Intercultural communication

Four Components of Individual Competence (Social Scientific Perspective)

1) Motivation- 3 reasons for the lack of motivation. 2) Knowledge- Self, other, linguistic 3) Attitudes- Tolerance of ambiguity, empathy, nonjudgementlism (d.i.e exercise) 4) Behavior and skills- 4 levels of intercultural communication competence

Three Reasons for the lack of Motivation

1) members of less powerful groups have a stronger incentive to learn about more powerful groups than the reverse. 2) Anxiety, uncertainty, and fear can also be disincentives to intercultural communication. 3) motivation is lacking in contexts in which historical events or political circumstances have resulted in communication breakdown.

Facework

Communication strategies used to "save" our own or someone else's "face, "or public image.

Culture Shock & Reverse Culture Shock

Culture shock: A relatively short-term feeling of disorientation and discomfort due to the lack of familiar cues in the environment. Reverse culture shock: Process of readapting to oneʻs home culture .

Four Conflict Styles

Discussion style- combines the direct and emotional restrained approaches to conflict. Engagement style- combines the direct and emotional expressive approaches to conflict. Accommodation style- combines the indirect and emotional restrained manner. Dynamic style- combines the indirect and emotional expressive approaches to conflict.

Media Imperialism

Domination or control through media.

Electronic Colonialism

Domination or exploitation utilizing technological forms.

Cultural Imperialism

Domination through the spread of cultural products.

Flight & Fight Approaches

Flight approach: A strategy to cope with a new situation, being hesitant or withdrawn from the new environment. Fight approach: A trial-and-error approach to coping with a new situation.

Culture Industries

Industries that produce and sell popular culture as commodities.

Line of sight data

Information about other peopleʻs identity based upon visible physical characteristics.

Intermediary & Meditation

Intermediary- in a formal setting, a professional third party, such as a lawyer, real estates agent, or counselor, who intervenes when two parties are in conflict. Informal intermediaries may be friends or colleagues who intervene. Meditation- the act of resolving conflict by having someone intervene between two parties.

Linguistic Knowledge

Knowledge of other languages besides ones native language or of the difficulty of the difficulty of learning a second or third language.

Self-Knowledge & Other Knowledge

Knowledge: As an individual component of intercultural component of intercultural communication competence the quality of knowing about oneself, others, and various aspects of communication Self-Knowledge: quality of how one is perceived as a communicator, as well as one's strengths and weaknesses Other Knowledge: Knowledge about how people from other cultures think and behave that will also help you be more effective communicator

Refugees

Long-Term- people who are forced to relocate permanently because of war, famine, and oppression. Short-Term- people who are forced for a short time to move from their region or country.

Pacificism

Opposition to the use of force under any circumstances.

Social Movement

Organized activities in which individuals work together to bring about social change, often use confrontation as a strategy to highlight the injustices of the present system. Ex. Women's suffrage movement, racism, sexism, and homophobia, animal rights, environment, free speech, and civil rights

Encoding/ Decoding Model (Stuart Hall)

Hall is careful to place meaning at several stages in the communication process, so that it is never fixed but is always being constructed within various contexts. Encoding: The process of creating a message for others to understand. Decoding: The process of interpreting a message.

Cognitive Consistency

Having a logical connection between existing knowledge and a new stimulus.

Six Western Conflict Myths (David Augsburger)

1. People and problems can be separated cleanly; interests and positions can be distinguished sharply 2. Open self-disclosure is a positive value in negotiations. AN open process of public data shared in candid style is assumed necessary for trust 3. Immediacy, directness, decisiveness, and haste are preferred strategies in timing 4. Language employed should be reasonable, rational, and responsible 5. No is no and yes is yes (an affirmation is absolute, a negation final) 6. When an agreement is reached, implementation will take care of itself as a logical consequence

Seven Suggestions for Dealing with Conflict

1. Stay centered and do not polarize: More beyond either-or thinking, be open to a third alternative perspective 2. Maintain contact: Attempt to dialogue, speak and be understood, rather than isolate themselves 3. Recognize the existence of different styles:Reconcile the different management styles, "maintain civility" and be polite, respectable, and avoid direct confrontation 4. Identify your preferred style:Although people change their way of dealing with conflict based on the situation and type of conflict, but tend to use the same style 5. Be creative and expand your style repertoire: When a particular way of dealing with conflict is not working, be willing to try a different style 6. Recognize the importance of conflict context: Understand the contexts that frame the conflict, it will be better to conceive the possibilities for resolution. 7. Be willing to forgive: Letting go - not forgetting - feelings of revenge, forgiveness is a human's basic instinct

The Chinese Concept of guanxi

A Chinese term for relational network. "Relationships of social connection built on shared identities such as native place, kinship, or attending the same school." Being able to get something done through connections, is seen as very positive and are purposefully cultivated. It is not the same thing as friendship, but rather, guanxi provides a foundation to building close relationships filled with obligation that can turn into friendship.

Diaspora

A massive migration often caused by war, famine,or persecution that result in the dispersal of a unified group.

Popular Culture

A new name for law culture, referring to those cultural products that most people share and know about, including television, music, videos, and popular magazines.

Apartheid

A policy that segregated people racially in south africa

Similarity Principle

A principle of relational attraction suggests that individuals tend to be attracted to people they perceive to be similar to themselves.

Grand Narrative

A unified history and view of mankind.

Restraint Approach

A view that the best way to deal with conflict is by hiding or suppressing feelings and emotion.

Emotionally Expressive Approach

A view that the best way to deal with conflict is by overt displays of feeling.

Migrant

An individual who leaves the primary cultural context in which he or she was raised and moves to a new cultural context for an extended time.

Absent History

Any part of history that was not recorded or that is missing. Not everything that happened in the past is accessible to us today because only some voices were documented and only some perspectives were recorded.

Social Conflict

Arises from unequal or unjust social relationships Ex. The cause of youth uprising and looting in Europe: hooliganism or religious element?

4 Types of Migrant-Host Relationships

Assimilation- A type of cultural adaptation in which an individual gives up his or her own heritage and adopts the mainstream cultural identity. Separation- a type of cultural adaptation in which an individual retains his or her original culture while interacting minimally with other groups. Separation may be initiated and enforced by the dominant society, in which case it becomes segregation. Segregation- The policy or practice of compelling groups to live apart from each other. Integration- a type of cultural adaptation in which individuals maintain both their original culture and their daily interactions with other groups.

3 Benefits of Intercultural Relationships

1) Acquiring knowledge about the world 2) Breaking stereotypes 3)Acquiring new skills

Immigrants

People who come to a new country, region, or environment to settle more or less permanently

Sojourners

People who move into new cultural contexts for a limited period of time and for a specific purpose, such as for study or business.

Reader Profiles

Portrayals of readership demographics prepared by magazines.

Predictive & Explanatory Uncertainty

Predictive uncertainty: a sense of uncertainty that stems from the inability to predict what someone will say or do. Explanatory uncertainty: In the process of cultural adaptation, uncertainty that stems from the inability to explain why people behave as they do (see cultural adaptation).

Three Outcomes of Adaptation

Psychological health: The state of being emotionally comfortable in a cultural context. Functional fitness: The ability to function in daily life in many different contexts. Intercultural identity: Identity based on two or more cultural frames of reference.

Self-Disclosure

Revealing information about oneself.

Anxiety & Uncertainty Management Model

Stresses that the primary characteristic of relationships in intercultural adaptation is ambiguity. The goal of effective intercultural communication can be reached by reducing anxiety and seeking information, a process known as uncertainty reduction. Anxiety Uncertainty Management theory- The view that the reduction of anxiety and uncertainty theory plays an important role in successful intercultural communication, particularly when experiencing new cultures.

Four Styles of Interaction in Intercultural Couples

Submission style: A style of interaction for an intercultural couple in which one partner yields to the other partnerʻs cultural patterns, abandoning or denying his or her own culture. Compromise style: A style of interaction for an intercultural couple in which both partners give up some part of their own cultural habits and beliefs to minimize cross-cultural differences. Obliteration style: A style of interaction for an intercultural couple in which both partners attempt to erase their individual cultures in dealing with cultural differences. Consensus style: A style of interaction for an intercultural couple in which partners deal with cross-cultural differences by negotiating their relationship

Integrative Model (Young Yun Kim)

Suggests that adaptation is a process of stress, adjustment, and growth. As individuals experience the stress of not fitting in with the environment, the natural response is to seek to adjust. This process of adjustment represents a psychic breakdown of previously held attitudes and behaviors (growth).

Transnationalism

The activity of migrating across the borders of one or more nation-states.

Contact Hypothesis Eight Conditions

The definition for contact Hypothesis-the nation that better communication between groups is facilitated simply by putting people together in the same place and allowing them to interact. 1 )Group members should be of equal status 2)Strong Normative and institutional support 3)Contact between groups should be voluntary 4)Contact should have the potential to extend beyond the immediate situation 5)Programs should maxi cooperation between groups and mini competition. 6)Programs should equalize numbers of groups members 7)Groups member should have similar beliefs 8) programs should promote individual group members

Liminality

The experience of being between two or more cultural positions

Diasporic Histories

The histories of the ways in which international cultural groups were cultural groups were crafted through transnational migration, slavery, religious crusades, or other historical forces

Hidden Histories

The histories that are hidden from or forgotten by the mainstream representations of past events.

Modernist Identity

The identity that is grounded in the western tradition of scientific and political beliefs and assumptions for example, the belief in external reality, democratic representation, liberation,and independent subject.

Postcolonialism (Edward W. Said)

The study of how we might deal with that past and its aftermath, which may include the ongoing use of the colonial language from pg146. The definition- pg 67 an intellectual, political, and cultural movement that calls for colonized states and also liberation from colonialist ways of thinking.

Folk Culture

Traditional and nonmainstream cultural activities that are not financially driven.

U-Curve and W-curve Theories of Adaptation

U-curve: A theory of cultural adaptation positing that migrants go through fairly predictable phases--excitement/anticipation, shock/disorientation, adjustment--in adapting to a new cultural situation. W-curve: A theory of cultural adaptation that suggests that sojourners experience another U-curve upon returning home (see U-curve theory and sojourners).

d.i.e exercise

a device that helps us determine if we are communicating at a descriptive, interpretive statements are non judgemental descriptive- factual information verified through the senses Interpretive- attach meanings to the descriptions Evaluative- clarify how we feel about something

Empathy & Transpection

empathy- the capacity to walk in another person's shoes. Transpection- cross cultural

Nonjudgmentalism

free from evaluating according to one's own cultural frame of reference

Tolerance for Ambiguity

the ease with which an individual copes with situations in which a great deal is unknown