Summary
Summary International and Global communication
- Course
- Institution
This is a summary of the reading material for International and Global communication.
[Show more]
Seller
Follow
esmeelieuwon
Reviews received
Content preview
Intercultural CommunicationCM1010
This summary covers:
Piller, I. (2017). Intercultural Communication (book chapters): 1, 2, 4, 6, 7, 8
Essed, P. & Trienekens, S. (2008, Sep 26). ‘Who wants to feel white?’ Race, Dutch culture and contested
identities. Ethnic and Racial Studies.
Santoro, N. (2014). ‘If I’m going to teach about the world, I need to know the world’: developing Australian
pre-service teachers’ intercultural competence through international trips. Race Ethnicity and Education.
Martin, J.N. & Nakayama, T.K. (2015). Reconsidering intercultural (communication) competence in the
workplace: a dialectical approach. Language and Intercultural Communication.
Primecz, H., Mahadevan, J. & Romani, L. (2016). Why is cross-cultural management scholarship blind to
power relations? Investigating ethnicity, language, gender and religion in power-laden contexts. International
Journal of Cross Cultural Management.
Fitzgerald, H. (2012). Paralympic Athletes and ‘Knowing’ Disability. International Journal of
Disability, Development and Education.
Van Sterkenburg, J. & Knopper, A. (2004). Dominant Discourses about Race/Ethnicity and Gender in
Sport Practice and Performance. International Review for the Sociology of Sport.
Kuipers, G. & de Kloet, J. (2009). Banal cosmopolitanism and The Lord of the Rings: The limited role of
national differences in global media consumption.
Yin, J. (2011). Popular Culture and Public Imaginary: Disney Vs. Chinese Stories of Mulan. Javnost – The
Public.
Asante, M.K., Miike, Y. & Yin, J. (2008). Introduction: Issues and Challenges in Intercultural
Communication Scholarship. The Global Intercultural Communication Reader.
El Helou, R. & Bou Zeid, M. (2015). “In Line with the Devine”: The Struggle for Gender Equality in
Lebanon.
+ lectures
Esmée Lieuw On 1
,Chapter 1: Approaching Intercultural Communication
Central RQ: Who makes culture relevant to whom in which context for which purposes?
Intercultural Communication: What is it?
• Used as an umbrella term
• 3 studies which help understand intercultural communication:
1. Investigation of the ways in which British and Italian service staff of an airline
respond to service failure (Lorenzoni and Lewis 2004) (a.k.a. cross-cultural
communication)
Service failure is another term for ‘when something goes wrong’ such as
baggage being lost or a customer not being able to get on their flight due to
overbooking.
Concluded that attitudes are more influenced by culture and not as amenable
to training as behavior.
2. The ways in which Korean immigrant shopkeepers in Los Angeles interact with their
African-American customers (Bailey 2000) (a.k.a. intercultural communication)
Found that service encounters with Korean customers were very
straightforward, and usually contained three communicative activities –
greeting, business transaction, closing
By contrast, interactions with African-American customers were more
complex because these customers initiated additional communicative
activities such as small talk, jokes or personal talk
The researcher explains the persistence of divergent communicative styles
with reference to the wider socio-historical context in which the two groups
interact (long history of racial tensions)
3. The ways in which people who live in tourist destinations are being represented in
travel writing (Galasiński and Jaworski 2003). (a.k.a. inter-discourse
communication)
They found that travel journalists used three distinct strategies to describe
people who live in tourist destinations: locals, single out prototypical
representatives and helpers (hospitable locals)
The researchers conclude that these representational strategies are part of
turning a place into a tourist destination: not a place where real people, part
of a complex society, lead their lives, but rather a place where people are
specimens of a particular culture and where it is safe for the tourist to go and
gaze at people as a tourist attraction.
• Studies in ‘cross-cultural communication’ start from an assumption of distinct
cultural groups and investigate aspects of their communicative practices comparatively.
• Studies in ‘intercultural communication’ mostly also start from an assumption of
cultural differences between distinct cultural groups but study their communicative
practices in interaction with each other.
• The ‘inter-discourse approach’ avoids any a priori notions of cultural identity. Instead,
this approach asks how culture is made relevant in a text or interaction and how cultural
identity is brought into existence through text and talk.
Esmée Lieuw On 2
, • For intercultural communication studies to be meaningful in an increasingly
interconnected world, to be sound research and to be socially relevant, they need to
eschew a priori definitions of culture.
• A priori assumptions about ‘culture’ are clearly absent from studies in the inter-discourse
tradition, and also from many studies in the intercultural communication tradition.
Therefore, as part of that argument I prefer the term ‘intercultural communication’
because it is more likely to be used in studies of communication in which culture, and
particularly cultural difference, is made relevant by and to the participants.
• Culture should not be considered as something that people have but something that is
created and recreated through text and talk.
Definitions of Culture
• No single definition term is very ambiguous
• I regard culture as the fundamental research question of the field of intercultural
communication to ask who makes culture relevant to whom in which context for which
purposes.
• We look at content, scope and status:
1. Content: What is it that ‘culture’ comprises?
‘Culture as a national asset’ is linked to what often has been called ‘high
culture’: history, the arts and festivals.
‘Popular culture’ such as folklore, belief systems and particularly cuisine.
‘Culture as challenge’ is mostly about interpersonal relationships and how
these are communicated verbally (ex. Small talk) and non-verbally (ex.
Removing shoes when entering a home)
‘Culture as citizenship’ is presented as consisting of practices that are
widely seen as signifying a particular identity (ex. Dress codes, ways of
speaking etc.)
2. Scope: Exclusion and inclusion – the identity work that ‘culture’ does – become
apparent only relative to the scope of a definition of culture.
The scope of each underlying understanding of culture, that is, the cultural
unit, is a nation
Taking the nation or another large group based on social variables (for
example, ethnicity or religion) as the unit of analysis in much of the
intercultural communication literature is inevitably simplistic and has a
number of theoretical and practical consequences (chapter 4)
3. Status: If we treat culture as something people do, then its status changes from an
entity to a process.
Two types of understandings of the status of culture:
1. The entity understanding (essentialist): it treats culture as something people have or
to which they belong.
2. The process view (constructionist): it treats culture as something people do, which
they perform, and, crucially, compete over.
• The product understanding is best epitomized in the work of Geert Hofstede, who
considers culture to be ‘the software of the mind [. . .] our mental programming’
• By contrast, the view of culture espoused here and grounded in the anthropological and
sociological traditions is that ‘culture is not a real thing, but an abstract and purely
analytical notion. It does not cause behavior, but summarizes an abstraction from it, and
is thus neither normative nor predictive’
Esmée Lieuw On 3
, Key Points
• Instead, intercultural communication is one domain where ‘culture’ as concerned with
the specific – and different – ways of life of different national and ethnic groups is
constructed.
• Culture is an ideological construct called into play by social actors to produce and
reproduce social categories and boundaries, and it must be the central research aim of a
critical approach to intercultural communication to understand the reasons, forms and
consequences of calling cultural difference into play.
Counterpoint
• While culture is not something we have – a trait – but something we do – a performance
– it is also something that is done to us when others perceive us and treat us as
representatives of a particular culture.
Esmée Lieuw On 4
The benefits of buying summaries with Stuvia:
Guaranteed quality through customer reviews
Stuvia customers have reviewed more than 700,000 summaries. This how you know that you are buying the best documents.
Quick and easy check-out
You can quickly pay through EFT, credit card or Stuvia-credit for the summaries. There is no membership needed.
Focus on what matters
Your fellow students write the study notes themselves, which is why the documents are always reliable and up-to-date. This ensures you quickly get to the core!
Frequently asked questions
What do I get when I buy this document?
You get a PDF, available immediately after your purchase. The purchased document is accessible anytime, anywhere and indefinitely through your profile.
Satisfaction guarantee: how does it work?
Our satisfaction guarantee ensures that you always find a study document that suits you well. You fill out a form, and our customer service team takes care of the rest.
Who am I buying this summary from?
Stuvia is a marketplace, so you are not buying this document from us, but from seller esmeelieuwon. Stuvia facilitates payment to the seller.
Will I be stuck with a subscription?
No, you only buy this summary for $5.14. You're not tied to anything after your purchase.
Can Stuvia be trusted?
4.6 stars on Google & Trustpilot (+1000 reviews)
83662 documents were sold in the last 30 days
Founded in 2010, the go-to place to buy summaries for 14 years now
Recently viewed by you
