COPING WITH INTERCULTURAL CONFLICT

IN COMMUNICATION

Nurhani binti Abd Muis

ID: 2991 17 2024
INTRODUCTION
Culture as defined by Fred E. Jandt is the “ways of living including behavioral norms, linguistic
expressions, communication styles, thinking patterns, and beliefs and values of a group large
enough to be self-sustaining, which are transmitted over the course of generation”1. However, this
definition is still considered as too broad. In order to define it further, culture is always presented
in two ways: general and local culture. General culture is a characteristic of all humankind, an
adaptable feature prevalent in our species. It directs attention to universal attributes of human
behavior which is the “human nature.” In contrast, local culture refers to those complex systems
of meanings (encoded in symbols, schemas, and other sorts of cognitive representations) created,
shared, and transmitted (socially reproduced and inherited) by individuals in particular social
groups, at particular points in time2. Generally, the local culture is divided into two: the Eastern
culture and the Western culture. However, even between the Eastern cultures itself, the culture in
China for example, is not identical to the culture in India. This also apply to the Western culture,
whereby the American’s culture is dissimilar to the British’s culture.

As for the definition of intercultural communication, Fred E. Jandt defined it as “face-to-face

interactions among people of diverse cultures”3. Intercultural communication has become a
common occurrence nowadays due to the advancement of technology, modernization of society
and globalization of businesses. As people from different background and culture started to
converse with one another, they will find that the rules and values that they considered norms are
not practiced in other culture. This diverse rules and values across varied culture are bound to
cause cross-cultural misunderstandings and can lead to conflicts and disagreements.

1
Jandt, F. (2001). Intercultural communication: An introduction, Thousand Oaks, CA ,Sage.
2
Avruch K (2002) Cross-cultural conflict. In: Hipel KW (ed) Conflict resolution. Encyclopedia of life support systems.
UNESCO, Oxford.
3
Jandt, F. (2001). Intercultural communication: An introduction, Thousand Oaks, CA ,Sage.
RESOLVING THE MISUNDERSTANDINGS
As individuals from various culture communicate, the differences in behavioral norms will begin
to become more apparent. Besides having language barriers, body movement and gestures can also
vary from one culture to another. For example, the simple action of head nod and shake. Nodding
your head is a universal sign for ‘yes’, and shaking your head is the sign for ‘no’. However, even
though it is considered as a universal sign, in some countries like Greece, the actions of nodding
and shaking your head and the meanings are all reversed. In other countries, like India for example,
shaking your head means ‘yes’ while nodding it does not necessarily mean ‘no’. This shows that
even universal gestures are not commonly used by all humankind, and we cannot avoid cultural
differences.

One of the methods of coping with disagreements in different culture is by acquiring cross-cultural
competence. Cross-cultural competence is the capability to put the knowledge of national or ethnic
cultures’ unique characteristics acquired beforehand into practice. In order to be considered cross-
culturally competent, an individual must at least acquire the language skills and a respect for
different cultural backgrounds4. By acquiring the language skills, a person will be able to
appropriately use and interpret a means of language which is used during the communication. But
being able to communicate in the language alone isn’t enough. An individual has to also be able
to discern and understand the various non-verbal expressions, such as hand gestures, body
language or space distance and be able to observe the formal rules related to the business
communication. Not only that, a person must be respectful of others’ cultural background and
familiarize with different culture in depth, so as to be aware of certain conducts and also understand
the reason why they have come into existence. In doing so, cross-cultural conflict in
communication can be solved, and even be avoided to prevent further misunderstandings.

Another method is by creating a global culture which are shared by all humankind and in doing
so, the culture barriers will be removed. For example, creating universal hand gestures that does
not have any room for variations. However, it would unavoidably cause unique cultural identities
to be lost in the midst of homogeneity and it would be a very unusual development for the human

4
Průcha (2010). Interkulturní komunikace. Praha: Grada Publishing.
society. As such, producing a global culture is a very effective method to reduce conflicts between
parties of varying degrees of culture, but doing so will cause a huge loss of cultural identities.

The next method of resolving cross-cultural misunderstandings in communication is by using a

specific language as a lingua franca, although it can function only in the case of language as
barriers – not for cultural barriers. According to the Oxford dictionary, lingua franca is defined as
“a language that is adopted as a common language between speakers whose native languages are
different”5. The history of the usage of a lingua franca goes back to the expansion of the Sumerian
language as far as the year 3000 BC and the history of using the English language as lingua franca
dates back to the 17th century when the Great Britain became the sea and colonialist power6. The
English language spread in the colonialized nations as a language of traders, seafarers, soldiers
and missionaries. Nowadays, English as a means of communication is widely used in politics,
business, science, education, travelling and many others. There are also other languages that were
used to be a lingua franca, but as time changes, the language gradually disappeared (Greek), or
became dead and broke into other independent languages (Latin). However, successor languages
for English is already making a beeline for being the lingua franca, be it Chinese, Spanish or Arabic
as the number of fluent speakers of these languages is going to surpass the number of English
speakers soon. Thus, using a universal language like the English language as the lingua franca will
lessen the conflicts in communication between people of different cultural background.

5
Definition of lingua franca in English (2017) Retrieved from:
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/lingua_franca Date accessed: 16th November 2017
6
Lenka Bělašková (2011) Communication Misunderstandings and their Impact on Dealing between Multicultural
Companies. Retrieved from:
https://digilib.k.utb.cz/bitstream/handle/10563/17142/b%C4%9Bla%C5%A1kov%C3%A1_2011_bp.pdf?sequence=
1 Date accessed: 14th November 2017
CONCLUSION

When communicating with people of different culture who have diverse habits and behavior, both
parties should be cross-culturally competent and be respectful towards each other, so as to prevent
any conflict and misunderstanding. Knowing another culture in depth is also a good way to
understand and discern various habits that may cause future disagreements. To avoid cultural
barriers, one can also use and create new global culture, although it will cause the loss of cultural
identities. Another method is coping with cross-cultural conflict is by using a language as lingua
franca, like the English language for example. But it can only assist in solving the problem of
language barriers but not cultural barriers. By following any of the methods stated above, an
individual will be able to avoid future conflicts and also foster better relationships with people of
various cultural background.