LOCAL AND GLOBAL

COMMUNICATION IN ARIS PET ANGELI A.

SUAREZ
MULTICULTURAL SETTING
LOCAL COMMUNICATION
Local communication is being able to communicate
with the members of your local area. It can either
be in your local language (mother tongue), or a
common language that you speak within your town.
GLOBAL COMMUNIATION
Global communication is the term used to describe ways to
connect, share, relate and mobilize across geographic, political,
economic, social and cultural divides. It redefines soft and hard
power as well as information power and diplomacy in ways not
considered by traditional theories of international relations.
MULTICULTURAL VS.
INTERCULTURAL
COMMUNICATION

What’s the difference between

multicultural, intercultural, and cross-
cultural communication?
MULTICULTURAL
Multicultural refers to a society that contains several
cultural or ethnic groups. People live alongside one
another, but each cultural group does not necessarily have
engaging interactions with each other.
INTERCULTURAL

Intercultural describes communities in which there is a

deep understanding and respect for all cultures.
CROSS-CULTURAL

Cross-cultural deals with the comparison of different

cultures. In cross-cultural communication, differences are
understood and acknowledged, and can bring about
individual change, but not collective transformations.
COMMUNICATING ACROSS
CULTURES
Communicating across cultures is challenging. Each culture has
set rules that its members take for granted. Few of us are aware
of our own cultural biases because cultural imprinting is begun at
a very early age. And while some of a culture’s knowledge, rules,
beliefs, values, phobias, and anxieties are taught explicitly, most
of the information is absorbed subconsciously.
HIGH CONTEXT VS LOW
CONTEXT
High-Context cultures (Mediterranean, Slav, Central European,
Latin America, Africa, Arab, Asian, American Indian) leave much
of the message unspecified, to be understood through context,
nonverbal cues, and between the lines interpretation of what is
actually said.
Low-Context cultures (most Germanic and English-speaking
countries) expect messages to be explicit and specific.
SEQUENTIAL VS
SYNCHRONIC
In sequential cultures (like North American, English, German,
Swedish, and Dutch), business people give full attention to one
agenda item after another.
In synchronic cultures (including South America, southern
Europe and Asia) the flow of time is viewed as a sort of circle,
with the past, present and future all interrelated. This viewpoint
influences how organizations in those cultures approach deadlines,
strategic, thinking, investments, developing talent within, and the
concept of “long term” planning.
AFFECTIVE VS NEUTRAL
In international business practices, reason and emotion both play
a role. Which of these dominates depends upon whether we are
affective (readily showing emotions) or emotionally neutral in our
approach.
Members of neutral cultures do not telegraph their feelings, but
keep them carefully controlled and subdued. In cultures with high
affect, people show their feelings plainly by laughing, smiling,
grimacing, scowling, and sometimes crying, shouting, or walking
out the room
ACTIVITY: TRUE OR FALSE
1. Anyone who is proficient speaker of a language will find
communicating across cultures easy.
2. Our emotions do not matter whenever we communicate with others.
3. There is no such thing as a right culture or a wrong culture.
4. All cultures have the same way of thinking about time.
5. Communicating across cultures happens in one’s own country
because of the diverse domestic workforce of many companies
today.