Week 1 - Lecture
● Culture is often seen as a fixed entity that determines worldviews and
communication styles of all members that are seen as part of that culture
● Mass media give meaning to cultures and differentiate between them
○ In and through communication, cultural characteristics and differences
are made relevant and highlighted
● How does culture influence communication?
○ Culture/ cultural differences -> communication
○ Entity approach vs. Culture as process approach
● Underlying assumption: culture is a fixed entity that shapes/precede communication
○ Culture is something one has to belong to
○ BUT it is not sustainable to explain why cultures change all the time
or why people may experience different cultural identities
simultaneously
● Underlying assumption: culture is a process that changes over time
○ Doing culture rather than having culture
○ Communication is a social practice that socially constructs culture
● How does communication shape/ influence culture and cultural differences?
○ Communication -> culture/ cultural differences
● Central question in intercultural communication research: Who makes culture
and cultural differences relevant to whom, in which context, for which
purpose?
● Interdiscourse communication avoids any prior notions of cultural identity
○ It asks how culture is made relevant in a text or interaction and how
cultural identity is brought into existence through text and talk
○ BUT it treats cultures as fixed entities to be compared (variables)
● How is the concept of culture applied in a text or conversation (Piller, 2017)
1. What is the use of culture?
, 2. What is the content of culture?
3. What is the scope of culture?
4. What is the status of culture?
1. What is the use of culture?
○ Who makes culture and cultural differences relevant to whom, in which
context, for which purpose?
2. What is the content of culture?
○ Culture as a national asset (e.g. high culture or pop-culture)
○ Culture as a challenge (interpersonal relationships, businesses,
communication)
○ Culture as citizenship (culture consisting of practices that are seen as
signifying a particular identity)
3. What is the scope of culture?
○ What is considered as the basic unit of culture? (often the nation)
○ E.g. Hofstede’s cultural dimensions to rank national cultures
4. What is the status of culture?
○ Culture as an entity that influences/ precedes
communication VS. Culture as a process/ social
construction that gains meaning in and through
communication (it is something people construct
Banal nationalism is nationalism as enacted and re-enacted daily in many mundane,
almost unnoticeable (banal) ways
○ Everyday instances of banal nationalism socialize is into national
subjects who live in a world of nation-states
But banal nationalism is flawed….
- theoretically, because it does not acknowledge the multiplicity of identities
- practically, because nationality has lost some of the sway it once held in an age
characterized by globalization and transnationalism
● Hofstede’s work is an example of banal nationalism in three ways:
1. The nation-state in which a person lives is the key determinant of their
cultural orientation
2. National culture can be reduced to a few dimensions (value orientations)
3. These value orientations can be measured and quantified
● National identity is not a given but a discursive construction (Piller, 2017)
, ○ National identity is a discursive construction but has real and tangible effects
○ E.g. passport identities
● Cultures are often seen as national entities preceding communication practices
○ This approach finds justification in some scholarly work (e.g. Hofstede)
and is confirmed in, and through, banal nationalism
○ BUT national culture does not precede communication but is a process
(discursive construct) that is made relevant by and to the participants in
specific contexts
Conclusions
- Culture is made relevant through communication
- Culture is often made relevant in terms of national culture e.g. in business advise
resulting in banal nationalism
- banal nationalism finds justification in some scholarly work e.g. Hofstede
- National culture is not a given entity but a discursive construct that is made relevant in
specific contexts for specific purposes
- Nevertheless, national identity is real and powerful in its consequences in terms of a
‘passport identity’
Chapter 1 - Approaching Intercultural Communication
Chapter objectives
● One central research question: Who makes culture relevant to whom in which context
for which purposes?
● Key terms: cross-cultural communication, intercultural communication and inter-
discourse communication → identify how the terms are used with different, similar or
overlapping meanings in different studies. Also; the essentialist view and the
constructionist view to communication.
So, what is intercultural communication?
➢ Piller uses three different studies to describe the concept of ‘intercultural communication’
and asks how the researchers conducting these studies understand intercultural
communication
○ In study number 1, Piller concludes that “in terms of intercultural communication,
the researchers explain the similarities they found in the way the workers act as
resulting from the same training that all employees of the airline receive,
irrespective of where they are based; and they explain the differences they found
, in the workers’ attitudes as resulting from British and Italian culture, and conclude
that the attitudes are more influenced by culture and not as amenable to training
as behaviour.”
○ Study number 2 is concerned with Korean immigrant shopkeepers and African
American customers in Los Angeles. The study showed that the Koreans were
more straightforward and few in words while the African Americans found small-
talk appropriate and thought the Koreans racist when they did not respond to their
efforts to start a conversation. After years of doing business in African-American
neighbourhoods, the intercultural communication between shopkeepers and
customers did not seem to improve and they failed to accommodate each other’s
ways of speaking.
○ Study number 3 is concerned with the ways in which people who live in tourist
destinations are being represented in travel writing. The researchers found that
travel journalists use three distinct strategies to describe people who live in tourist
destinations.
■ Strategy number 1: the people living in tourist locations are referred to in
very general terms (‘locals’), as members of an ethnic group
(‘Dominicans’) or as members of a broad social group (‘women’). These
groups are then described as homogenous and with clearly identifiable
attributes → “Madeirans are modest, undemonstrative, devoutly Catholic
people”.
■ Strategy number 2: People in tourist destinations were represented by
singling out one or more prototypical representatives that the journalist in
question had observed (or interacted with). → journalists give specific
descriptions of individuals for the sake of the story
■ Strategy number 3: this strategy represents the people in travel
destinations as helpers to tourists → the hospitable locals.
➢ These three studies remind us that intercultural communication can be mundane but,
given the very different objectives of each study, they also raise the question of what
intercultural communication really is → THREE SUBFIELDS (or maybe more like forms
IC takes):
○ Study number one is considered a study of cross-cultural communication,
because it compares the attitudes and communicative behaviors of service
workers from different cultural backgrounds and understands culture as
identical to nation.