Intercultural Communications

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Intercultural Communications

• Dr. Abel Adekola

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What Is Communication?

• Communication is the process of transmitting
  information and understanding between two or more
  people.
• Information.
• People.

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What Is Communication?

• Technically speaking, communication is successful
  only when mutual understanding results, that is,
  when one transmits information and makes oneself
  understood by others.

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Underlying Principles of Intercultural
Communication

• According to Rue Yuan (yin/yang principle and
  the relevance of externalism and Paralogic
  rhetoric to intercultural communication. Journal
  of business and technical communication 11
  297-320, 1997)
• The issue of international communication has
  three underlying principles

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• 1. There is no universal model for intercultural
  communication.
• Intercultural communication is interpersonal
  communication, and we should not lose sight of
  other differences such as age and gender.

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• 2. The two sides in any communication act should
  look for a common meeting ground, rather than
  focusing on the differences in the method, style,
  or format of the message.

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• 3. Receivers of a message should assume that
  there is a logical and rational reason for
  differences in communication style and be willing
  to look for coherence even if it is not
  immediately obvious.

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What Is Effective Communication?

• Effective communication across nations/cultures
  can only take place when the sender encodes the
  message using language, idioms, norms and values,
  and so on, which are familiar to the receiver or
  when the receiver is familiar with the language,
  idioms and so on used by the sender.

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• Attaining familiarity of language, slang, norms
  and values, and so on concepts are often not
  easily translatable and sometimes not
  translatable at all from one culture to another.
• For example, the concept of self-fulfillment is
  well understood in the American culture, but such
  a concept is not translatable to many cultures
  throughout the world, who understand better the
  concept of group-fulfillment.

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• Words often have different meanings when
  translated into another language.
• For instance, Americas general motors
  corporation advertised on many of automobiles it
  produced that the body was made by fisher (body
  by fisher). The Flemish interpreted it to mean
  corpse by fisher.

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• The above suggests that communication is bound to
  create many problems for people conducting
  international/cross-cultural business.
• International managers cannot generally be
  effective if they do not possess strong
  cross-cultural communication skills.

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Using Metaphors to understand national differences

• A cultural metaphor is some unique or distinctive
  institution, phenomenon, or activity expressive
  of a nations values, such as the Chinese family
  altar or American football.
• Frequently, outsiders have difficulty
  understanding such metaphors and the manner in
  which they express values.
• Also, members of a culture tend to be emotionally
  expressive about their cultural metaphors.

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• Metaphors should be used with caution.
• Metaphors do not pertain to every individual or
  even every subgroup within a society. Rather,
  they highlight national differences in an easily
  understood way that provides a rich vocabulary
  for any discussions.
• A cultural metaphor provides nation-specific
  characteristics rather than general dimensions
  along which all nations vary.

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Difference Between Communication Effective
Communication

• The difference between communication and
  effective communication is the consistency of
  meaning.

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Difference Between Communication Effective
Communication

• Although all jobs involve communication to some
  extent, by its very nature a managers job
  requires more time spent communicating than most
  others.
• Because of the frequency and audience variation,
  communication must be consistent in meanings for
  organizational objectives to be achieved.

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Language of Communication

• English is relatively accepted as the language of
  communication in the transition of international
  business.
• Verbal English language appears to be emerging as
  the accepted language of communication in global
  business transactions.

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• Even though English is accepted as the language
  of communication in the transaction of global
  business, people who know English as a second or
  third language prefer that communication take
  place in their first language.

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Communication Clarity Versus Ambiguity.

• Until there is a research on a cross section of
  readers or communicators, it is difficult to know
  if the widely advocated principles of clear
  writing, simplified language, or plain
  English make communication processing easier in
  other languages or for speakers of English as a
  second language.

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• American texts overwhelmingly preach clarity.
  Writers are urged to keep messages short and
  simple, use concrete vocabulary, and get to the
  point quickly.

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• Clarity is emphasized because of an underlying
  assumption that clear communication will be
  easier to understand and translate into clearer
  messages in the target language.

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Clarity is not necessarily a universal valued
quality

• However, clarity is not a universally valued
  quality as argued by
• Tim Weiss (Reading Culture Professional
  Communication as Translation. Journal of
  Business and Technical Communication 11 321-338,
  1997).
• Weiss points out that the Japanese, for example,
  use ambiguity and indirectness as a tool to save
  face and give instructions politely.

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Notion of Understanding

• Asian cultures also are often wary of words and
  the misunderstandings they can provoke.
• The central problem according to Weiss, is often
  not one of clarity (simply focusing the camera
  right, so to speak) but of understanding
  (interpreting) and formulating the understanding
  (translating) into appropriate messages.

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• Communication must become much more adept at
  interpretation and translation, at functioning in
  high-context environments (e.g. the Asian market)
  in which indirectness, ambiguity, silence and
  absence may convey much of the meaning of the
  messages.

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• This is important because in those cultures,
  indirectness and silence may be signs of
  politeness, calculation, foresight and wisdom.

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Plain versus Elaborated Communication Style

• American clearness and direct may deliver
  messages of precipitousness and naivete.
• According to Weiss, the American communication
  style often lacks subtlety, can seem immature
  and simplistic, and patronizing.

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• Carolyn Boiarsky in an article on culture and
  communication style (The Relationship between
  Cultural and Rhetorical conventions Engaging in
  International Communication. Technical
  Communication Quarterly 4 245-259, 1995) gives
  examples of business letters from various
  cultures that exhibit a more elaborated, complex
  writing style than that advocated in American
  communication textbooks.

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Effects of socioeconomic educational background
on communication

• Boiarsky and others have pointed out that in many
  places business managers are expected to come
  from a certain family or socioeconomic and
  educational background.
• It can be unusual for people to work their way up
  from the lower ranks of an organization.

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• Facility with language is one way that members of
  these cultures demonstrate their fitness for
  their positions and establish credibility.
• Class lines are less rigid in the United States.
  It is not uncommon for managers to be promoted
  from the ranks of workers or for children of
  laborers to become presidents and CEOs of
  corporations.

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• Part of the impetus behind the use of Plain
  English for workplace documents is an attempt to
  accommodate the wide range of linguistic and
  educational backgrounds of people in all strata
  of the American workforce.

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• Unfortunately, the communication style currently
  advocated by most business textbooks, with its
  short, direct sentences, agent-action structure,
  and simple vocabulary, may indicate to readers in
  other cultures that the writers are not educated,
  sophisticated, qualified, or knowledgeable, and
  therefore not competent in conducting their
  business.