COMM 335- Lecture 1: Chapter 1 Imperatives for studying 08/26/2026

Ethnocentrism definition and example

the center of your world is your ethnicity (your ethnicity is better than others)

Ex: using paper to use the restroom vs. bidet

Anglo centrism definition and example

british or white thought first, whatever you think is white is better

Ex: Turkey for thanksgiving vs. Ham

• Anglo saxon, white individuals

• British mentality

Demographics definition and example

things you can check of on a census

Ex: Aggie, age, male, female (I am…)

Heterogenous definition and example

cultural is very different (dissimilar)

Ex: China (most)

Homogeneous definition and example

very similar

Ex: Japan

Nativist definition

your land is the best

Self reflexivity and definition and example

reflect on an experience to understand yourself better, part of self awareness

Ex: laundry at a laundry mat, privileged to have access to water from sink, in another place they must use bottled water

Imperative: Self Awareness

• You don’t know who you are until you who know who you are not

• Realize own cultural biases

• Familiar with own cultural practices

• Understand own ethnocentrism

- Realize what you do differently and you can see which beliefs are ethnocentrist.

 

Imperative: Demographic and Demographic Changes

• Changing Society = Changing Rules

• Changing Rules = Intercultural Conflict

- A&M used to be a male military school, now it’s not

- As more people enter our state, things change

- As demographics change we must be aware of how to deal with it

In Texas there is no official language, there are both signs in english and spanish because of demographic change, in france its french and in colorado it is in english because that is the official language

- US census in 2017, in 2050 there will be 49% of hispanics compared to 70%, demographics will change

Imperative: Economic

• The Global Village

• Global markets

• Globalization

- Describes how electronic media have effectively shrunk our world into a single, interconnected tribe

- Marshall McLuhan was writing about the local village, and the academics were writing about globalization, they saw it as a benefit, as a positive thing

- OUR generation no longer sees globalization as a positive thing

Prior to the 700s A.D.

- Used to be seen as a good things, my generation not so much

Global Village Definition

Describes how electronic media have effectively shrunk our world into a single, interconnected tribe

Tribal cultures definition and notes

 Definition: Societies characterized by close knit communities with shared beliefs, values often through oral tradition

- Ex: Pre 900 AD in Europe; indigenous communities

Impact of media: face to face communication creates close communities and requires repetition, additive, nature, and strong dedication to memory

• Communicated in a tribal meeting like around a campfire

• Impact: Traditional storytelling is very additive in nature because there's no book for us to go back and see how things connected (and, and, and)

• Memorization was extremely important, additive nature was extremely important, and the way we communicated was face to face 

• No states, just tribes

Scribal cultures definition and notes

Definition: Societies where written communication becomes the primary medium of recording and transmitting information. This period is characterized as using manuscripts and other written documents.

- Monks created scribal culture and the Bible

- Examples: 900 AD -  1440s in Europe

- The elite and extremely wealthy started to read and write and produced the Bible

- Impact of media: Written communication became associated with power and status, often limited to the clergy, nobility, and elite scholars

- Churches are starting to become huge, in the Church there is a priest in pig latin, get the tale of King Arthur, oral story in the 700s, scribal in the 900s

- Lasted until the 1400s

Detribal cultures definition and notes

Definition: Societies that have moved away from tribal connections, characterized by individualism and urban, but fragmented communities.

- Ex: Urbanization, industrialization

- Impact of media: Print communication creates disconnection and isolation despite physical proximity or distance

- Middle class is formed because you can take notes of when somebody sold or bought something from you

- Prior to the printing press, if you wanted to stay over you just need to feed the chickens and get eggs, but now you have a record (you must pay me now)

- Nations are formed because prior to the printing phone it was like the game of telephone, but now you can create laws, print it and mail it out and we can read the exact same laws

- United States and other states weren’t formed until detribalized culture

- Delete the tribe

- People started to read and write for themselves

- In the 1440s with the invention of the printing press, 1442 started and by 146o its all over europe

- Miguel de Cervantes decided to write his bastardized version of Latin down on a a book because if anything written is true then King Arhtur is true so a guy named Alonso Ichano believes that the stories of King Arthur are true so he made Don Quixote and created Lingua Serentina which created the Spanish language because that was the first time that version of Latin was written down in a way that was pass produced

- Bible is the most published book in the world

- Don Quixote is the second most, is a response to the printing press

- Martin Luther read the Bible for himself, and he nails some pieces on the door in Germany, creating the Protestant religion

- The Protestant religion cannot happen or exist without the invention of a detribalized culture, still today most Catholics have one Bible leper house with the family member, mom, or dad, or priest reading the Bibles to the kids

- In Protestant houses, each individual has their own Bible to read for themselves

Retribal cultures definition and notes

Definition: The reformation of tribal like communities through electronic media, forming new, global tribes based on shared interests

- Reunite the tribe

- The ability to communicate instantaneously like from Texas to Spain in seconds

- The ability to communicate and make the world smaller through technology which is the Global Village 

- All of the above will come together and let us go back to a tribe

- Ex: Online gaming communities, fandoms, social media groups

- Impact of media: 

- World would become smaller like we were a tribe

Key Terms:

- Instantaneous communication

- Interconnectedness- can pull up phone and see every room in the house and someone else can do that

- Cultural exchange- get to travel a lot because of new technology, can talk to someone in Mexico by face time

- Compression of space and time- it used to take 40 to 90 days to get mail from Spain to the New World, now it is delivered instantaneously, time and space has shrunk, it used to take months to sail across the ocean and now it takes about seven hours

- Tribalization(returning into a tribe) and retribalization (the world is getting smaller so we are interconnected)

- Sees globalization as a good thing, people won’t be oppressed (Hitler won’t rise to power because the rest of the world would see it immediately and stop that)

Issues of globalization: immigration, misinformation (seeing only one side of the world), imperialistic mindset of the US is spreading worldwide and the smaller cultures are losing aspects of their culture, for instance in the Czech Republic almost every person will ask you why learn czech if everyone here speaks english anyway (erasure of smaller cultures)

- Economic reason: the world is interconnected, in Ecuador, Panama and the US use the U.S. dollar, in Ecuador they have coins that aren’t used in the U.S. but it has george washington and harrison’s face on it

- The biggest problem for the European Union is with new states joining is how it’s going to impact their economy and their euros, like when Greece joined it devalued the euro for a moment

Imperative: Technological

The reformation of tribal like communities through electronic media, forming new, global tribes based on shared interests

- Reunite the tribe

- The ability to communicate instantaneously like from Texas to Spain in seconds

- The ability to communicate and make the world smaller through technology which is the Global Village 

- All of the above will come together and let us go back to a tribe

- Ex: Online gaming communities, fandoms, social media groups

- Impact of media: 

- World would become smaller like we were a tribe

Key Terms:

- Instantaneous communication

- Interconnectedness- can pull up phone and see every room in the house and someone else can do that

- Cultural exchange- get to travel a lot because of new technology, can talk to someone in Mexico by face time

- Compression of space and time- it used to take 40 to 90 days to get mail from Spain to the New World, now it is delivered instantaneously, time and space has shrunk, it used to take months to sail across the ocean and now it takes about seven hours

- Tribalization(returning into a tribe) and retribalization (the world is getting smaller so we are interconnected)

- Sees globalization as a good thing, people won’t be oppressed (Hitler won’t rise to ower because the rest of the world would see it immediately and stop that)

Issues of globalization: immigration, misinformation (seeing only one side of the world), imperialistic mindset of the US is spreading worldwide and the smaller cultures are losing aspects of their culture, for instance in the Czech Republic almost every person will ask you why learn czech if everyone here speaks english anyway (erasure of smaller cultures)

- Economic reason: the world is interconnected, in Ecuador, Panama and the US use the U.S. dollar, in Ecuador they have coins that aren’t used in the U.S. but it has george washington and harrison’s face on it

- The biggest problem for the European Union is with new states joining is how it’s going to impact their economy and their euros, like when Greece joined it devalued the euro for a moment

Imperative: Peace and UN

• Misunderstandings = Conflict

• Work through intercultural differences

- US: direct, discussion style

- Middle East: indirect, expressive

- The United Nations is an intergovernmental organization tasked with maintaining international peace and security, developing friendly relations among nations, achieving international co operation, and being a center for harmonizing the actions of nations.

- The more we understand others, the more likely  we won’t run into needless conflict

- The US is a discussion based society so we can be direct (not talking about who is doing the dishes so it creates conflict, but if direct about conflict, she did it)

- The Middle east is indirect with their anger, conflict and are expressive (show passion on how upset they are)

- Learn how different cultures deal with conflict and that can create peace (no passion from a leader, people didn’t believe him and he got flown out)

- Test question: They are trying to maintain international peace by harmonizing intercultural action

Imperative: Ethical

• The principles of conduct that govern the behavior of a group

• What is good? What is bad?
  - We should try not judge others based on or own ethical guidelines but on the cultural others guidelines (sir can be offensive, but you can understand why they use it in the south)