INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION IN CONTEXTS

INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION IN CONTEXTS

1. Foundation of intercultural comunication.

   • Culture, communication, context and power.
     • CULTURE
       • Learned patterns of behavior and attitudes shared by a group of people.
         • Can be viewed as:
           • Social Science Definitions
             • Culture as Learned, Group-Related Perceptions.
               • Culture becomes a collective experience.
                 • Because
                   • it is shared with people who live in and experience the same social environments.
             • The cultural patterns of thought and meaning.
               • Influence
                 • Our perceptual processes, which, in turn, influence our behavior.
           • Interpretive Definitions:
             • Culture as contextual sy.mbolic patterns of meaning, Involving emotions
               • Ethnography of communication
                 • Analyze verbal and nonverbal activities that have symbolic signifi cance for the members of cultural groups to understand the rules and patterns followed by the groups.
                   • THE PATTERNS
                     • Must endure over time, passed along from person to person.
               • Symbolic significance
                 • To qualify as a cultural pattern, the activity must have the same symbolic significance for all members of the group.
               • Embodied ethnocentrism
                 • Feeling comfortable and familiar in the spaces, behaviors, and actions of others in our own cultural surrounding
           • Critical Definitions:
             • Culture is heterogeneous, dynamic, and a site of contestation.
     • COMMUNICATION
       • Can be viewed as
         • Components of speaker, sender, receiver, message and channel, and variables
         • Symbolic and processual
         • Involving power dynamics
     • The relationship between culture and communication is complex:
       • THE POWDER
         • Is pervasive and plays an enormous, although often hidden, role in intercultural interactions.
       • THE CONTEXT
         • influences communication: It is the physical and social setting in which communication occurs or the larger political, social, and historical environment.
       • THE COMMUNICATION
         • is a way of contesting and resisting the dominant culture.