Intercultural communication

Michał Wesołowski

Wrocław, 02/02/2010

INDEX

Introduction; What exactly is the intercultural communication? How we can define it?

Non-verbal communication Stereotypes Own identity The concept of time Taste

Culture:

”

➡ is linked to communication and a wide range of human

experience including feelings, identity and sense-making

➡ provides people with different ways of thinking, seeing,

hearing and interpreting the world;

➡ involves a number of man-made, collective artefacts and is shared by the members of a social group;

➡ is something that shapes one‘s behaviour or structures one′s perception of the world

Culture and communication

t Scout Law”

Culture is often

defined in

interrelation to

Communication

It means that Culture is passed on via communication and

communication reflects one′s culture!

“Culture is

communication

and

communication

is culture”

Intercultural communication

“We may say that intercultural communication is

the communication among those people who

have so different cultural references that they

perceive themselves as pertaining to differnent

cultures.”11Rodrigo Alsina, Miquel: “Comunicación

intercultural”, Anthropos Editorial, Barcelona 1999, p.

12

Non-verbal communication

The shortest way between

two people is a smile

non-verbal language may have the

following basic functions:

1) to communicate attitudes and emotions

2) to support the sense of words

3) substitution of verbal language

Non-verbal communication

It means that

1) to communicate attitudes and emotions

2) to support the sense of words

This may take place in different ways: completing the sense of the words controlling synchronisation

(among the different speakers of a group) producing feed back maintaining the attention

3) to substitute verbal language body language, gestures gaze behaviour ...

Non-verbal language, depending on

authors, makes from 50% to 70% of direct

communication among human beings.

Stereotypes

Stereotypes often reflect the differences in

socioeconomic status, religion or dialect;

➡ It is important to suspend judgement, avoid

misconceptions, narrow perspectives and

immature reactions;

➡ Stereotypes often contain a grain of truth, but

cannot characterize an entire culture;

➡ Getting the whole picture of culture needs

active participation;

Identity

Identity Is the relationship between “the I” and “the other”

there is no identity without the “other”

so: when talking about the own identity, we also have to consider the foreign identity

Two kinds of identity

1. Personal identity:

based on the culture in which we were

socialized

2. Cultural identity

founded on the sense of belonging to a

community with certain characteristics

Two kinds of identity

TIME BEHAVIOUR:

THE CONCEPT OF “TIME”

Monochronic Cultures

•Also called: Rigid-time culture• Do only one thing at the same time•Appointments (time) areinescapable• Punctuality is a norm ofconduct• Time is money

Polychronic Cultures

•Also called: Fluid-time culture• Do several things at the same timetime engagements are more flexible• work is considered lessimportant than being polite, nice, helpful, etc. with other people• Time is an opportunity

Two people, participating is the same task, one monochronic and the other

polychronic: will consider the whole process from very

different points of view will have different objectives will have different priorities

It means that

What we have to take into account… There are no “better” and “worse” tastes There are different culinary customs Each culture establishes its culinary order and

marks food as “eatable” or “uneatable” Each culture marks certain food as

unacceptable

The concept of taste

Food is an element of cultural identification. (We are what we eat.) 9 British call French “frogs” Germans call Italian “Spaghettifresser”

The concept of taste

Spend few minutes at the end of this session answering these three reflective questions:

!What did you learn today?

!Why is that learning important to you?

!How can you make use of that learning tomorrow?

Thanks for your attention!