Intercultural Communication as Intercultural Dialogue: Revisiting Intercultural Competence

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Intercultural Communication as Intercultural
Dialogue Revisiting Intercultural Competence

• Liisa Salo-Lee, Ph.D.
• Professor
• University of Jyväskylä
• Department of
• Communication
• P.O. Box 35
• FIN-40014 University of
• Jyväskylä
• Tel. [phone]
• Fax [phone]
• Email liisa.salolee_at_jyu.fi

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Intercultural competence

• What does intercultural competence consist of?
• What qualities should people have in order to be
  interculturally apt?
• Is intercultural competence something one can
  learn?
• Or be trained in?

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Communicative Competence

• Competence vs. performance
• (Noam Chomsky)
• Communicative competence
• (Dell Hymes)
• ethnography of speech
• language didactic applications

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Intercultural Competence

• overseas/cross-cultural/intercultural
  effectiveness
• cross-cultural proficiency
• cross-cultural awareness
• cross-cultural adaptation

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Intercultural Competence

• deficiency models
• skills - models
• competence models

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Broad domains of Intercultural Competence

• other-orientation
• behavioral flexibility
• communication cultural sensitivity

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Intercultural dialogue

• understanding
• listening
• empathy
• openess
• trust
• atmosphere
• responsibility

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Dialogue

• to explore
• to expand
• to discuss
• to investigate
• to exchange ideas
• to review
• to ventilate

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Listening

• Once we see someone as bearing a label we dont
  like, we stop listening (Tannen 199936)

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Listening

• When someone really hears you without passing
  judgement on you, without trying to take
  responsibility for you, without trying to mold
  you, it feels damn good When I have been
  listened to and when I have been heard, I am able
  to reperceive my world in a new way and go on. It
  is astonishing how elements what seem insoluble
  become soluble when someone listens. (Carl W.
  Rogers on impact of empathy, in Rosenberg
  2001119)

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Different opinions

• In dialogue there is opposition, yes, but no
  head-on-collisions. Smashing heads does not open
  minds. (Tannen 199926)

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Atmosphere

• Atmosphere is a pervasive feeling which makes
  collaborative learning or knowledge-sharing
  possible in a multicultural environment (Holden
  2002)

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Dialogical competence

• knowledge, skills and motivation to participate
  in a responsible way to an interaction so that
  the participation is both effective and
  appropriate in the respective context. (Törrönen
  2001)

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Responsibility for the Other

• Martin Buber
• Mihail Bakhtin
• Emmanuel Levinas
• Jürgen Habermas

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• Ethic of aggression
• (Tannen 1999)

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• Nonviolent Communication. A Language of
  Compassion. (Marshall B. Rosenberg 2001)

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Debate vs. Dialogue

• Its a challenge we must undertake, because our
  public and private lives are at stake (Tannen
  1999290)