Ch. 2 Culture and Intercultural Communication
CHAPTER 2
Culture and Intercultural Communication
CHAPTER OBJECTIVES
(1) To introduce students to the topic of culture.
(2) To provide a definition of culture.
(3) To identify the forces that create and maintain cultural differences.
(4) To emphasize the interrelatedness of these historical, ecological, technological, biological,
institutional, and interpersonal forces.
(5) To describe how an understanding of the ways that cultures change and adapt can improve
one's intercultural competence.
(6) To build awareness of and make distinctions between intercultural communication and
communication that is not intercultural.
(7) To describe and elaborate on those differences among groups of people that constitute
cultural differences.
(8) To explain how extended communication may change the effects of cultural differences.
(9) To provide a definition of intercultural communication and examine the similarities and
differences between intercultural communication and related terms.
CHAPTER OUTLINE
I. Culture
A. Culture is a learned set of shared interpretations about beliefs, values, norms, and social1. Culture is learned through everyday interactions with members of a particular culture.
practices, which affect the behaviors of a relatively large group of people.
2. Culture is a set of shared interpretations derived from the meanings that were and are
created between members of the culture.
3. Culture involves beliefs, values, norms, and social practices.
4. Culture affects behaviors.
5. Culture involves large groups of people.
B. Culture and related terms
1. Nation
a. Nation is used to refer to a political government and governing laws that group
people within the same political boundaries.
b. A number of unique cultures can exist within the political boundaries of one nation.
2. Race
a. Race is a term that is commonly but incorrectly used to refer to a genetic or biologically based similarity that distinguishes one group of people from another.
b. Race is actually a political, legal, and social distinction.
c. Racial distinctions often form the basis for prejudicial communication.
3. Ethnicity
a. Ethnicity refers to a wide variety of groups who share a common language,
b. People may share ethnic beliefs but may be members of different cultures.
4. Subculture and coculture
a. Subculture is often used to refer to cultures that exist in the midst of another large Coculture is used in place of subculture to hide the implication of a hierarchical culture relationship between the European American culture and other important cultural groups in the United States.
c. Both Subculture and Coculture are redundant and imprecise terms, and it is preferable to regard the cultural groups referenced by these terms as cultures in their own right.
C. Why Cultures Differ
1. Forces that Maintain Cultural Differences
a. History: the unique experiences that have become part of a culture's collective wisdom are its history.
b. Ecology: the external environment includes the climate, weather patterns, land and water formations, and availability of food and raw materials.
1. Effects of a culture's ecology are often hidden from its members.
2. Geographical features such as availability of water and land contour influence differences among cultures.
3. Ecological features have been largely overlooked in the study of cultural
differences.
c. Technology: the inventions a culture has created or borrowed, including such things as tools, weapons, navigational aids, computers, and paper clips.
1. Changes in the available technology can affect a culture’s survival.
2. Media allow humans to communicate across time and distance.
a. Media such as television are responsible for introducing ideas to other
cultures.
b. Media can also influence how people perceive other cultures.
d. Biology: inherited characteristics shared by cultural members.
1. There is more variation
a. Racial categories are not based primarily on biological distinctions but on political and social ones.
b. Racial distinctions are often used to include or exclude others from a group.
2. Most differences among human groups result from cultural learning or
environmental causes.
e. Institutional networks: formal organizations in societies that structure activities for large numbers of people.
1. Institutional networks include government, educational systems, religious organizations, and professional and social organizations.
2. Religion binds people to one another and helps maintain cultural bonds.
a. In Christianity and Judaism, people belong to a particular church or
synagogue.
b. Hindus do not belong to one temple but may visit any one of the many
throughout India.
f. Interpersonal communication patterns: the face-to-face verbal and nonverbal coding systems used to convey meanings and intentions.
1. Interpersonal communication patterns provide the common cultural categories used to sort perceptions, objects, and ideas.
2 They are the means through which cultures transmit beliefs and practices.
3. Cultures assign and organize importance to their interpersonal communication patterns.
2. The Interrelatedness of Cultural Forces
a. Each cultural force works in conjunction with and is influenced by the others.
b. Changes in a culture's institutions or traditions can lead to behavioral changes among a culture's members.
1. For example, the cultural practice in 19th Century Ireland of women waiting until the age of 30 to marry is a result of several interrelated forces:
overpopulation, food shortages, and a ban on artificial means of birth control imposed by the Catholic Church.
2. As an alternative example, an early marriage age in india resulted from a different set of interrelated forces: a short life expectancy and high infant mortality rates.
c. Cultural adaptations and accommodations are rarely made consciously.
d. The interrelationship of cultural forces explains why Europeans conquered the Americas, rather than the other way around.
1. Europeans had two initial ecological advantages: the availability of a large number of domesticable plants and animals, and an east-west axis.
2. These initial advantages led to complex institutional networks, technological advantages, and a biological resistance to certain infectious diseases.
II. Intercultural Communication
B. Similarities and differences between communicators
1. What differences among groups of people constitute cultural differences?
2. How extensive are those differences?
3. How does extended communication change the effects of cultural differences?
C. Dissimilar interpretations and expectations about how to communicate competently.
D. Intercultural communication and related terms
1. Intracultural communication
a. Intercultural communication refers to interactions between people who do not share the same value orientations, communication codes, or role expectations.
b. Intracultural communication refers to interactions between people who share these attributes and are therefore culturally similar.
2. Interethnic and interracial communication
a. These terms usually refer to communication between members of different racial or ethnic groups who live in the same nation-state.
b. In this text these terms are categorized as subsets of intercultural communication.
3. Cross-cultural communication
a. Cross-cultural communication involves a comparison of intracultural interactions among people from different cultures.
b. Intercultural communication involves interactions among people from different cultures.
4. International communication differs from intercultural communication in that the former refers to interactions among people from different nations.