Intercultural communication

Lecture 2
Culture and cultural differences

Key Features in Lecture 2

I. Defining Culture for the Study of Communication

II. Defining Interpersonal Communication
III. Defining Intercultural Communication

PART I – Defining Culture for the Study of Communication

The definitions of culture are numerous. Recently, more than 300 definitions of
culture are listed by John R. Baldwin and his colleagues. The definitions of
culture in this session focus on the study of communication.

Culture is a learned set of shared interpretations about beliefs, values, norms,

and social practices, which affect the behaviours of a relatively large group of
people.
(Lugstig & Koester, 2012, p.25)

1. Culture is learned
· Culture is learned from the people you interact with you are socialized.
· Humans learn their culture through interactions with parents, other
family members, friends, teachers, and strangers who are part of the
culture.
· Examples: child education on decision making; showing table manners;
classroom behaviours; how to be good child/student, etc. Watching how
adults react and talk to new babies is an excellent way to see the actual
symbolic transmission of culture among people.

2. Culture involves large groups of people

Some people might want to use the term ‘culture’ to refer to the bonds that
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develop among the people in a small group, such as a workplace, or a school, but
here our emphasis is more traditional – we talk about ethnicity.
· Nation
Ø Nation is a political term referring to a government and a set of
formal and legal mechanisms that regulate the political behaviours
of its people.
· Race
Ø Race refers to certain physical similarities, such as skin colour, that
are shared by a group of people and are used to mark or separate
them from others.
Ø Primarily, race is not a biological term; it is a political and societal
term invented to justify economic and social distinctions.
Ø Not all people of the same race have the same cultural backgrounds.
For example, although a person from Nigeria and an African
American are both from the same race, they are from distinct
cultures.
Ø One’s ‘race’ is best understood as a social and legal construction, or
a classification system. E.g. white and non-white; Caucasians and
Africans, etc.
Ø Race can, however, form the basis for prejudicial communication
that can be a major obstacle to intercultural communication.
Categorization of people by race in the US has been the basis of
systematic discrimination and opposition of people of colour.
· Ethnicity
Ø Ethnicity refers to a wide variety of groups who might share a
language, historical origins, religion, nation-state, or cultural
system.
Ø The nature of the relationship of a group’s ethnicity to its culture
will vary greatly. It is possible for members of an ethnic group to be
part of many different cultures and/or nations. E.g. Jewish people
share a common ethnic identification even though they belong to
widely varying cultures and are citizens of many different nations.

3. Culture is a set of shared interpretation

· Cultures exist in the minds of people, not just in external or tangible
objects or behaviours. The meanings of symbols exist in the minds of the

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 individual communicators; when those symbolic ideas are shared with
others, they form the basis for culture.

Culture is shared beliefs, values, norms and social practices that people bring
to their interactions and the unique expectations and experiences that arise as a
result of particular interpersonal relationship that develop.

· Beliefs refer to the basic understanding of a group of people about what

the world is like.
Ø A belief is an idea that people assume to be true about the world.
Ø Beliefs are a set of learned interpretations that form the basis for
cultural members to decide what is and what is not logical and
correct.
Ø Cultural beliefs are expectations about how the world works.
Ø Beliefs are sometimes based on the teachings of those regarded as
authorities, such as parents, teachers, elders, etc.
Ø Peripheral beliefs refer to matters of personal taste.
· Values refer to what the group of people defines as good or bad, right or
wrong, fair or unfair, just or unjust, beautiful or ugly, clean or dirty,
valuable or worthless, appropriate or inappropriate, and kind or cruel. It
is also about what it regards as important.
Ø Cultures differ not only in beliefs but also in values.
Ø Values are the desired characteristics or goals of a culture.
Ø Values serve as guiding principles in people’s lives.
· Norms refer to rules for appropriate behaviours, which provide the
expectations people have of one another and of themselves. Norms are the
predictable behaviour patterns that members of a culture typically follow.
Ø Norms are the socially shared expectations of appropriate
behaviours. E.g. the greeting behaviours of people within a culture
are governed by norms; good manners in different situations are
based on norms.
Ø Norms basically constitute the ‘right’ way of communication and
performing a role within a culture.
· Social Practices are the predictable behavior patterns that members of a
culture typically follow. They are the outward manifestations of beliefs,
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 values and norms.
Ø Social practice can be informal. The practice of eating with ‘good
manners’ can be culturally different. For example, finishing all the
food on the table can be a respect for the host in European culture,
while finishing all the food on the table can be a loss of face for the
host in Chinese culture.
Ø Social practice can be formal. Formal social practice can be rituals,
ceremonies, and structured routines typically performed publicly
and collectively: saluting the flag, praying in church, honouring the
dead at funerals, getting married, etc.

However, as suggested, ‘Individuals in a culture generally are socialized in ways

consistent with the cultural-level tendencies, but some individuals in every
culture learn different tendencies.

Taken together, the shared beliefs, values, norms and social practices provide a
‘way of life’ for the members of a culture.

4. Culture affects Behaviours.

· The shared interpretations about beliefs, values, and norms affect the
behaviours of large group of people.
· The social practices that characterize a culture give people guidelines
about what things mean, what is important, and what should or should
not be done. Thus, culture establishes predictability in human interactions.
· Cultural differences are evident in the varying ways in which people
conduct their everyday activities, as people ‘perform’ their culture in their
behavioural routines.
· However, no one is entirely ‘typical’ of the culture to which he or she
belongs; each person differs, in unique ways, from the general cultural
tendency to think and to behave in a particular way. Differences in age,
gender, social status, and many other factors also affect the likelihood that
people will enact specific behaviours.

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PART II – Defining Interpersonal Communication
· Interpersonal communication patterns are the face-to-face verbal and
nonverbal coding systems that are developed to convey meanings and
intentions. These patterns include communication with parents, siblings,
peers, teachers, relatives, neighours, employers, authority figures, and
other social contacts.
· Differences in interpersonal communication patterns both cause and result
from cultural differences.
- Verbal communication systems, or languages, give each culture a
common set of categories and distinctions to organize perceptions
and ideas and to give meaning to shared experiences.
- Nonverbal communication systems provide information about the
meanings associated with the use of space, time, touch and gestures.
They help to define the boundaries between members and
nonmembers of a culture.

Interpersonal Communication Patterns are also important in maintaining the

structure of a culture because they are the means through which a culture
transmits its beliefs and practices from one generation to another. The entire
network of interpersonal relationship provides unrelenting messages about the
preferred ways of thinking, feeling, perceiving, and acting in relation to
problems with which the culture must cope.

PART III – Defining Intercultural Communication

Most intercultural --------------------------------------------------------> Least intercultural

· Intercultural Communication Continuum – we can create an

‘interculturalness’ scale – to make distinctions among those
communication situations that are placed in the middle, with some closer
and some farther from the most intercultural end.
· There are learned differences among groups of people that are associated
with their culture, such as cultural patterns, verbal and nonverbal codes,
relationship rules and roles, and social perceptions. When such important
differences are relatively large, they lead to dissimilar interpretations
about the meanings of the messages that are created, and they therefore
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 indicate that people are from different cultures.
· Intra-cultural Communication – the ‘least intercultural’ end of the
continuum.
· Cross-cultural communication – the study of a particular idea or concept
within many cultures for better cultural understanding. It involves a
comparison of interactions among people from the same culture to those
from another culture.

Intercultural Communication occurs when large and important cultural

differences create dissimilar interpretations and expectations about how to
communicate competently. It involves interactions among people from different
cultures. The objective here is to use cross-cultural comparisons to understand
intercultural communication competence.

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