CHAPTER 2:

INTERCULTURAL
AND GLOBAL
COMMUNICATION
OBJECTIVES:

• Define culture;
• Identify the dimensions of culture;
• Explain how these dimensions of culture affect the communication
situation; and
• Apply practical use of these dimensions in improving the quality of
communication.
• Identify ways/ guidelines in communicating under a diverse intercultural
setting.
• Identify barriers in intercultural communication and how to resolve them.
– What does it mean to belong to a
culture?
– When do you identify yourself as a
member of a larger group?
“Cultures are created through communication; that
is communication is the means of human
interaction through which cultural characteristics,
whether customs, roles, rules, rituals, laws or other
patterns- are created and shared.”
 Culture as geography or ethnicity
- East and West, majority and minority
- Structure, place, and national identities
COMMUNICATIVE DIFFERENCES
1. Cross- cultural communication
Generally compares the communication styles and patterns of
people from very different cultural/ social structures. (nation-
states)
2. Intercultural communication
Deals with how people from these cultural/ social structures
speak to one another and what difficulties or differences they
encounter, over and above the different languages they speak.
CONSIDERATION/ LOVE AND
EXPRESIVENESS
Important points!

– Multiple cultures exist in one society or national

group.
– Multiple social communities coexist in a single
society and talk amongst themselves as part of
their conduct of membership.
AS YOU KNOW!

In Japan, it is impolite to summon someone

with the moving index- finger gesture as is
done in the West to mean “Come here.” In
Japan you should hold your palm facing
downward and move all your fingers at once.
Culture as something that other people
have.

Unusual clothes, strange foods, or odd

customs.
Ethnocentric bias is believing that your
culture is the benchmark of all others.
 Cultures

Styles of speaking System of beliefs Customs

family friends co- workers strangers

friendship romance

drivers athletes
Cultures (Jandt, 2010)

– A community or population sufficiently large

enough to be self sustaining.
– The totality of that group’s thought,
experiences, and patterns of behavior and
its concepts, values and assumptions about
life that guide behavior and how those
evolve with contact with other cultures.
Hofsede, 1994
Four Categories of Three Elements of
Culture
a) Symbols refers to verbal and nonverbal language.
b) Rituals are the socially essential collective activities
within a culture.
c) Values are the feelings not open for discussion within a
culture about what is good or bad, beautiful or ugly,
normal or abnormal.
d) Heroes are the real or imaginary people who serve as
behavioral models within a culture.
Cross- Cultural
Characteristics
a) CONTEXT = High
Association Relationship build slowly and depend on
trust.
Interaction Nonverbal elements such as voice tone,
gestures, facial expression and eye
movement are significant.
Territoriality Space is communal. People stand close to
each other and share same space.
Temporality Everything has its own time, and time is
not easily scheduled.
Learning Multiple source of information are used.
From general to specific. Occurs by model
or demonstrate then practice. Groups are
preferred and accuracy is valued.
Low
Relationship begin and end quickly.
Nonverbal elements are not significant.
Space is compartmentalized. Privacy is
important, so people stand farther apart.
Events and tasks are scheduled and to be
done at particular times.
One source of information is used. From
specific to general. Follows explicit
directions and explanations of others.
Individual orientation is preferred, and
speed is valued.
b) INDIVISUALISM VERSUS
COLLECTIVISM
Individualism Collectivism
Focusing on the individual person. Stress group benefits and overriding
value of working harmoniously. For
the common good.
Personal achievement is lauded and Personal achievement is selfishness
reinforced through conversations and disrespectful and reprimanded.
with others.
 Individualism
Interest of individual prevails over
the interest of the group.
Goals are set with minimal
consideration given to groups other
than perhaps your immediate family.
Collectivism
Interest prevails over the interest of
the individual.
Other groups are taken into account
in a major way when goals are set.

Loosely integrated. Tightly integrated.

Want to know what the other person Emphasize relationships among
does and/ or anything about the other people to a greater degree. Stress
person. More distant. independent and suppressing
individual aims for the group’s
welfare.
Direct style Indirect style
 C) TIME

– Monochromatic time: people tend to do one thing at

a time or multitask only because it helps them work
toward particular goals with tasks in sequence and
communications fitting into a particular order. Think
time as a straight line from beginning to end.
– Polychromic time: think of a time as a rotation of
the season or something more open ended, where
independent and unconnected tasks can be done
simultaneously. For example, people often carry
out multiple conversations with different people at
the same time.
 d) Conflict
– Conflict-as-opportunity cultures: individualist
– Conflict-as-destructive cultures: collectivist
Individualist Collectivist
Conflict is normal, useful process Conflict is a destructive disturbance of the peace.
All issues are subject to change through The social system should not be adjusted to meet
negotiation. needs of members; rather members should adapt
to established values.

Direct confrontation and conciliation are valued. Confrontations are destructive and ineffective.
Conflict is necessary renegotiation of an implied Disputants should be disciplined.
contract-redistribution of opportunity, release of
tensions, and renewal of relationships.
Five Styles of Conflict Management

– Dominating Styles: force one’s will on another to

satisfy individual desires regardless of negative
relational consequences.
– Integrating styles: necessitate a great deal of open
discussion about the conflict at hand to reach a
solution that completely satisfies everyone involved.
Compromising styles: confused with integrating styles
because a solution is reached following discussion of the
conflict. However, making a compromise demands that
everyone must give something up to reach a solution and
as a result, people never feel fully satisfied.
Obliging styles: giving one’s position to satisfy another’s
this style generally emphasizes areas of agreement and
deemphasize areas of disagreement.
Avoiding styles: people avoid conflict entirely either by
failing to acknowledge its existence or by withdrawing
from a situation when it arises.
 5 VALUE
DIMENSIONS
 Individualism
Interest of individual prevails over
the interest of the group.
Goals are set with minimal
consideration given to groups other
than perhaps your immediate family.
Collectivism
Interest prevails over the interest of
the individual.
Other groups are taken into account
in a major way when goals are set.

Loosely integrated. Tightly integrated.

Want to know what the other person Emphasize relationships among
does and/ or anything about the other people to a greater degree. Stress
person. More distant. independent and suppressing
individual aims for the group’s
welfare.
Direct style Indirect style
 Masculinity Femininity
Strive for maximal distinction between Those that permit more overlapping
what women and men are expected to social roles for the sexes.
do.

Stress assertiveness, competition, and Stress quality of life, interpersonal

material success. relationships, and concern for the weak.
 Power Distance

– The extent to which less powerful members of

institutions and organizations within a country expect
and accept that power is distributed unequally.
(Hofstede, 1997 in Jandt, 2010)
– Learned in families.
– Power, prestige and wealth are distributed within a
culture.
 Uncertainty Avoidance
– People in a culture feel threatened by uncertain or
unknown situations.
– This feeling is expressed through nervous stress
and in need for predictability or a need for written
or unwritten rules.
 High Low
Active Contemplative

Aggressive Less aggressive

Emotional Unemotional

Compulsive Relaxed

Security seeking Accepting of personal

risks
Intolerant Relatively intolerant
 HIGH I don’t know
everything.
LOW

It’s fine Ma'am!

You’re supposedly You must be perfect!

expert!
 Task- oriented Social-oriented
Getting the job done. Concerned about the members and
their smooth functioning as a team.

More competent through training and Collective concerns.

the use of up-to-date methods.

Individual success. Cooperative problem- solving,

friendly- atmosphere, and good
physical working conditions.
 Intercultural
Communication
Ethics And
Competence
You are not alone: You belong and you don’t
always have a choice.
You belong to many groups, some small
groups (neighbor or friends), some large
( citizenship/ ethnic), some central (family,
friends) and some peripheral ( shoe size,
clothing preference)
 Identifying your culture

Try this personality test and know your personality group.

https://www.perzonality.com/personality-test/your-results
These contexts and backgrounds go beyond your immediate
networks to a sense of belonging to a larger set of people who
include you in their membership. E.g. race/national group or
ethnicity.
Society and Cultural identity- geographical locations, nations,
races, and regions.
 You belong without knowing it
– Not only focusing on the physical boundaries that
surround it but also exploring how psychological and
communicative boundaries get drawn by the habits
and practices of communication that occur.
– Speech communities ( Philipsen, 1995, 1997)-
cultures and define membership in a culture in terms
of speaking patterns and styles that reinforce that
particular “culture” and make them belong
communicatively.
 You do it without knowing it

– Your talk indicates or displays your cultural

membership.
– Your culture is written down in your voice not only in
the language you speak but also the thoughts you
express and the assumptions you make.
– “Man’s talk”- prefers action to words and is based on
talking only when the power is equal.
 Ethnic across cultures (Kale, 1997)
– Address people with the same respect that they would like to
receive themselves.
– Seek to describe the world as they perceive it as accurately as
possible. What is perceived to be the truth may vary from one
culture to another; truth is socially constructed.
– Encourage people of other cultures to express themselves in their
uniqueness.
– Strive for identification with people of other cultures. Emphasize
the commonalities of cultural beliefs and values than differences.
 Two areas of addressing people of other
cultures
The Language and Ethics of Prejudice and Racism
 Prejudice and racism are commonly viewed as being rooted in
the child’s early socialization and fostered in communication
with other people who are prejudiced or racist (Adorno et al.,
1950)
 Hate speech- includes threats or verbal slurs directed against
specific groups or physical acts such as burning crosses or spray
painting swastikas on public or private property (Walker, 1994).
 The Language and Ethics of Othering
 Othering- labeling and degrading of cultures and
subgroups outside of one’s own ( Riggins, 1997).
Example is Colonists were hard- working;
natives were lazy (Jandt & Tanno, 2001)
 “us”, “not us” and “ them” category is created.
These could be use to justify suppression and
even extermination.
 Communication approach TO
INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION
Personality Strength
1. Self- concept- the way in which person views the self.
2. Self- disclosure- willingness to openly and appropriately reveal
information about themselves to the counterparts.
3. Self- monitoring- using social comparison information to control
and modify your self- presentation and expressive behavior.
4. Social relaxation- ability to reveal little anxiety in
communication.
 Communication Skills
1. Message skills- ability to understand and use the language and feedback.
2. Behavioral flexibility- ability to select an appropriate behavior in diverse
contexts.
3. Interaction management- emphasizes a person’s other- oriented ability to
interaction, such as attentiveness and responsiveness.
4. Social skills- empathy and identity maintenance.
- empathy- ability to think the same thoughts and feel the same emotions as
the other person.
- Identity maintenance- ability to maintain a counterpart’s identity by
communicating back an accurate understanding of that person’s identity.
Psychological Adjustment
Acclimate to new environments. Handle feelings of
“culture shock” such as stress, frustration, and
alienation in ambiguous situations.
Cultural Awareness
understand the social customs and the social system
of the host culture.
Barriers To Intercultural
Communication
 Six Barriers in communication
(Laray m. barna, 1997)

1. Anxiety
– High anxiety- anxious of not knowing what you
are expected to do. For example, you may have
experienced anxiety on your first day on new
school. You may be conscious of being new- and
out of place- and focus so much of your
attention on the feeling that you make common
mistakes and appear awkward to others.
2. Assuming similarity instead of differences
When you have no information about a new culture,
it might make sense to assume there are no differences,
to behave as you would in your home culture. But
making assumption could result to miscommunication.
Each culture is different and unique to some degree.
The inverse can be a barrier as well. Assuming
difference instead of similarity can lead to your
recognizing important things that cultures share in
common.
It’s better to assume nothing.
 Ethnocentrism
Negatively judging aspects of another culture by the
standards of one’s own culture.
To believe in the superiority of one’s culture.
Anthropological concept of cultural relativism. It
does not mean that everything is equal, otherwise we
try to understand other people’s behavior in the context
of their culture before we judge it. We recognize the
subjective nature of our own cultural behaviors and are
willing to re- examine them by learning about behaviors
in other cultures. ( Cohen, 1998)
 Less extreme ethnocentrism- taking one’s
culture for granted and neglecting other
cultures.
Extreme ethnocentrism- leads to rejection
of the richness and knowledge of other
cultures. Impedes communication and blocks
the exchange of ideas and skills among
people because it excludes other point of
views; restrictive and limiting.
 Stereotypes and Prejudice
These are destructive stumbling block to intercultural
communication.
Stereotype is the broader term commonly used to
refer to negative or positive judgments made about
individuals based on any observable or believed
group membership.
Prejudice refers to irrational suspicion or hatred of a
particular group, race, religion, or sexual orientation.
Both refer to making judgments about individuals
based on group membership.
 Stereotypes
– The term is first used by journalist Walter Lippman in 1992 to describe
judgments made about others on the basis of their ethnic group
membership.
– Today, judgments made on the basis of any group membership.
Examples:

Figure 1
Figure 2

Figure 3
– What is the difference between cultural sensitivity
and ethnic stereotyping?
– NEGATIVE EFFECTS ON COMMUNICATION
- They cause us to assume that a widely held belief is
true when it may not be.
- Continued use of the stereotype reinforces the
belief.
- Impede communication when they cause us to
assume that a widely held belief is true of any one
individual.
- “Self- fulfilling prophecy” for the person stereotyped.
 Prejudice
– Irrational dislike, suspicion, or hatred of a
particular group, race, religion, or sexual
orientation. (Rothenerg, 1992)
– Highly prejudiced individual as having an
authoritarian personality (Adorno et al., 1950).
Such person tend to generalize and think in
bipolar terms; they are highly conventional,
moralistic, and uncritical of higher authority. They
unlikely to change their attitudes even when
presented with new and conflicting information.
 Characteristics Of Intercultural
Competence
– Motivation
The desire to communicate successfully with
strangers is an important start.
– Tolerance for Ambiguity
Communicating with people from different
backgrounds can be confusing. This makes it possible to
accept, and even embrace, the often equivocal and
sometimes downright incomprehensible messages that
characterize intercultural communication.
– Open- mindedness
It’s one thing to tolerate ambiguity. There is a natural
tendency to view others’ communication choices as
“wrong” when they don’t match our cultural upbringing.
– Knowledge and skill
The rules and customs that work with one group
might be quite different from those that succeed with
another.
One way to boost your understanding of cultural
differences is via mindfulness- awareness of your own
behavior and of others.
– Three strategies for moving forward to amore mindful,
competency style of intercultural communication
(Charles Berger, Communication theorist)
- Passive observation involves noticing what behaviors
embers of a different culture use and applying these
insights to communicate in ways that are most effective.
- Active strategies include reading, watching films, and
asking experts and members of the other culture hoe to
behave, as well as taking academic courses related to
intercultural communication and diversity.
- Self- disclosure involves volunteering personal
information to people from the other culture with whom
you want to communicate.
 Assessment:

INSTRUCTIONS:
Write T if the sentence is TRUE. Change the
underlined word/s to make the sentence true if it is
otherwise. (this will be in the google classroom-
assignment quiz form)
1. Self- concept refers to the way in which a person views the self. ( underlined: self
concept)
2. Cultural sensitivity is being aware of the cultural differences among nations.
3. The word ethnocentrism was first used by Walter Lippmann in 1992.
4. Cultural nearsightedness means taking one’s culture for granted and neglecting other
cultures.
5. To be prejudiced is to believe that one’s culture is superior than another.
6. Stereotype refers to the irrational suspicion or hatred of a particular group, race, religion,
or sexual orientation.
7. A barrier in intercultural communication is assuming differences only among cultures.
8. The local practice of basing holidays on the Western calendar is manifestation of
ethnocentrism.
9. Prejudice is commonly used to refer to negative or positive judgments made about
individuals based on any observable or believed group membership.
10. High anxiety centers your focus on your feelings instead of the communication situation.
 ACTIVITY 2
Fictitious Characters with Intercultural Communication Struggles
– Watch a movie or television program that highlights characters facing an intercultural communication barrier. Define
the barrier and then make three to five recommendations for improving intercultural competence in these situations.
Tips to Deal with "Hot Spots" in Cultural Communication: Practical or Impractical?
– Schuler, A. J. 2003. Tips for successful cross cultural communication. Schuyler Solutions. 
http://www.schulersolutions.com/cross_cultural_communication.html  (accessed February 24, 2010).
– Review the tips for getting started when communicating with those from another culture, then review the potential “hot spots.” Answer the
following questions:
– Which recommendation would you find the most difficult to overcome, based on your current communication style?
– Based on your own travels or dealings with others from another culture, what "hot spots" have you recognized? Explain any other
communication issues not noted in this article.
– Do a search to find a culture where you would need to be sensitive about (a) appropriate topics to discuss in public, (b) use of silence, or (c)
sequencing elements in conversation. Explain your findings.