An overview to Intercultural communication:

Intercultural communication in its most basic form refers to an academic field of study
and research. It seeks to understand how people from different countries and cultures
behave, communicate and perceive the world around them. The findings of such
academic research are then applied to 'real life' situations such as how to create cultural
synergy between people from different cultures within a business or how psychologists
understand their patients.
Groups of people are coming together, sometimes with enormous differences in cultural
back grounds, beliefs, life styles, economic resources and religions. And it illustrates that
intercultural communication doesn’t happen in a vacuum. History, economics and
politics played an important role and how various people and group reacted from the
mayor, to the hate group of Illinois, to the reaction of many local town people.
Intercultural communication occurs when people of different cultural back grounds
interact, but this definition seems simplistic and redundant.
Defining Intercultural Communication
To describe Intercultural Communication we just need to analyze three words i.e;
INTER+CULTURAL+COMMUNICATION.
INTER+CULTURAL = Consisting of various cultures
COMMUNICATION= An act of imparting information

"Intercultural communication is the interpersonal interaction between members of

different groups, which differ from each other in respect of the knowledge shared by
their members and in respect of their linguistic forms of symbolic behavior."

To properly define intercultural communication it’s necessary to understand the two root
words culture and communication and basic building blocks of Intercultural
Communication

Building blocks of Intercultural Communication

Following are the four building blocks of intercultural communication

 Culture
 Communication
 Context
 Power
Explanation

1) Culture
Culture is defined as “A system of shared beliefs, values, customs, behaviors
and artifacts that the members of the society use to cope with one another
and with their world”.
Transmitted from generation to generation through social learning, culture is the
mechanism that allows human beings to make sense of the world around them. Cultures
include a wide variety of races, ethnic groups and nationalities. Culture is often
considered the core concept in intercultural communication. Culture can also be stated as
a learned pattern of perception, values and behaviors shared by group of people that is
also dynamic and heterogeneous.

Important aspects of culture

Culture is Learned
Culture is to be learned first of all. While all human beings shared some universal habits
and tendencies e.g. we all eat, sleep, seek shelter, make love and share some motivations
to be loved and to protect ourselves. These are not aspects of culture rather, culture is the
unique way the human beings have learned to eat, sleep and make love because we are
Muslims, Asians, Europeans, male or female, etc. when we are born, we don’t how to be
a male or female, Pakistani or Afghan and so on. Rather we are taught. We have to learn
hoe to eat, walk, talk and love like other members of cultural groups and usually do so
slowly and sub consciously, through a process of socialization.

Culture Involves Perception and Values

Culture groups share perceptions, or ways of looking at the world we select, evaluate and
organize information from the external environment through perception. Thus, all of our
prior learning the information we have already stored in our brains effects how we
interpret new information. Some of this learning and perception is related to the values of
the cultural groups we belong to. Values have to do wit what is judged to be good or bad,
or right or wrong in a culture.

Culture is Shared
Another important part of our definition of culture is that cultural patterns are shared.
These cultural patterns of perceptions and beliefs are developed through interactions with
different groups of individuals at home, in the neighborhood, at school, in youth groups,
at college, at workplace, shopping malls etc. culture becomes a group experience because
it is shared with people who lie in and experienced the same social environments, in
class, the researchers some times put students in same sex groups to highlights that how
many men share many similar perceptions about being male and similar attitudes towards
women, the same seems to hold true for women. Men sometimes share the perceptions
that women have power in social situations. Women sometimes share a perception that
men think badly of women who go out with a lot of guys.

Culture is Expressed as Behavior

Our cultural analysis influences not only our perceptions and beliefs but also our
behaviors. Some people believe in the importance of individual independence, or simply
individualism, is reflected in their behavior. Some children expect to become increasingly
independent when growing up and they won’t to make their own decisions about career
marriage etc. but some are socialized to the cultural values of collectivism. They are
expected to be more responsible for caring for other family members and to take their
wishes into consideration and marriage and career decisions.
2) Communication
Communication, our second building block is also complex and may be defined in many
ways we can define communication as “our symbolic process whereby meaning is
shared and negotiated”.
In other words communication occurs when ever some one attributes meaning to other
words or actions. In addition, communication is dynamic, may be unintentional and is
receiver oriented.
By symbolic we mean the words we speak and the gestures we make have no meaning
themselves, rather they achieve significance only because people agree, at least to some
extent on their meaning. When we use symbols to communicate we assume that the other
person shares our symbol system. Also these symbolic meanings are conveyed both
verbally and non-verbally. Thousand of non-verbal behaviors, gestures, postures, eye
movements, facial expressions involved shared meaning. Power of social symbols e.g.
flags, national anthems, and corporate logos also communicate meaning non-verbally.
Communication is the process involving several components like
a) People who are communicating.
b) A message that is being communicated (verbal or non-verbal)
c) A channel through which the communication takes place and a context.
People communicating can be thought of as senders and receivers as they are
sending and receiving messages.
Similarly communication involves sharing and negotiating meaning. People have
to agree on the meaning of a particular message, but to make things more
complicated, each message often has more than one meaning. When we
communicate, we assume that the other person takes the meaning that we intend
but for individuals from different cultural backgrounds and experiences, this
assumption may be wrong and may lead to miss-understanding and a lack of
shared meaning.
3) Context
Context act as the third building block of intercultural communication it means the
physical and social situation in which communication occurs e.g. communication may
occur in a class room, market, MASJID, office, etc. the physical characteristics of the
setting influence the communication. People communicate differently depending upon
the context e.g. we talk we never talk to the teachers and parents the way we talk to our
friends or strangers. Context may consist of the physical, social, political and historical
structures in which the communication occurs.

4) Power
Power is always present when we communicate with each other although it is not always
evident or obvious. In every society, a social hierarchy exists that gives some groups
more power and privilege than others. The groups with the most power determined, to a
great extent the communication system of the entire society. Those empower, consciously
or unconsciously create and maintain communication systems that reflect, reinforce and
promote their own ways of thinking and communicating.
There are two types of group-related power.
 a) The first involves membership in involuntary groups based on age, ethnicity,
gender, physical ability, race and sexual orientation and is more permanent in
nature.
b) The second involves membership in more voluntary group based on educational
background, geographic location, marital status and socio-economic status and is
more changeable. Power is complex, especially in relation to institutions or the
social structure. Some inequities, such as those involving sex, class, race is more
rigid then those resulted from temporary roles like student or teacher. The power
relations between student and teacher are more complex if teacher is a women
challenge by male students. In short we really can’t understand intercultural
communication without considering the power dynamics in the interaction.

Relationship between Culture and Communication

Intercultural Communication and Business

With the expansion of industrial sector all over the world and growth of world economy
trade and commerce have been flourished all over the world even the geographical,
cultural, ethnic and racial frontiers of the countries have been failed to defend the arrival
of foreign businesses. Running a business in one’s own country needs strong
communication skills. Similarly, incorporating the business in other countries, cultures,
nations and religions require strong intercultural communication.
The globalization process is forcing businesses to rethink their strategies. Intercultural
communication, skills assume an ever-larger role in global marketing and sale strategies.
Consequently, language programs need to respond to these changes. Future business
managers must acquire effective intercultural competence. The one world market has
forced businesses to think global, act local, and integrate. Intercultural communication
serves a vital role in that it can forestall miscommunication, prevent misunderstandings,
and avert mistakes.
There are two aspects of business:
 Domestic Growth
 Global Growth

Barriers to Intercultural Communication

Following are the four main barriers in intercultural communication

d) Ethnocentrism
e) Stereotyping
f) Prejudice
g) Discrimination
Explanation

1) Ethnocentrism
Intercultural communication may involve groups whose members differ in terms of
gender, age, ethnicity and physical ability among other things.
Ethnocentrism is a belief that one’s own culture or group is superior to all other groups or
cultures. Ethnocentrism becomes a barrier when it prevents people from even trying to
see another’s point of view through another’s “perception lens”. It is the largest problem
that occurs during intercultural communication in which people bring an ethnocentric
perspective to the interaction.
If some body observed and judged the rest of the world from his own culture’s
perspective he is known to be ethnocentric. To some extent, each of us operates from an
ethnocentric perspective but problems arise when we interpret and evaluate other cultures
by the norms and standards of our own. Generally, a lack of interaction with another
culture fosters high levels ethnocentrism and encourages the notion that one culture is
somehow superior to other.
Ethnocentrism can create defensiveness on the part of the person who is being treated as
if he or she is some how deficient or inferior.
Solution
It can be very difficult to see our own ethnocentrism often; we see it best when we
expand extended time in other cultural group. How ever ethnocentrism can be avoided by
judging another person’s culture by his own context which is called cultural relativism.

2) Stereotyping
Another barrier to intercultural communication is stereotypes. A stereotype can be
defined as a generalization about some group of people that over simplifies their cultures.
Stereotypes are widely held beliefs about a group of people. Stereotyping becomes
troublesome in communication when people make assumptions about an individual on
the basis of simplified notions about the group to which he or she belongs. In fact our
assumptions get us in trouble when we apply to individual what we guess to be true of a
group. Such stereotypes are injurious to individuals and groups.

Kinds of Stereotypes
Negative Stereotypes
Some times teachers assumes that students don’t want to study to much but that they
won’t to know what type of tests and quizzes would be given to them. These
generalizations, mental shortcuts help the teachers know how to interact with students.
However generalizations become harmful to stereotypes when they are held rigidly. Thus
if they thought that all students were lazy or unwilling to study on their own, and they
interacted with students based on this belief they would hold a negative stereotype.
Positive Stereotypes
Stereotypes also may be positives for example some people hold the stereotype that all
attractive people are also smart and socially skilled. Even positive stereotype can cause
problems for those stereotyped. Attractive individuals may feel excessive pressure to fit
the stereotype that they are competent at some thing they are not, or they may be hired on
the basis of their appearance and then find out they cannot do the job. Hence when some
body meets an attorney, doesn’t assume that she is shady. When some body needs an
Asian, doesn’t assume that he is good at mathematics. Similarly when some body meets a
beautiful blond doesn’t assume that she is empty headed.
Why do we hold stereotypes?
One reason is that stereotypes help us know what to expect from and how to react to
others however stereotypes once adopted is not easily discarded. In fact, people tend to
remember information that supports a stereotype and to not retain information that
contradicts the stereotypes.
We pickup stereotypes in different ways e.g.
a) The media tend to portray culture groups in stereotypic ways. Some times stereotypes
persist because the media choose to not pass along information that would contradict
stereotypes.
b) Stereotypes can also develop out of negative experiences. If we have unpleasant
contact with certain people we may generalize that unpleasantness to include all members
of that particular group, what ever group characteristic we focus on (race, gender, sexual
orientation).
Solution
Since stereotypes often operates at unconscious level and are so persistent, people have to
work consciously at rejecting them. This process involves several steps.
a) Recognizing the negative stereotypes (we all have them).
b) Obtaining individual information that can counter act the stereotype.

3) Prejudice
Prejudice is a negative attitude towards a cultural groups based on little or no experience.
It is a sort of pre-judgment. Where as stereotypes tell us what a group is like, prejudice
tells how we are likely to feel about that group.
Why are people prejudiced?
Firstly, it might be that prejudiced some social functions.
One such function is the adjustment function, whereby people hold certain prejudices
because it may lead to social rewards. People want to accepted and liked by their culture
groups and if they need to reject members of another group to do so, then prejudice
servers a certain functions.
Another function is the ego-defensive function, whereby people may hold certain
prejudices because they don’t want to admit certain things about themselves e.g. an
instructor who doesn’t feet successful as a teacher they may find it easier to blame
students and hold prejudices against them then to admit short comings as a teacher.
Secondly people hold some prejudices because they help to reinforce certain beliefs or
values which is called the value expressive function e.g. part of belonging to some
religious groups might require holding certain prejudices against religious groups.
Prejudices also may arise from a personal need to feel positive about once own group and
negative about others, or from perceived or real threats. These may be genuine threats
that challenge a group existence economic or political power or symbolic threats in the
form of inter group value conflicts and the accompanying anxieties. In addition if some
one has already had negative intercultural contact and is anxious about future contact,
particularly if there are inequalities and perceive threats, prejudices likely will develop.
Kinds of prejudices
The noisiest form of prejudices is easy to see but is less common today. It is more
difficult, however to pinpoint less obvious forms of prejudices e.g. “tokenism” is a kind
of prejudices shown by people who don’t want to admit they are prejudiced. Hey go out
of their way to engage in unimportant but positive inter group behavior showing support
for other people’s programmers or making statements like “I am not prejudiced” to
persuade themselves and others that they are not prejudiced.
The other form of prejudiced is “Arms-length” when people engage in friendly, positive
behavior towards members of another group on public and semi formal situations just
like casual friendships at work, interactions in large social gatherings or at lectures but
avoid closer contact like dating or attending intimate social gatherings.
Solution
Like stereotypes, prejudices, once established, is very difficult to undo because it operates
at subconscious level that is we often aren’t really aware of this fact, there has to be very
explicit motivation to change our ways of thinking.

4) Discrimination
Discrimination is the behavior that results from stereotyping or prejudice. It means to
overt actions to exclude, avoid or distance oneself from other groups. Discrimination may
be based on racism or any of the other “isms” related to belonging to cultural groups e.g.
sexism, ageism, nationalism or elitism. One way of thinking about discrimination is that
power and prejudice combine together to give rise to an “ism”. It means it one belongs to
more powerful group and hold prejudices towards another, less powerful, group, resulting
actions towards members of that group are based on an “ism” and so can be called
discrimination.
Range of Discrimination
Discrimination may range from very delicate non verbal to verbal insults and exclusions
from job or other economic opportunities, to physical violence and systematic elimination
of the group, or genocide.
The connection between prejudice and extreme discrimination is closer then one might
think. Discrimination may be interpersonal, collective or institutional. In recent years
interpersonal racism seems to be much more delicate and indirect but still persistent.
Institutionalized or collective discrimination whereby individual are systematically
denied equal participation or rights in informal and formal ways also persists. Sometimes
institutional discrimination is very blatant.

Challenges to the Intercultural Relationships

In every single aspect culture influences every single aspect of business communication:
how to show politeness and respect, how much information to give, how to motivate
people, how loud to talk, what size paper to use.

Values, Beliefs, and Practices

Values and beliefs, often unconscious, affect our response to people and situations. Most
North Americans accept competition and believe that it produces better performances.
The Japanese, however, believe that competition leads to disharmony. U.S. business
people believe that success is based on individual achievements and is open to anyone
who excels.
Nonverbal Communication
Communication that doesn't use words- takes place all the time. Body language the size
of an office or how long someone keeps a visitor waiting-all these communicates pleasure
or anger, friendliness or distance, power and status.
A young woman took a new idea into her boss, who glared at her, bows together in a
frown, as she explained her proposal. The stare and lowered brows showed anger to her,
and she assumed that he was rejecting her idea. After few months of working, she learned
that her boss always "frowned" when he was concentrating.

Body Language
Posture and body movements connote energy and openness. North Americans open body
positions include leaning forward with uncrossed arms and legs, with the arms away from
the body. Closed or defensive body positions include leaning back, sometimes with both
hands behind the head, arms and legs crossed or closed together, or hands in pockets.
U.S. women are taught to keep your arms close to your bodies and their knees and ankles
together. If we notice ourselves while sitting with friends, we can't sit in a closed body
position.

Eye Contact
North American whites see eye contact as a sign of honestly. But many cultures, dropped
eyes are a sign of appropriate defense to a superior. Japanese are taught to look at neck.
In Korea, prolonged eye contact is considered rude. In Muslim countries, women and
men are not supposed to have an eye contact.

Gestures
Americans sometimes assume that they can depend on gestures to communicate if
language fails.
The "thumbs up" sign means good work or go ahead in U.S. but considered as insult in
Greece. The circle formed with the thumb and the first finger is considered as OK in U.S.
but it means "you are nothing" in France and Belgium.

Space
Personal space is the distance that someone wants between himself or herself and other
people in ordinary, no intimate interchanges. Observation and limited experimentation
show that most North Americans, North Europeans, and Asians want a bigger personal
space than to Latin Americans, French, Italians, and Arabs. People who prefer lots of
personal space are often forced to accept close contact on a crowded elevator or subway.

Touch
Bodies needed to be touched to grow and thrive and that older people are healthier both
mentally and physically if they are touched. But some people are more comfortable with
touch then others. Some people like to shake hands but don’t like to be touched at all,
except by family members or lovers. Other people, having grown up in families that
touch a lot, hug as a part of greeting and touch even casual friends.
Spatial Arrangements
In the U.S, the size, the placement and privacy of one's office connote status. Large
corner offices have the highest status. An individual office with a door that closes
connotes more status then a desk in a common area. Japanese firms however see private
offices as "inappropriate and inefficient" they also have desk in common areas.

Time
Organizations in the U.S. – business, government, and schools- keep time by the colander
and clock. Being "on time" is seen as a sign of dependability. Other cultures may keep
time by the seasons and the moon, the sun, internal "body clocks", or a personal feeling
that "the time is right".
North Americans who believe that "time is money" are often frustrated in negotiations
with people who take a much more leisurely approach.
According to some scholars Europeans schedule fewer events in a comparable period of
time than do North Americans.

Oral communication
Effective oral communication requires cultural understanding. Different conversational
styles are not better or worse than each other, but people with different conversational
styles may feel uncomfortable without knowing why. A subordinate who talks quickly
may be frustrated by a boss who speaks slowly. People who speak slowly may feel shut
out of a conversation with people who talk more quickly.

Compliments
The kind of statements that people interpret as compliments and the socially correct way
to respond to compliments also vary among cultures. The statement "you must be really
tired" is a compliment in Japan since it recognizes the other person has worked hard. The
correct response is "thank you, but I am ok." An American who is complimented on
giving a good oral presentation will probably say "thank you."
Statements that seem different in complimentary in one context may be inappropriate in
another.

Silence
Silence also has different meanings in different cultures and sub cultures. Some
Americans have difficulty in doing business in Japan because they do not realize silence
almost always means that the Japanese do not like the American's ideas.
Different understandings of silence can prolong problems with sexual harassment in the
work place. White women sometimes use silence to respond to comments they find
offensive, hoping that silence will signal their lack of appreciation. But some men may
think that silence means appreciation or at least neutrality. African-American may be
more likely to "talk tough" in response to unwelcome advances.

Writing to International Audiences

Most cultures are most formal than the United States. When you write to international
audiences, use titles, not first names. Avoid contractions, slang, and sports metaphors.
The patterns of the organization that work for North American audiences may need to be
modify for international correspondence. For most cultures, buffer negative messages and
may requests more indirect.

Benefits of Intercultural Communication

Most people have variety of intercultural relationships that span differences in age,
physical ability, gender, ethnicity, class, religion, race and nationality. Intercultural
relationships can encompass many kinds of cultural differences and offered many
rewards and opportunities.
The benefits of such relationships include
1) learning about the world
2) Breaking stereotypes
3) Acquiring new skills
In intercultural relationships we often learn specific information about unfamiliar cultural
patterns and language.
We may also learn about what it really means to belong to a different culture. A romance
or close intercultural friendship may be a way to bring abstractions like “culture or race”
to life.
We may learn something about history as well which produce curiosity to learn about
different religions of the world. This is a kind of relational learning.
Intercultural relationships also helps us to break false assumptions i.e. stereotypes about
different nations of the world.
We may also learn how to do new things in intercultural relationships e.g. playing
different games, cooking world wide recepies, learning languages and professional skills
etc.
In short, intercultural communication can lead to a sense of connection with others and
can established a life long pattern of communicating to bridge differences e.g. one can
recounts how an encounter with an international exchange student led to a life time
interest in intercultural relations.

Building Intercultural Skills

Communication is too much complex. However, we can identify several general skills
that can be applied to the various aspects of intercultural communication.
1) Understanding cultural identity and history.
2) Improving verbal and non-verbal communication
3) Understanding the role of popular culture in intercultural communication
4) Building relationships and resolving conflicts

We must focus on cultivating and improving the following communication skills.

a) Become more conscious of our own communication. A first step in improving
intercultural communication is to become aware of the messages we send and
received both verbally and non-verbally. Think about the tone of voice, body
posture, gestures and the eye contact also become more conscious of the cultural
values of our family and observe how these values are emphasized,
communicated in the family and influence our communication.
b) Become more aware of others communication. Understanding other people’s
communication requires the importance intercultural skills of empathy i.e.
knowing where some one else is coming from, or “walking in their shows”. This
is not an easy task but by doing things such as improving our observational skills
and learning how to build better intercultural skills one can accomplish it.
c) Expand our own intercultural range. Notice the diversity, gender, ethnicity, age
group, socio-economic classes, language and disabilities of the friends.
d) Become more flexible and knowledgeable about different culture by reading local
ethnic newspapers and watching foreign movies.
e) Notice how different cultural groups are portrayed in the media that is the roles
played by people as the representatives of color or other minority groups etc.
f) Try to use tentative words wile speaking about other groups that don’t reflect
generalizations e.g. “generally it happens” or “many times it occur” or “it seems
to me” or “in my experience”.
g) Discourage the people using ethnic, racist or sexist jokes hurtful towards another
groups by saying “what do you mean by that?” or “why is that funny?” or “I
really don’t think that’s very funny”.