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INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION COMPETENCE

Besse Darmawati
Badan Riset dan Inovasi Nasional
bess001@brin.go.id

1. Introduction
Talking about intercultural communication cannot be separated from talking
about the understanding of culture among social groups such as countries, ethnic
groups, and other social institutions in the world. All people try to fulfil their needs and
wants that cannot be done by themselves, so they need other people to do it. When they
need other people, they must communicate each other using language. However, the
difference of culture often causes misunderstanding among communicators in the
process of communication. Therefore, it is important to understand other social groups
(especially countries) when we deal with their language.
This chapter tries to elaborate how important communication competence is,
and displays an American cultural overview to be connected to other countries in order
to make effective communication and avoid misunderstanding of concepts and contents
of communication. The points to be elaborated are metaphors of U.S. cultural diversity,
competence and intercultural communication, and basic tools for improving
intercultural competence.

2. The United States as an International Community

Various communities with different culture live within the borders of the United
States of America (USA) that is why the U.S. is called as an intercultural community.
The diversity can be seen in the description of four metaphors, those are melting pots,
tributaries, tapestries, and garden salad.
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The melting pot is a metaphor to picture the multiple cultures in the United
States, where the diversity helped the U.S. become an industrial power. The great range
of cultures derived from the immigrants who came to work and live, and there they mix
and blend together into one great assimilated culture that is stronger and better than
before. They are all blended to overcome their individual weakness. Afterwards, the
tributaries metaphor describe America as a huge cultural watershed which provide
numerous ways where the tributary cultures can flow. This view propose that the
cultural groups maintain their distinctive identities. Even though, there is an idea that
all tributaries blending together to form one mainstream where some cultures assimilate
in US culture. Nevertheless, the stream is not quite though or somehow become
subordinate or less important than the strongest one. The next metaphor is tapestry, it
is the supposition of a decorative cloth made up of many strands of thread; thus, groups
of similar threads represent the culture. The idea is one culture may interwoven
(compose) with many others in such a way all of them are not distinguished.
Nevertheless, it is distinguishable even the threads have been grouped into small
clumps. It is fixed and unchanged. The last is Garden Salad metaphor, where the US
represent the complex display of distinct cultures that are blended into a unique
combination one. It suggest a firmness and stability, it has no fixed arrangement;
however, it is not always moving, mixing, and mingling with the speed and swiftness.
From the four metaphors, Lustig and Koester prefer the last two metaphors to represent
the characteristics of cultural groups’ diversity in U.S.
As an outsider, we always called the people who come from the USA as
American. Conversely, many other people from Central and South America also call
themselves as American, and the consider that people from the US is imperialistic and
insulting for calling themselves as American. Therefore, there are some possibility that
is often used to label the people from US as United Statians or United Staters. It may
not occur ambiguity since it specifically identify people from a single nation, even
though it is not widely used by the people of US itself.
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A variety of terms are used to refer to the nation’s cultural groups. The goal is
to find ways to refer to cultural groups that reflect their differences accurately while
avoiding negative connotations and evaluations. Several terms which may result on
emotionally charged should be avoid in discussing the cultural groups, especially who
resides in the US., such as majority, minority, dominant, nondominant, and
subordinate. It is wise to use the terms European Americans than White or Caucasian
to represent the White people of America. It is better to label the black Americans as
African American; also Asian American as a global term to refer to Japan, Chinese,
Korean, Indonesian, and other cultures that geographically in the area of Asia. The use
of broad terms in discussing intercultural communication allows for an economy of
words.

3. Competence and Intercultural Communication

A competent communicator is a person who is categorized as being able not
only to communicate with other people in the same mother tongue and culture but also
in different ones. He can speak in any kind of context across cultures all over the world
especially the culture of the people whose language is being communicated. The
international languages such as English, Mandarin, Arabic, and other languages which
are familiar with science and technology such as Japanese, German, French, etc. are
the ones that have their own cultures.
A competent communicator of English has to master the culture English
language, competent communicator of Japanese should be able to deal with the culture
of Japanese, and so on. Misinterpretation and misunderstanding of statements and ideas
will happen if the culture of a language is not suited to the process of communication
because language is a part of culture. Therefore, it is important to improve intercultural
communication competence for a communicator of particular language in the process
of communication in order to make the communication very effective.
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Competent communication is an effective interaction among people through a

language or languages that the purposes of the communication are easily and exactly
achieved in any kind of appropriate context. In relation to the definition of competent
communication, Hyon and Bruno in Lustig Koester state:
“Competent communication is interaction that is perceived as
effective in fulfilling certain rewarding objectives in a way that
is also appropriate to the context in which interaction occurs”
Based on the definition above, it is concluded that a process of communication
can be very effective and the purposes of communication can be achieved well without
any misinterpretation and misunderstanding of statements, ideas, and concepts depends
on how the communicators perform their competence in well. In other words, the
communicators have to understand the different intercultural expressions and
communicate them based on the context. Cultural adjustments, friendliness, politeness,
individual’s personal characteristics, etc. have to be recognized and performed based
on the appropriateness of the context in the process of communication.
Intercultural communication competence is the ability to communicate
statements, ideas, and concepts in different cultures of language and communication
performed by the communicators effectively and easily. There are some components
of intercultural competence, namely context, appropriateness, effectiveness,
knowledge, motivation, and action.
Competence is closely related to situation where, when and with whom the
communication occurs called context. Social, cultural, educational, and economic
backgrounds of the people we are communicating to are always considered in the
process of communication to be specified in the form of context. Therefore, a
communicator should know and recognize the context of communication so he/she is
regarded ad a competent communicator. Aappropriateness deals with behaviors to be
performed by communicators in a proper and suitable situation (culture) in order to
achieve the objectives of communication. Effectiveness of a communication can
happen when the purposes to be communicated is acheved by using certain strategies
in the interpersonal communication. Knowledge deals with cognitive information about
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commnucators, the contexts and the appropriate behaviors and values based on the
culture in a particular social group where the communication takes place. Motivation
refers to emotional or affective states felt or experienced by everyone that produces
willingness or intentions to do or say something through communication that basically
related to cultures. Action means the implementation of knowledge emotions,
cognitions, thoughts, and motivations to do or tell something through interpersonal and
intercultural communication by involving behaviors and values across cultures of the
communicators.

4. Basic Tools for Improving Intercultural Competence

To know someone’s competence in performing intercultural communication,
there is an instrument called BASIC which stands for Behvioral Assessment Scale for
Intercultural Competence. It was developed by Jolene Koester and Margaret Olebe
based on the the work done originally by Brent Ruben and his colleagues. This
instrument consists of eight elements as the skills to improve intercultural competence
in the process of communication, namely desplay of respect, orientation of knowledge,
empathy, interaction management, task role behavior, relational role behavior,
tolerance for ambiguity, and interaction posture.
Desplay of respect refers to performing polite expressions verbally (usually
formal expressions) as well as nonverbal displays such as showing attentiveness throgh
the position of the body, facial expressions, and iye contact. Orientation of knowledge
covers the terms and expressionas used in communication are used to explain
themselves and their surroungs, and the expreiences and interpretatiions tend to be
specific to individual and personal rather than general ones. Empathy refers to the
ability to express verbal communiaction by expressing other people’s thoughts,
feelings, and experiences. Interaction management is the abiluty to manage the timing
in communiaction process in terms of starting and ending interactions among
participants in order to keep the communiaction run well beacause all of them have
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their turns to talk. Task role behavior refers to the communicator’s performance in
communiaction focusing contents or ideas on the specific topic based on the context
and topic of communiaction being performed. Relational role behavior is the efforts to
keep personal relationships with among people as well as group members both in the
verbal and nonverbal communiaction. Tolerance for ambiguity refers to the ability to
understand and be patient to another communicator’s ambiguous expressions.
Interaction posture covers someone’s ability to interact with other people in
descriptive, nonevaluative and nonjugmental ways (Lustig and Koester, 2006: 72-76).

5. Conclusion
Building an effective communication to the people with different cultural
backgroud requires interpersonal and intercultural competences in order to avoid
misunderstanding and misinterpretation as well as making the communication run well
and smoothly. This can be performed by the communicators who have crosscultural
knowledge and polite behavior. Because it is a skill, a communicator should practice it
continuouysly in order to be easily performed ehen communicating.
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