Cross-cultural communication
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Categories: Articles with limited geographic scope | USA-centric | Cultural anthropology | Cultural studies | Human communication
Cross-cultural communication (also frequently referred to as intercultural communication) is a field of study that looks at how people from differing cultural backgrounds endeavour to communicate.
Origins of the disciplineThe application of cross-cultural communication studies began post World War II. Its use was originally found within businesses and the government both seeking to expand globally. Businesses began to offer language training to their employees. Businesses found that their employees were ill equipped for overseas work in the globalizing market. Programs developed to train employees to understand how to act when abroad. Current cross-cultural training in businesses does not only focus on language training but also includes focus on culture training. With this also came the development of the Foreign Service Institute, or FSI, through the Foreign Service Act of 1946. Interdisciplinary orientationCross-cultural communication tries to bring together such relatively unrelated areas as cultural anthropology and established areas of communication. Its core is to establish and understand how people from different cultures communicate with each other. Its charge is to also produce some guidelines with which people from different cultures can better communicate with each other. For example, how does a person from China communicate with a person from America? Furthermore, what underlying mental constructs appear from both parties that allows for constructive communication? Cross-cultural communication, as in many scholarly fields, is a combination of many other fields. These fields include anthropology, cultural studies, psychology and communication. The field has also moved both toward the treatment of interethnic relations, and toward the study of communication strategies used by co-cultural populations, i.e., communication strategies used to deal with majority or mainstream populations. The introduction of power as a cultural communication variable leads to a body of critical scholarship (e.g., Molefi Kete Asante, Mark P. Orbe, and Ronald L. Jackson II). Global rise of cross-cultural communication studiesWhile the study of cross-cultural communication is a long established field in the US, it is fast becoming a global research area. As a result, cultural differences in the study of cross-cultural communication can already be found. For example, cross-cultural communication is generally considered to fall within the larger field of communication studies in the US, but it is emerging as a sub-field of applied linguistics in the UK. As the application of cross-cultural communication theory to foreign language education is increasingly appreciated around the world, cross-cultural communication classes can be found within foreign language departments of some universities, while other schools are placing cross-cultural communication programs in their departments of education. TheoriesThe main theories for cross-cultural communication are based on the work done looking at value differences (or Cultural dimensions) among cultures, especially the works of Edward T. Hall, Geert Hofstede, Mary Jane Collier, Harry C. Triandis, Fons Trompenaars and more recently Shalom Schwartz. Clifford Geertz was also a major contributor to this field. The first Ph.D. in intercultural communication was awarded to William J. Starosta (Indiana University, 1973), who became the founding editor of the Howard Journal of Communications. Richard D. Lewis, creator of the Lewis model for the categorization of cultures; and author of When Cultures Collide has captured the rising influence of culture and the seismic changes throughout many regions of the world. Cross-cultural expert and international businessman, Richard D. Lewis has significantly broadened the scope of his seminal work on global business and communication. These theories have been applied to a variety of different communication theories and settings, including general business and management (Fons Trompenaars and Charles Hampden-Turner) and marketing (Marieke de Mooij, Stephan Dahl). There have also been several successful educational projects which concentrate on the practical applications of these theories in cross-cultural situations. Notably the European-funded research project media-net-works which illustrates ways in which virtual communities can be established to achieve an understanding of how people from different cultures communicate with each other. These theories have also been criticised mainly by management scholars (e.g. Holden, Nigel) for being based on the culture concept derived from 19th century cultural anthropology and emphasising on culture-as-difference and culture-as-essence. Another criticism has been the uncritical way Hofstede’s dimensions are served up in textbooks as facts. There is a move to focus on 'cross-cultural interdependence' instead of the tradititional views of comparative differences and similarities between cultures. Cross-cultural management is increasingly seen as a form of knowledge management. Psychological Applications of Multicultural CommunicationsPsychological applications of cross cultural / multicultural communications work on the primes that all human beings essentially communicate on similar definable levels, and these definitions can be predictable and applied to cultivate a “Borderless Communication Foundation”. William Ury of the University of Colorado uses what he calls “Conflict Research” to apply a series of anti-conflict strategies. Lily Lau of Culture Dynamics in Malaysia, “Directive Communication Psychology” to cultivate cooperative multicultural cultures in organisations, and Katinka Bayrish from the Centre for European Reform, applies her version of the psychological effects Economic Dependencies on multiple cultures. Theorists
See also
Further Reading
Carbaugh, Donal. (2005). "Cultures in Conversation." Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Organizations
Free online journals
External links
es:Comunicación intercultural id:Komunikasi antarbudaya lb:Interkulturell Kommunikatioun hu:Kultúraközi kommunikáció pl:Komunikacja międzykulturowa |
