Analyzing Intercultural Communication

Intercultural Communication

• Culture involves the values, attributes, attitudes, beliefs, orientations, and underlying assumptions prevalent among people in a society (Samovar, Porter & McDaniel, 2009, in Wood, 2012)
• Culture shock is the psychological discomfort you may feel when you attempt to adjust to a new cultural situation (Klyukanov, 2005, in Wood, 2012)
• Culture shock is caused by an absence of shared meaning
• Intercultural communication refers to interactions between people whose assumptions are so different that the communication between them is altered (Samovar, Porter & McDaniel, 2009, in Wood, 2012)
• When we communicate across cultural boundaries, it can lead to misunderstandings that would not commonly occur between people with a similar culture

Dominant Culture

• The attitudes, values, beliefs, and customs that the majority of people in a society hold in common

Co-culture

• Cultural groups whose values, attitudes, beliefs, and customs differ from the dominant culture.

Race

• Biological characteristics such as skin and eye color
• Scientific justifications for such divisions have proven elusive, hair texture, and body shape
• People have experienced the social effects of perceived race

Ethnicity

• Refers to a classification of people based on combinations of shared characteristics such as nationality, geographic origin, language, religion, ancestral customs, and traditions

• People vary greatly in the importance they attach to their ethnic heritage and the degree to which it affects their attitudes, values, and behavior.

• Language and mother tongue is an obvious influence of ethnicity on communication

Gender

• Traditional thinking about men’s and women’s co-culture

• Part of what men and women learn from their co-culture is expectations of how they are to behave and communicate

• Women’s co-culture values the nurturing role, so women who identify with the feminine co-culture tend to speak more about their personal relationships, more easily describe feelings and more likely to include others in the conversation

• Men who identify with the masculine co-cultural norms may focus more on tasks or outcomes when they communicate

Religion

• A system of beliefs that is shared by a group and that supplies the group with an entity (or entities) for devotion, rituals for worshipping that entity, and a code of ethics

Social Class

• Social Class is a level in the power hierarchy of a society
• Membership in each social class is determined by income, education, occupation and social habits

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Social Class and Language

What is the linguistic landscape?

• “It is the visibility and salience of language on public and commercial signs in a given territory or region (Landry and Bourhis, 1997)

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Example Studies:

Linguistic Schoolscope: Studying the Place of English and Philippine Languages of Irosin Secondary School

She found out that local languages in their province have very limited space in formal education, especially in the secondary level. Thus, the preferential use of English in the school LL, on one side, underscores the power, prestige of the language over the national and local languages and other, it may be contingent on the context where the dominant language is used. (Susan Fresnido Astillero, 2011)

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Language of Order: English in the linguistic landscape of two major train stations in the Philippines

English dominated the linguistic landscape of the two stations and very likely in many parts of the Philippines, evidently, there is no “active competition” between English and Filipino in the linguistic landscape of the country. Hence, instead of being bilingual, it seems rather apt to call the LL essentially “unilingual” (Rob Reyes, 2015)

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Age

• The period in which we are born and raised has a strong influence on us
• People of the same generation form a cultural cohort whose personal values, beliefs, and behaviors have been influenced by common life experiences and events

Dimensions of Culture

(Hofstede, 1980, in Sipacio & Balgios, 2016)

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