Adaptation and Competence

Adaptation and Competence

1. different domains of adjustment

   • areas of demand
   • Psychological adjustment (well being/ emotional satisfaction)
   • Sociocultural adjustment: ability to fit in and get tasks done)
   • Cross Cultural adaptation: ability to negotiate the culture and accomplish tasks to fit in.
     • Stable and functional relationships
     • some degree of the host culture
   • Cross cultural adjustment: one's cping or psychological health when moving to new culture
   • both parties adapt to each other
   • Critique of western theories: focus on individual, independence, reason and self-enhancement

2. Acculturation

   • Not straightforward adaptation
   • Integration/ biculturalism: fully embrace and identify with both cultures
     • deliberately resisting new culture and maintain elements of old
   • Not based solely on individual's adjustment
     • Majority people accept or expect integration of minority
     • attitude of majority towards minority/strangers
   • Segregation: separate them intentionally'unintentionally
   • Multiculturalism: maintain both group and new culture identities
   • Melting Pot (assimilation model): expect people to lose their own cultural identity and become mainstream
   • Exclusion: negate their existence/ have no relations with them
   • Cultural pluralism: members of co-cultural groups should embrace their own culture
   • Selective adaptation: acceptance of some elements of the dominant culture but not others
   • Diaspora: group from specific homeland is pread out across a wide geographic area
   • Hybridity: diasporic groups rub together against local cultures (cultural blends)
     • Have different types of power
     • Dominant culture pics terms that benefit them
   • Cultural adjustment can be predictable or negotiated through communication and power relations with dominant cultures

3. Returning Home

   • Return cultural adjustment: adjusting to one's culture psychologically and behaviourally
     • Partial re-acculturation
     • Psychlogical adjustment
   • Process And Nature of Return Cultural Adjustment
     • W-curve of return adjustment
     • Change in relationships
     • Unrealistic expectations and disillusionment
       • ambivalent, critical of own home culture
     • Lack of appreciation
   • Making it Easier
     • Cultural preparation
       • Communication in new culture
       • interacting with host nationals
       • Open-minded, adventurous, patient, realistic expectations
     • Suspend judgement on unfamiliar things
     • accept need to retreat from time to time
     • talk to people in host culture about misunderstandings
     • Needs of partners and children
       • Aspects of adjustment= spouse's expectations and adaptation
     • Adjustment varies
       • Contact with home
       • Mediating person: help people understand different cultures
     • Alienated approach
       • Missing abroad culture
       • being critical and bitter about home culture
     • Resocialized approach: quickly shed abroad culture and re-adapt
     • Proactive Approach: sees the good in home and host cultures

4. Intercultural Communication Competence

   • Understanding
     • 5 aspects of effectiveness
       • Communicate interpersonally
       • Adjust to differet cutures
       • deal with different societal systems
       • establish interpersonal relationships
       • understand others
     • Competence
       • one's culture specific understanding
       • culture general understanding and positive feeling for the other culture
     • Skills and attitude x intercultural competence and effectiveness
       • Charisma, flexibility, empathy, non-enthocentrism, person-ability strength, opimism, self-efficacy, facilitate communication
       • Communication effectiveness: accomplish tasks (achievement of interaction goals)
       • Communication competence: effective + appropriateness to the rules of he situation
       • Intercultural Communication Competence
         • motivation
         • knowledge of how to communicate well/ task specific details
         • skills of knowing how to gain knowledge of the other culture, episodes and relationships
     • social, linguistic, communicative and relational competence
     • Guo Ming Chen and William Starosta Model
       • 1. Affective Dimension: intercultural sensitivity, focuses on emotions and feelings
       • 2. Behavioural/ Skill dimension: task accomplishments in intercultural situations
       • 3. Cognitive/ knowledge dimension: intercultural sensitivity, deals with awareness of difference
     • Multicultural person: serve as a catalyst for dislogue between cultures
       • move easily between cultures
       • 'lives on the boundary'
       • Never fully belong to one culture
     • Intercultural transformation: learn new ways of thinking, feeling and behaving
       • wide range of intercultural experince
     • Return from travel as more complex, broad minded and effective individuals
   • Going beyond
     • variables can be more or less important depending on culture/mission
       • structural and cultural factors
       • disposition
       • environment
     • Women spoke of identities in relation to context of being included or excluded (race, religion, ethnicity and gender)
     • travelers need to find their own sense of rootedness/ home to help them sustain difficulties
     • Being multicultural might leave us with a sense of void in our identity

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