is a society with diverse cultures. Living and working together
requires tolerance and mutual understanding.
As an attitude: multiculturalism can refer to a society’s tolerance towards diversity and acceptance of
equal societal participation.
Host countries have expressed concerns over the threat that different ethnic cultures may
pose to their mainstream cultural values, the political and economic power structure and the
distribution of employment opportunities.
Breaking down the cultural and psychological walls is a challenge we face today, living in a
global society.
Necessity and benefits of intercultural communication
Studying intercultural communication allows you to work together and understand others.
Building intercultural understanding: understanding is the first step to acceptance.
Promoting international business exchange.
Promoting intercultural cooperation in the workplace
Facilitating cross-cultural adaptation: Letting immigrants and host-countries adjust to
multiculturalism
3 perspectives on globalization:
1. Globalists: globalization as an inevitable development which cannot be resisted or
significantly influenced by human intervention, particularly through traditional political
institutions, such as nation-states.
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, 2. Traditionalists: argue that the significance of globalization as a new phase has been
exaggerated. They believe that most economic and social activity is regional, rather than
global, and they still see a significant role for nation-states. (Think of Europe (regional)
instead of the entire world.) Traditionalists think that nation-states are more important.
3. Transformationalists: contend that globalization represents a significant shift, but they
question the inevitability of its impacts. They argue that there is still significant scope for
national, local and other agencies. (A little between globalists and traditionalists)
Lecture notes week 1 lecture 1
Small world experiment (Milgram, 1967)
How many steps (via other people) does it take to connect two random people in the world?
Participants in various cities in the US were asked to send a letter to a person in Boston. Only
via people that they knew personally.
Result: on average it took 5 to 6 steps (people) to get from the starting point to the end
point.
“Six degrees of separation” (network theory)
In 2012: Small word experiment 2.0
Facebook calculated the distance between two random FB users
Result: there’s an average of 3.57 ‘degrees of separation’ between them.
It seems that the world is getting smaller
Do we live in a unified world?
KOF index of globalization which is based on 3 indicators:
Economic globalization: trade and investment flows, import/export
Social globalization: personal contact, information flows, number of McDonald’s restaurant,
IKEA stores, etc.
Political globalization: foreign embassies in a country, membership of international
organizations, participation in UN missions, involvement in international trade agreements.
Biological diversity: diversity in terms of plants
Cultural diversity: diversity in cultures
Biological and cultural diversity go together. The higher the biological diversity the higher the cultural
diversity. This is because in the past people would go to places with high biological diversity because
here was more food.
Environmental factors and sociocultural factors also play a role in diversity.
Environmental factors: geographical barriers breed divergence, tropical climates support more life.
Sociocultural factors: Smaller groups are highly adaptable, multilingualism is the global norm.
Chapter 2: Culture and people
Culture consists of a group or community’s traditions, customs, norms, beliefs, values and thought
patterns, passed down from generation to generation.
Culture is pervasive in human life. (it’s everywhere).
Culture governs people’s behaviours.
Components and characteristics of culture
Culture: the particular way of life of a group of people and the meaning-making process by which
people make sense of their social world. Culture comprises the deposit of knowledge, experience,
beliefs, values, traditions, religion, notions of time, roles, spatial relations, worldviews, material
objects and geographic territory.
Culture is a process and a product of communication.
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,Components of culture
The model by Dodd (1998) groups cultural components into three levels:
1. Inner core
2. Intermediate layer (cultural activities)
3. Outer layer (institutions within culture)
The inner core of culture
History: carrier of cultural heritage, provides continuity.
Identity: a sense of ‘who we are’ or ‘who I am’.
Beliefs: what a culture believes as true or false.
Values: what a culture regards as good or bad.
Worldview: what a culture believes about nature and the working of the universe.
The intermediate layer of culture (observable cultural activities)
Rituals and customs: for example King’s day in the Netherlands or greeting people in a
particular way.
Artistic expressions: artworks in western society contain more humans whereas artwork in
Eastern society contain more nature.
Technology: reflected in transportation, communication, food, clothing, shelter and tools.
Technology has form (what it is or how it looks), function (what it does and how it works) and
meaning (what it represents).
Communication patterns: For example gestures, loudness, directness and turn-taking.
Material objects
Rules: For example the importance of punctuality.
Roles: what we do in a cultural context forms relationships with others; these relationships
generate a dynamic of roles and expectations.
Popular culture: comprises the daily interactions, needs and desires that make up the
everyday lives of the mainstream. Includes cooking, clothing, sports, etc.
The outer layer of culture (institutions within culture) formalized systems that structure a culture.
Kinship system: family structure. Is only the nuclear family or also extended family the major
family structure?
Economic system
Political system
Educational system
Religious system
Health system
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, Digital culture: the changes brought about by contemporary digital, networked and personalized
media in our society and it signifies the transformation from print- and broadcast-centred media to
networked media which rely on digital communication technologies.
Characteristics of culture
Culture is holistic: culture functions as an integrated and interrelated complex whole. All
aspects of an event must be interpreted to fully understand it: none of the individual
components makes sense on its own.
Culture is learned: we are socialized into our culture. Culture is learned through instruction,
culture is absorbed and cultural learning is a lifelong process.
Culture is dynamic: culture is subject to change over time through influence of other cultures
or changes in the environment. (The inner core of culture can be more resistant to change).
Culture is ethnocentric: ethnocentrism is the belief that one’s own culture is superior to
other cultures. Ethnocentrism is found in every culture. It builds barriers between cultures,
gets in the way of intercultural understanding and affects intercultural communication.
According to Kenneth Pike (1967) there are two main approaches to studying culture:
1. Emic approach: views each culture as a unique entity that can only be examined by
constructs developed from inside the culture. It tries to understand culture from the native’s
point of view.
2. Etic approach: assumes that culture can be examined with predetermined categories that
can be applied to all cultures in the search for cultural universals.
While etic categories may be useful for comparative analysis, they need corroboration (=evidence
which confirms or supports a statement) from fieldwork and must allow for new elements collected
through an emic approach. Hence etic and emic approaches are complementary, and researchers
should combine both approaches in studying culture.
Cultures within culture
Subcultures: cultures within a culture.
In this book 4 subcultures are described:
1. Ethnic culture: frequently the basis of a subculture that people use to categorize immigrants.
2. Social class culture: Socioeconomic status (SES) can be derived from a person’s income,
education, occupation, residential area and family background.
3. Organizational culture: each organization has its ways of doing things and its ways of
communicating, which together constitute its organizational culture.
4. Regional culture: regional differences often imply differences in social attitudes, lifestyle,
food preferences and communication.
Discursive construction of culture
Culture and identity are discursively constructed and socially defined. Identification with a cultural
group gives us a sense of identity.
Identity is socially constructed through communication. Communication is sharing who we are and
what we know.
Discursively constructed = as members of a cultural group interact with each other to establish
consensual meanings of their shared experiences, they come to agree on what is important to their
culture. Such collective agreements become shared knowledge.
Ethnography: a specific research methodology which has strong links with the anthropological
tradition of observation of culture situated in the original place. It aims to describe the whole culture.
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