Intercultural Communication

1. INTERCULTURAL
COMMUNICATION
© PHAN THỊ VÂN QUYÊN
ULIS - VNU

2. BENEFITS OF STUDYING IC
Knowledge of culture and intercultural communication can help us
• understand the multicultural workplace, make more money
• when we travel abroad by choice or by force
• understand the media that advertise foreign-made products, cover
stories from different countries or different cultural groups within
our own country
• become more flexible as individuals
• be better world citizens, have responsibility to live together
peacefully & ethically
“As we are freed from ignorance & negative attributions, we are able
to build better relationships with a wide variety of people”
(E.T.Hall)

3. Challenges of studying IC
Studying culture and IC poses certain risks of
• Overgeneralization of members of a cultural group
• Oversimplication of our understanding of cultures
• Exaggeration of cultural differences (find differences
rather than highlight similarities)

4. BACKGROUND CONCEPTS
OF
INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION

5. COMMUNICATION
• Communication is the process of sharing or
exchanging ideas, information, etc. between
two or more persons
(Dictionary definition)
• “Communication is the process of creating
and sending symbolic behaviour, and the
interpretation of behaviour between people”
(Baldwin et al. 2014:5)

7. co mmun icat io n
Ver bal co mmun icat io n No n ver bal co mmun icat io n
In t r al an guage Par al an guage Ext r al an guage
- Vocabulary
- Grammatical rules
- Phonetic rules
- Rules of language use
- ...
- Vocal characteristics
+ Pitch
+ Volume
+ Rate
+ Vocal quality
+ Types of vocal flow
- Vocal interferences
- Silence
- ...
Bo dy l an g uage
(Act io n )
))language/Kinesics)
Obj ect l an g uage
(Ar t if act s)
En vir o n men t al
l an guage
- Eye contact
- Facial expressions
- Gestures
- Postures
- Touch/Haptics/Tactile
- ...
- Clothing
- Jewellery
- Make-up
- Artificial scents
- Flowers
- Gifts
- …
- Setting
- Conversational distance
(Proxemics)
- Time/Chronemics
- Lighting system
- Colour
- Heat
- …
Types of
communication
Nguyen Quang

8. CULTURE
• Definitions of culture are numerous
• Since 1952, many scholars have offered different
definitions and approaches
• Our concern in this course : link between culture &
communication
→ our definition of culture is one that allows us to
investigate how culture contributes to human symbolic
processes

9. Defining CULTURE for
the study of Communication
Culture is a learned set of shared interpretations
about beliefs, values, norms, and social practices,
which affect the behaviors of a relatively large
group of people
(Myron W. Lustig & Jolene Koeste)

10. Culture
• a sort of knowledge created by human beings
• not innate
• learned through the process of socialization in which
you become a full member of a society by accepting all
of its ideas, values and patterns of behavior
• dynamic and constantly changing.
However, such change is both slow and gradual. The
core culture may take generations to change

11. Components of Culture
• Beliefs: ideas that people assume to be true about the world
(what is logical and correct)
• Values: what a culture regards as good or bad, right or wrong,
appropriate or inappropriate, …
→ Values are the desired characteristics or goals of a culture (not
necessarily actual behavior and characteristics)
• Norms: socially shared expectations of appropriate behaviors
• Social Practices: predictable behavior patterns that members of
a culture typically follow
→ Social Practices are the outward manifestations of beliefs,
values, and norms

13. DOMINANT CULTURE
The attitudes, values, beliefs, and customs
that the majority of people in a society hold
in common
(i.e. Culture of the ruling majority)

14. SUBCULTURE and CO-CULTURE
• Subcultures/Co-cultures = Groups of people living with
a dominant culture but exhibiting communication that
is different enough to distinguish them from the
dominant culture
• Major contributors to Co-cultures are: gender, race,
ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, social class,
age, …

16. In the United States
• Subculture = racial and ethnic minority groups that share both a
common nation-state with other cultures and some aspects of the
larger culture.
e.g. African Americans, Arab Americans, Asian Americans, Native
Americans, Latinos, … = subcultures within the U.S
• “Subculture” has connotations that Americans find problematic,
because it suggests subordination to the larger European
American culture.
• Co-culture has become more commonly used in an effort to avoid
the implication of a hierarchical relationship
between European American culture and
the other important cultural groups
that form the mosaic of the U.S.

17. • Co-culture is sometimes redundant or imprecise
→ Alternative terms:
Cultural groups
(when referring to people of different origins/races living
within a nation)
Social group/ Lifestyle
(when referring to one’s identity as a member of various
groups based on occupation, hobbies, interest, and the
like)

18. INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION
• IC occurs when culture impacts the communication
between two or more people enough to make a
difference
(Baldwin et al., 2014:5)
• IC occurs when large and important cultural differences
create dissimilar interpretations and expectations about
how to communicate competently
(Myron W. Lustig & Jolene Koeste, 2010:52)

19. • IC occurs between people who have different cultural
backgrounds. They may come from different countries
or may live and work in the same country but still have
different cultural backgrounds
• There are more problems in IC than in communication
between people of the same cultural background.
This is because cultural differences make a difference

20. SCALE OF CULTURAL DIFFERENCES
Western Asian
Italian Saudi Arabian
U.S. American Greek
U.S. American German
White American Ethnic American
U.S. American British
U.S. American English Canadian
Most Different
Least Different

21. Interculturalness scale
• In a given instance of communication, degree of difference
between communicators  degree of interculturalness
• Communicators are very different from one another
 most intercultural interaction
• Communicators are very similar to one another
 least intercultural interaction

22. • Initially, one’s interactions could be very intercultural, but
subsequent communication events could make the
relationship far less intercultural

23. • Culture shock = the
psychological discomfort of
adjusting to a new cultural
situation
(Klyukanov, 2005:3)
• Why culture shock?
Absence of shared meaning
due to different values,
attitudes, beliefs and
behaviors

24. Intracultural Communication Intercultural Communication
The culture provides
predictability → the threat
of the unknown is reduced
Cultural patterns allow for
automatic responses to
stimuli
In essence, cultural patterns
save people’s time and
energy
Sense of security, comfort,
and predictability is lost
The greater the degree of
interculturalness, the
greater the lost of
predictability and certainty
Assurances about the
accuracy of interpretations
of verbal and nonverbal
messages are lost

25. INTERCULTURAL
COMMUNICATION
COMPETENCE

26. Communicative Competence
Communicative competence is a social
judgment about how well a person interacts
with others (our judgement on how you do
sth, its depends on other’s values, etc.)

27. Intercultural Competence
• Intercultural competence is more difficult to
achieve, because cultural differences create
dissimilar meanings and expectations that require
even greater levels of communication skills
→ Intercultural competence = using your knowledge,
motivation, and skills to deal appropriately and
effectively with cultural differences.
•  communicate effectively & better

28. • Knowledge = information about the people, context, norms of
appropriateness that operate in a specific culture
• 2 important kinds of knowledge:
– Culture-general knowledge: knowledge about interpersonal
communication and the many ways in which culture influences
the communication process
– Culture-specific knowlwdge: knowledge about predominant
cultural patterns, forces that maintain the culture’s
uniqueness, rules and customs that govern interpersonal
communication in the culture

30. • Appropriateness = behaviors that are regarded as
proper and suitable given the expectations
generated by a given culture, the constraints of the
specific situation, and the nature of the relationship
between the interactants
• Effectiveness = behaviors that lead to the
achievement of desired outcomes

32. • Businesses, government agencies, educational
institutions, … want to select competent people for
intercultural assignments
• Lack of intercultural competence means failed
business ventures, government projects that have not
achieved their objectives, and unsuccessful learning
experiences for students