Intercultural Communication

7. cultural display rules

Cultural Display Rules: procedures we learn for managing the way we express our emotions; the rules tell us when it is or is not acceptable to express our emotions

5. Verbal styles: direct/indirect, self-enhancement/self-humbling

Direct Style: statements tend to reveal the speaker's intentions with clarity and are enunciated with a forthright tone of voice Indirect Style: statements tend to camouflage the speaker's actual intentions and are carried out with a softer tone Self-Enhancement Style: emphasizes the importance of drawing attention to or exaggerating one's credentials, outstanding accomplishments, and special abilities Self-humbling Style: emphasizes the importance of downplaying oneself via modest talk, restraint, hesitation, and the use of self-deprecation message concerning one's performance or effort

intergroup attribution biases

Fundamental Attribution error: with competitors or strangers, we tend to engage in negative attributions by overestimating negative personality factors in explaining a stranger's negative event and underestimating situational factors Principle of negativity: we typically place more emphasis on negative information concerning our competitors or outgroup members → bad news catches our eye more than good, and we often fall back on negative stereotypes when interacting with outgroup members Favorable Self-Bias and Other-Derogation Principle: arises from positive events concerning our own behavior versus as stranger's behavior Self-effacement bias: attributional explanation of individuals to use self-humbling or self-modesty interpretation to explain the failed events caused by their lack of ability or oversight

Haptics

Haptics: examines perceptions and meanings of touch behavior i. High-contact cultures: often look each other in the eye directly, face each other touch and/or kiss each other, and speak in rather loud voices 1. Latin Americans, Italians, Russians ii. Low-contact cultures: often engage in little if any touching preferring indirect eye gazes and speaking in a lower tone 1. Asians iii. Moderate-contact culture: blend of both 1. US, Canada, Australia

4. High-context and low-context communication characteristics

High-context communication emphasizes on how intention or meaning can best be conveyed through the embedded contexts (e.g., social roles or positions, relationship types, intergroup history) and the nonverbal channels (e.g., pauses, silences, tone of voice) of the verbal message. Low-context communication emphasizes on how intention or meaning is expressed through explicit verbal messages. LCC refers to communication patterns of direct, matter of fact tone, transparency, assertiveness, and sender oriented values such as the sender assuming the responsibility to communicate clearly. The value priority in the LCC style is "say what you mean, mean what you say" as the mode of respect for verbal honesty and personal accountability. In comparison, high-context communication refers to communication patterns of indirect, tactful nonverbal tone, diplomatic talk, self-humbling speech, and receiver sensitive values, such as the interpreter of the message assuming the responsibility to infer the hidden or contextual meanings of the message.

4. flexible/inflexible stereotyping

Inflexible (mindless) stereotyping: holds on to preconceived and negative stereotypes by operating on automatic pilot. We use rigid language labels to type cast a wide range of individuals that fit the label. We dismiss information and evidence that is more favorable to the outgroup, and we presume one member's behavior represents all members' behaviors and norms. Flexible (mindful) stereotyping: to be more flexible in our preconceived notion of unfamiliar others, we need to be mindfully minding our mind as we form our stereotypes of outgroup members. We must recognize that we often form stereotypes of others based on the three reactive process of human perception (selective attention, organization/labeling, and interpretation). We must treat our language labels or interpretation as the first best guesses. We should engage in open-ended interpretive process vs. premature, closure process. Refraining from typecasting an entire group, using loose, descriptive categories rather than polarized, evaluative categories.

5. cultural differences in the use of nonverbal communication: monochromic vs. polychromic, high/moderate/low contact culture, etc.

Monochromic-time (MT): pay close attention to clock time and do one thing at a time; people use time in a linear way, employing segments to break up time into scheduled and divided allotments so a person can concentrate on one thing at a time Polychromic-time (PT): pay attention to relational time (involvement with people) and place more emphasis on completing human transactions than on holding to schedules High/moderate/low contact culture??

2. nature of nonverbal communication

Nonlinguistic cues: nonverbal eye contact, smiles, touch, hand gestures, or even silence Paralinguistic cues: tone of voice, pitch, or volume of the sounds that accompany a verbal message Multiple channels: how the meaning of nonverbal messages can be simultaneously signaled and interpreted through various outlets such as facial expressions, body movements, voice characteristics, hand gestures, spatial relationships, and the temporal and physical environment in which people are communicating Sociocultural setting: emphasizes the importance of how cultural norms and expectations shape the standards by which we evaluate nonverbal appropriateness or inappropriateness in a particular cultural situation

1. definition of nonverbal communication

Nonverbal communication is the message exchange process involving the use of nonlinguistic and paralinguistic cues that are expressed through multiple communication channels in a particular sociocultural setting.

Paralanguage

Paralanguage: sounds and tones we use in conversation and the speech behavior that accompanies the message; it is how something`g is said, not what is said i. Paralinguistic Features: nonword sounds and characteristics of speech 1. Accent: how your words are pronounced together 2. Pitch range: your range of tone from high to low 3. Pitch intensity: how high or low your voice carries 4. Volume: how loudly or softly you speak 5. Articulation: if your mouth, tongue, and teeth coordinate to speak precisely or to slur your words 6. Rate: the speed of sound or how quickly or slowly you speak

1. perception process

Perception: process of selecting cues quickly from the environment, organizing them into a coherent pattern and labeling such a pattern, and interpreting that pattern in accordance to our expectation. i. Selective Attention Process: we pick out cues quickly from our cultural landscape; we pay more attention to the cues that match our own salient identities (e.g., same age group), cues that are distinctive from the group (e.g., different skin color) and cues that serve our interaction expectations or goals (e.g., shaking hands greeting ritual) ii. Selective Organization and Labeling Process: our culture and the language we speak guide us to aspects of our environment that we consider relevant; we organize our perceptions by grouping similar objects, people, or things together and labeling them with a symbol or name. iii. Selective Interpretation: interpretation allows us to attach meaning to the data we receive, and this includes our expectations. Expectations involve what we anticipate and predict about how others will communicate with us during an interaction → expectations are filters of our perceptions of others.

pragmatic rules

Pragmatic rules: pragmatics refers to the contextual rules that govern language usage in a particular culture. Pragmatics concerns the rules of "how to say what to whom and under what situational conditions."

6. How silence is interpreted and evaluated in different cultures

Silence is interpreted and evaluated in cultures differently. In Native American or Asian communication patterns, silence, or ma, reflects the inner pausing of the speaker's thoughts. In members of the Apache, Navajo, and Papago Indian tribes, silence is appropriate in contexts where social relations between individuals are unpredictable, role expectations are unclear, and relations involve high levels of ambiguity. European American styles use talk to "break the ice" and reserve silence for your most intimate relationships.

language functions

The cultural worldview function: To understand language in context, we must understand the fundamental worldview that drives particular language reasoning processes in particular situations. Worldview refers to our larger philosophical outlook or ways of perceiving the world and how this outlook in turn affects our thinking and reasoning patterns. The everyday social reality function: everyday language serves as a prism or mirror through which individuals emphasize important vs unimportant events out there or interesting vs uninteresting values priorities in a cultural speech community. The cognitive shaping function: language also serves as a strong filter between what we think and how our thinking pattern is shaped by the grammatical structure of our language system. The group membership identity function: language represents a rallying point for evoking group sentiment and shared identity. Language serves the larger cultural-ethnic identity function because it is an emblem of group solidarity. The social change function: we are the creators of the social tool of human language. We are also at times trapped by the habits of our own linguistic system.

7. Guidelines for communicating with individuals with a different language/communication style

Understand languaculture (languaculture: emphasizes the necessary interdependent tie between language and culture) Practice verbal tracking; pay close attention to the content meaning of the message. Practice verbal patience; use verbal empathy and patience for nonnative speakers from a different culture. Pay attention to nonverbal tone of voice; the tone of voice often expresses relational and identity meaning of your verbal content message. Use multiple modes of presentation. Master the cultural pragmatic rules. Understand the basic differences of low-context and high-context communication patterns. Practice verbal code-switching mindfully.

Feature of Language

1. arbitrariness 2. abstractness 3. meaning-centeredness 4. creativity: 3 features of creativity are productivity, displacement, and metacommunicative feature

Morphological rule

Morphological rule: morphology refers to how combinations of different sounds make up a meaningful word or part of a word.

Semantic rules

Semantic rules: semantics concerns the features of meaning we attach to words. Words themselves do not have self-evident meanings. It is people within a cultural language community who consensually establish shared meanings for specific words and phrases. We must understand three affective (or connotative) features of meaning: the evaluative feature (i.e., good—bad), the potency feature (i.e., strong—weak), and the activity feature (i.e., fast—slow)

syntactic rule

Syntactic rule: syntactics refers to how words are sequenced together in accordance with the grammatical practices of the linguistic community. The order of the words helps to establish the meaning of an utterance. It is also reflective of the cultural notions of causality and order.

multiple rules patterns

all languages are construct with words or symbols that are arranged in patterned ways, that is, they are rule governed.

2. compare and contrast ethnocentric state and ethnorelative state;Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity

ethnocentric is closed minded ethnorelative is open minded

Gestures: culturally specific and significant forms of nonverbal communication

i. Emblems: gestures that substitute for words and phrases 1. Shrug your shoulders to say "I don't know" ii. Illustrators: nonverbal hand gestures that we use along with the spoken message—they literally illustrate the verbal message 1. Making a heart with your fingers when describing the shape of a heart iii. Regulators: nonverbal behaviors we use in conversation to control, maintain, or "regulate" the pace and flow of the conversation 1. Nodding, maintaining eye contact, paralinguistic sounds (mmhmm, really, no kidding!) iv. Adaptors: habits or gestures that fulfill some kind of psychological or physical need 1. Covering your mouth when you cough or laugh 2. Most adaptors are not intended to communicate a message

4. forms of nonverbal communication (kinesics, proxemics, haptics, etc.) PHYSICAL APPEARANCE

i. Include body type, height, weight, hair, skin color, appearance, clothing, and artifacts (ornaments or adornments we use to communicate just by wearing the actual item) 1. Nonverbal cues can provide clues for us to determine the specific time in history 2. These cues serve as identity markers of the individual and also the practices of the larger culture 3. Artifacts can also place a person in a particular status or class 4. Adornment features reflect complex cultural and personal identities 5. Impression management; as we become an international community, the need to look global has some interesting implications

Facial Expressions

i. Kinesics: study of posture, body movement, gestures, and facial expression ii. SADFISH: Sadness, Anger, Disgust, Fear, Interest, Surprise, and Happiness iii. Cultural Display Rules: procedures we learn for managing the way we express our emotions; the rules tell us when it is or is not acceptable to express our emotions

Phonological rules

phonology refers to the different accepted procedures for combining phonemes. Phonemes are the smallest sound units of a word. Everyone who communicates speaks with an accent because accent means the inflection or tone of voice that is taken to the characteristic of an individual.