COMM 424: Cross-Cultural Communication - Lecture 1 Review

Course Overview, Logistics, and Assessment Policies

  • Course Identification & Instructor Details:

    • Course Title: Cross-Cultural Communication (also referred to as Intercultural Communication, COMM 424 / Count 424).
    • Instructor: Dr. Mel (Jonathan Dellinger).
    • Specialization: Primary focus in health communication and quantitative methodology/statistics.

  • Class Structure & Delivery Mode:

    • Hybrid Format: Core instructional content and readings are delivered online via Canvas, while weekly in-person sessions are reserved for discussion, prompt-based daily activities, and artifact evaluations.
    • Permanent Classroom Location: Classroom assignments are set to avoid noise from 1st-floor construction areas.

  • Required Materials & In-Class Documentation:

    • Blue Books: Required for all in-class daily writing prompts and discussion activities. Blue books are collected by the instructor after class to evaluate participation and remain stored on the instructor's desk throughout the semester.
    • Personal Archiving: Students are advised to take photos of their blue book entries with their phones if they wish to retain their personal notes and reflection ideas for outside assignments.
    • Secondary Notebook: Students are recommended to maintain a separate notebook dedicated specifically to standard lecture note-taking.
    • Textbook: No required textbook to purchase; all readings consist of targeted online materials and academic journal articles.
    • Device Policy: Earbuds, phones, and electronic devices must be put away during class unless specifically required for an active assignment.

  • Attendance & Makeup Policy:

    • Standing Makeup Assignment: A standard makeup assignment is available online for any missed class session, regardless of whether the absence is excused or unexcused. Completing in-person blue book reflections during scheduled class times is strongly advised over doing makeup work.

  • Grading Scheme & Point Distribution (1,000 Total Points1,000\text{ Total Points}):

    • Quizzes: Best 1010 scores out of 1111 offered online quizzes.
    • Identity Wheel Paper: An early-semester reflective assignment analyzing personal identity, cultural background, experiential shaping, and the application of core course concepts.
    • Sojourner's Reflection Paper: A major late-semester assignment requiring students to reflect on a meaningful adult cross-cultural experience.
    • Eligible Experiences: Must involve active cultural immersion conducted as an adult (e.g., study abroad, attending a religious service at a church or mosque of a different tradition, participating in cultural festivals like Oktoberfest, or attending Thanksgiving with a family from a distinct cultural background). Childhood trips (e.g., visiting Mexico at age 88) do not qualify due to the lack of mature cultural observation.
    • Verification: Students must confirm proposed sojourner activities with the instructor in advance.
    • Final Project: An application-based integrative project designed to apply course principles to real-world contexts.
    • Participation: Evaluated via weekly in-class Blue Book prompt completions.
    • Extra Credit Opportunity: A 5-minute5\text{-minute} recorded PowerPoint presentation detailing a specific co-culture of interest, uploaded directly to Canvas.

Conceptualizing Culture and Co-Cultures

  • Terminological Distinctions:

    • Cross-Cultural Communication: Historically and traditionally emphasizes comparative analyses between distinct cultural groups.
    • Intercultural Communication: Focuses primarily on direct, real-time interactions between individuals from different cultural backgrounds.
    • Practical Equivalence: While scholars debate nuanced differences, the terms are frequently used interchangeably in practical application.

  • Taxonomy of Sub-Group Identifiers:

    • Terms such as microculture, subculture, minority, and co-culture refer to distinct group identities within a broader framework.
    • Rationale for the Term "Co-Culture":
    • Avoidance of Hierarchical Baggage: Terms like subculture or microculture imply subordination or marginalization relative to a main culture.
    • Precision over "Minority": The term minority creates ambiguity regarding whether it references numerical statistical representation or power dynamics.
    • Power Dynamics vs. Numerical Representation: A numerical minority can hold dominant cultural power.
      • Historical Case Study: The Rwandan Genocide, where an ethnic numerical minority held disproportionate societal sway and power, leading to a violent uprising by the numerical majority ethnic group.

  • Intercultural Communication Competency Model:

    • Framework mapping course progression across key domains:
    1. Knowledge of others
    2. Motivation
    3. Communication skills
    4. Experiential engagement

  • Dynamic Nature of Culture:

    • Culture is non-static and subject to rapid societal evolution driven by technological and social catalysts.
    • Impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI): AI is shifting modern decision-making processes and will fundamentally re-shape cultural norms for upcoming generations.
    • Rapid Transnational Adoption (Example):
    • Sixteen years prior, organized Halloween celebrations were non-existent in Japan.
    • Over subsequent years, Halloween gained massive commercial popularity.
    • Modern municipal responses (e.g., Tokyo local government restrictions) later curbed public Halloween street drinking and foreign gatherings due to overcrowding.

Cultural Artifacts, Traditions, and Adaptation

  • Analysis of Cultural Artifacts:

    • Jade Cup:
    • Material significance: Jade is traditionally associated with vitality and good health.
    • Practice: Drinking from a jade cup functions simultaneously as a spiritual, superstitious, and practical health practice within its cultural origin.
    • Kyomizu Buddhist Temple (Kyoto, Japan):
    • Kyomizu translates to "clear water."
    • Shrine vs. Temple Distinction: Shinto traditions utilize shrines (animistic heritage), whereas Buddhist traditions utilize temples.
    • Buddhist Rosary: Constructed from local timber (e.g., maple wood). Beads are held and rubbed together during prayer or the chanting of sutras. Originally developed as a philosophical life approach before evolving into a formal religious framework.
    • Taiko Drums:
    • Physical construction: Large war drums that are non-tunable. Played using wooden sticks (bachi) of varying weights, lengths, and tapers (e.g., larger sticks for deep drums; thin, tapered sticks akin to snare drumsticks for smaller drums).
    • Historical origin: Ancient military instruments used to motivate troops, which transformed in the mid-20th20\text{th} century into a mainstream ensemble performing art.
    • Anishinaabe Drumming Traditions:
    • Symbolism: The drum beat represents the wagon—the physical heartbeat of Mother Earth.
    • Gender roles: Traditionally, men play the drum while women do not. The cultural rationale holds that women are inherently connected to Mother Earth through an uninterrupted biological line of lineage (childbirth) and do not require the instrument to feel the heartbeat.

  • Cross-Cultural Adaptation and Community Integration:

    • Immersive Integration: Adapting to a foreign culture presents psychological and practical hurdles. Active participation in local community practices is essential for successful adaptation.
    • Personal Anecdote (Sakai Minato / Sakai Naga, Japan):
    • Living in a rural fishing town with basic undergraduate Japanese skills led to initial social isolation.
    • Joining a local Taiko drumming group forced immersive language acquisition (as no members spoke English) and established deep community roots, transforming a planned single-year stay into a multi-year residency.
    • Domestic Cultural Transitions:
    • Cultural adaptation principles apply equally to domestic transitions, such as moving from a rural setting or large urban center to a university town like Whitewater. Active local involvement directly correlates with psychological well-being and successful adjustment.

Human Evolution, Prehistory, and Survival Needs

  • Human Chronology and Species Continuity:

    • Species Age: Homo sapiens have existed as a coherent biological species for approximately 400,000 years400,000\text{ years} (ballpark 0.5 million years0.5\text{ million years}).
    • Biological Equivalence: Genetic evidence indicates that a modern human traveling back 400,000 years400,000\text{ years} could successfully interbreed with ancient humans, confirming identical biological and neurological capabilities.
    • Recorded History Scale: Recorded human history spans only 10,000 to 20,000 years10,000\text{ to }20,000\text{ years}, representing a tiny fraction of total human existence.

  • Foundational Survival Goals:

    • Culture originally emerged as a collective mechanism to satisfy baseline species survival requirements:
    • Food acquisition
    • Clean water supply
    • Shelter and physical security
    • Maintenance of population (balanced historically by high infant and maternal mortality despite potential lifespan longevity up to 80 years80\text{ years} for those surviving past early adulthood).

  • Modern Detachment from Survival:

    • Modern society creates a buffer between daily routines and baseline survival needs.
    • Historic survival tasks (hunting, gathering, foraging) have been largely replaced by economic systems (currency exchange, wage employment).
    • Activities like bow hunting or gardening persist in modern culture as hobbies or lifestyle choices that reconnect individuals directly to primary survival processes.

Psychological and Cognitive Frameworks of Culture

  • Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs:

    1. Physiological Needs: Food, water, warmth, rest.
    2. Safety Needs: Physical security, shelter, stability.
    3. Belongingness & Love Needs: Intimate relationships, social group connection.
    4. Esteem Needs: Achievement, status, recognition.
    5. Self-Actualization: Personal fulfillment, realizing potential.   

  • Critical Re-evaluation of Maslow's Model:

    • Hierarchical Assumption: Maslow posits lower-order physiological/safety needs must be satisfied prior to pursuing higher-order actualization.
    • Interconnectedness Critique: Direct engagement with basic survival tasks (e.g., hunting, gardening, physical exertion, securing food) can itself be deeply self-actualizing. Primary survival needs and higher-order emotional needs are deeply intertwined rather than strictly sequential.

  • Human Cognition and Language:

    • Metacognition: The capacity to engage in abstract thought and reflect upon one's own cognitive processes ("thinking about thinking").
    • Abstract Language: Over 50%50\% of all human linguistic communication concerns non-physical, abstract concepts (things that cannot be physically touched).
    • Animal Culture: Culture is not exclusive to humans; all social animals (e.g., primates, cetaceans, songbirds with regional vocal dialects) display localized, learned behaviors transmitted across populations.

  • Bounded Rationality and Cognitive Biases:

    • Bounded Rationality: Human decision-making is inherently constrained by cognitive limits, emotional states, and evolutionary shortcuts.
    • Fundamental Attribution Error:
    • Definition: The systematic tendency to assign internal character traits to explain others' negative behaviors while attributing external situational excuses to explain one's own identical behaviors.
    • Example: Interpreting an aggressive driver who cuts in front of traffic as an inherently bad person, but excusing one's own aggressive lane change as a necessary action to avoid missing an exit.
    • Function: Acts as an automatic psychological self-preservation mechanism.

  • Evolutionary Biology Perspective on Culture:

    • Framework referenced from evolutionary biologists Brett Weinstein and Heather Heying (A Hunter-Gatherer's Guide to Modern Life).
    • Core Principle: Natural selection and biological evolution will not engineer biological traits for problems that culture can reliably address.
    • Transmission Speed: Culture changes rapidly and transmits both horizontally (peer-to-peer) and vertically (generation-to-generation), enabling immediate environmental adaptation without waiting for biological evolution.

Dominant Culture and European American Co-Culture

  • Dominant Cultural Baseline in the United States:

    • The dominant cultural context in the U.S. largely overlaps with European American norms, derived historically from foundational legal, social, and religious frameworks.
    • The WASP Template: Modern institutional structures were historically benchmarked against the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) cultural framework.

  • Historical Evolution of Whiteness and Assimilation:

    • Shifting Category Boundaries: Legal definitions of "whiteness" altered continuously over U.S. history based on political convenience and social power.
    • Immigration Waves: Early legal frameworks (e.g., initial citizenship restricted to "free white persons") excluded broad European immigrant groups such as indentured Irish workers, Slavic populations, Eastern European communities, and Jewish immigrants.
    • Mechanism of Assimilation: Incoming micro-cultures were pressured to drop distinct traits and conform to the pre-existing dominant European American baseline.
    • Judeo-Christian Values: Legal systems, civic calendars, and social etiquette in the U.S. remain heavily grounded in Judeo-Christian norms imported via European immigration waves.

  • Historical Pre-Columbian Context:

    • Prior to European colonization, complex Native American civilizations (e.g., the Mississippian culture) operated large urban centers and agricultural systems.
    • Inter-tribal migrations and displacements occurred continuously (e.g., the Anishinaabe expanding around the Great Lakes and displacing the Lakota westward utilizing acquired European firearms).

Group Identity and Othering Dynamics

  • Enculturation:

    • The foundational process by which an individual internalizes the primary norms, values, and behaviors of their surrounding native culture from early childhood.
    • The immediate family unit serves as the primary, smallest functional unit of culture.

  • Ethnocentrism:

    • The cognitive assumption that one's native cultural practices represent the natural default standard, leading to the implicit or explicit evaluation of outside cultures as inferior or incorrect.

  • Xenophobia:

    • An irrational fear, strong dislike, or deep aversion directed toward individuals perceived as outsiders or foreign to one's social group.

  • Stereotyping:

    • The improper assignment of real or imagined group-level generalizations onto a specific individual, or conversely, extrapolating an individual's behavior to characterize an entire population.

  • Racism:

    • Systematic discrimination, prejudice, or stereotyping directed against individuals based on constructed categories of race or physical differences.

  • Diversity and Relational Proximity:

    • Diversity is contextual and relative to group boundaries.
    • Othering tendencies originate from primitive impulses to protect local social groups essential for survival.

Questions & Discussion

  • Question: Is the current lecture room our permanent classroom location for the remainder of the semester?

    • Response: Yes. The class was permanently reassigned to this room to avoid severe construction noise from the 1st-floor office area.

  • Question: Is this class going to involve advanced mathematics or quantitative calculations based on the board notes?

    • Response: No. The content on the board is from previous work. Although the instructor utilizes quantitative methodologies and statistics in research, this class does not require mathematical operations.

  • Question: How should notes be formatted in the Blue Books for daily activities?

    • Response: Blue book entries do not require formal essay structure, thesis statements, or rigid formatting. They should capture genuine responses to daily prompts and class discussion points. Students who wish to retain their written thoughts long-term should photograph their entries before leaving.

  • In-Class Discussion Prompt (Prehistoric Culture & Human Goals):

    • Prompt: What did human culture look like during prehistory (400,000 years ago400,000\text{ years ago})?
    • Student Contributions:
    • Primary shared goals focused strictly on acquiring food, water, shelter, and physical security.
    • Knowledge transmission relied on oral storytelling, localized inventions, and adaptive tools.
    • Birth rates were higher to balance elevated infant and child mortality rates.
    • Social structures maintained an intimate, direct relationship with basic daily survival tasks.

  • Preparation Prompt for Upcoming Class:

    • Prompt: Select a documented communication preference of European American culture (e.g., directness in interpersonal dialogue) and analyze how an individual from a distinct cultural background (e.g., a high-context or indirect communication culture) could misinterpret that behavior.