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Статья "INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION"
КГУСО школа-лицей №7 г.Семей ВКО Учитель английского языка Кибатбаева Марина Владимировна INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION Terminology Intercultural communication or communication between people of different cultural backgrounds has always been and will probably remain an important precondition of human co-existence on earth. The purpose of this paper is to provide a framework of factors that are important in intercultural communication within a general model of human, primarily linguistic, communication. The term intercultural is chosen over the largely synonymous term cross-cultural because it is linked to language use such as “interdisciplinary”, that is cooperation between people with different scientific backgrounds. Perhaps the term also has somewhat fewer connotations than cross-cultural. It is not cultures that communicate, whatever that might imply, but people (and possibly social institutions) with different cultural backgrounds that do. In general, the term”cross-cultural” is probably best used for comparisons between cultures (”cross-cultural comparison”). What is a culture? Let us more closely analyze the concepts that can be found in the expression intercultural communication. One of them is culture which has been analyzed in several different ways by different researchers. See Kroeber and Kluckholm (1952) for an account of about 200 ways to to define the concept. It will be used here in the following way. The term “culture” refers to all the characteristics common to a particular group of people that are learned and not given by nature. That the members of a group have two legs is thus not a cultural characteristic but a natural one, while a special but common way of walking would probably be cultural. Analytically, we can differentiate between the following four primary cultural dimensions: Patterns of thought – common ways of thinking, where thinking includes factual beliefs, values, norms, and emotional attitudes. Patterns of behavior – common ways of behaving, from ways of speaking to ways of conducting commerce and industry, where the behavior can be intentional/unintentional, aware/unaware or individual/interactive. Patterns of artifacts – common ways of manufacturing and using material things, from pens to houses (artifact = artificial object), where artifacts include dwellings, tools, machines or media. The art factual dimension of culture is usually given special attention in museums. Imprints in nature – the long-lasting imprints left by a group in the natural urroundings, where such imprints include agriculture, trash, roads or intact/ruined human habitations. In fact, “culture” in the sense of “growth” (i.e. a human transformation of nature) gives us a basic understanding of what the concept of culture is all about. All human activities involve the first two dimensions. Most activities involve the third dimension, and ecologically important activities also involve the fourth. When a particular activity lastingly combines several of these traits, one usually says that the activity has become institutionalized and that it is thus a social institution. Similarly, one may speak of a culture or a subculture when one or more of the characteristics are lastingly connected with a certain group of people. In the context of intercultural communication, the groups are often associated with national states, and we may speak about Kazakh culture, French culture, etc. However, a group does not necessarily have to be a national group. It may be any group at all that is distinguishable over a longer period of time. We can thus speak about teenage culture, male culture, working-class culture, bakers’ culture or the culture of the city. Cultural differences between groups of these types are often just as great or even greater than those that exist between national cultures. The danger of stereotypical descriptions Studies and teaching programs that deal with intercultural communication are often based on attempts to understand national cultures; therefore there is a great risk of neglecting the significant differences which exist between activities, groups and individuals on a non-national level. An orientation toward national cultures combined with efforts to find easily conveyed generalizations gives a further risk, namely that of taking over stereotypical notions of a “national character” that have arisen to serve what a certain group sees as its own or national interests. See Tingsten (1936). For example, Swedes may be characterized as envious, Scots as stingy, French as vain, Americans as superficial, etc. The danger of misleading and biased generalizations is one of the greatest risks in research on intercultural communication, and that danger increases as soon as someone tries to describe the differences between groups from the perspective of a particular group's interests. Social identity and ethnicity Two important concepts in this discussion are ethnicity and social identity. I believe that these concepts can be related to culture and national states in the following way. A group is an ethnic group when certain of its cultural characteristics are used to socially and politically organize it and when this organization is allowed to continue for a relatively long period of time. The group’s ethnicity is comprised of those traits which have a politically cohesive power. If the group comprises or strongly aspires to comprise its own politically independent nation, the characteristics are termed nationally ethnic and the desire to emphasize and/or spread them is called nationalism. Depending on the strength of this nationalism or the evaluation of it, it can further be characterized as chauvinism or patriotism. Social identity can be related to culture in the following way. At a particular point in time, a culture provides a number of properties and relations around which individual persons can organize their lives. People construct their social identity by regarding a part of these properties and relations as decisive for who he/she is. In this way, it is possible for a person to identify him or herself with his/her age, sex, family position, profession, political ideology, religious belief, regional residence or national affiliation, etc. As social organizations are constructed around most of these characteristics, by identifying with them, one often simultaneously comes to belong to a group of people who think alike. Most people have a potential for identifying themselves with several of these characteristics but come gradually to focus on a few as primarily creating his/her identity. One possibility is that you strongly identify with characteristics that you consider important for your national or ethnic group. You mainly become a Swede, a Finn, a Basque or a Sami. Being a father or a teacher may become less important. For a person of this type, national or ethnic membership is what gives him/her their main identity. But as we have seen, identity can of course be constructed on the basis of other characteristics. Personal preferences and degree of social recognition are among the decisive factors in constructing one’s identity. This probably means that people with high status jobs will be less prone than people with low status jobs to let ethnic membership be the characteristic they mainly identify with. In studying what I here call intercultural communication, it is particularly important to be aware that there are no necessary relationships between identity on the one hand and ethnicity or nationalism on the other. A position taken without reflection can easily lead to hasty assumptions about stereotypical cultural differences. Culture and activities One way to escape the danger of stereotypes, at least to a certain extent, is to connect the concept of culture with the concept of activity. A culture, that is a way of thinking, behaving, etc., surfaces in the activities which the people in a certain group pursue. An activity here can be anything from arguing to hunting, fishing or farming. Most people participate in a number of activities and can often think and act in substantially different ways in different activities. There is a great difference between being a father, a pastor and a lover but, at least in Sweden, it is completely possible for one person to have each of these roles simultaneously. By taking into consideration the variation in activities among a group of people, we can begin to get an understanding of the nature of international and international cultural similarities and differences. At the same time, the variation in activity must also be supplemented with differences that are e.g. biological or regional. Intercultural communication As for the other key concept in intercultural communication – communication – I largely follow the analysis presented in Allwood (1976). In this context, one can briefly characterize communication as the sharing of information between people on different levels of awareness and control. I want especially to emphasize the latter since, in a intercultural context, this can become a problem particularly with features in communication about which people have low degree of awareness and find difficult to control. Examples would include the ways in which we show and interpret feelings and attitudes. If we use what is said above about “culture” and “communication” as a base, we would now be able to define intercultural communication as the sharing of information on different levels of awareness and control between people with different cultural backgrounds, where different cultural backgrounds include both national cultural differences and differences which are connected with participation in the different activities that exist within a national unit. Possible differences between communication patterns Misunderstandings and differences in communicative behavior When people of different cultural backgrounds meet, all differences between them can potentially lead to misunderstanding. A way of grasping the problems that can arise in intercultural communication is thus to investigate the ways in which communication patterns can vary between different linguistic and cultural communities. A way of doing this is to utilize a model in which one 1) takes into account different communication behaviors, 2) takes into account what can influence these types of behaviors and 3) tries to analyze differences between linguistic and cultural communities with regard to communication behavior and influencing factors. As for communicative behavior, a distinction can be made between behavior that is produced by a single individual and behavior that requires the interaction and/or cooperation of several individuals. I will call the first type of behavior “individual behavior” and the other type behavior, “interactive” behavior. That a behavior is individual does not mean that it is not affected by other people, such as by another person’s choice of words. It means only that the choice of words can be ascribed to an individual while the types of behavior that are interactive cannot be ascribed only to an individual. Individual level On the individual level it may be convenient to view linguistic communication from the following four aspects: 1. Body Movements 2. Sound and Writing 3. Vocabulary and Phraseology 4. Grammar Body Movements When we speak, our speech is continuously accompanied by gestures, facial expressions and other body movements that add to what we are saying in different ways. There are great differences in how people from different cultures communicate with their bodies. The largest differences are probably concern the use of hands to covey different meanings. Gestures for such things as money, great, come here vary considerably between Kazakhstan and the other countries. Other differences are found for when and where a person is permitted to express something, perhaps particularly certain emotions. There can also be variations from culture to culture in how intensely people show different emotions. In certain cultures such as Kazakh cultures, it is permitted to show strong feelings such as happiness, anger and grief in public. Sound and writing Two very obvious differences between different languages are their sound and writing systems. The differences in sound can be seen from two main aspects: 1. Each language has its store of least meaning differentiating sound units or phonemes. These vary in the languages of the world between 16 in the Polynesian languages, and about 80 in Caucasian languages. 2. Together with phonemes there is also what called “prosody” is usually, “intonation” or “melody”; that is, sound characteristics whose range is longer than separate sounds. The primary functions of prosody are the following: 1) to indicate biological, social and regional identity, e.g. that the speaker is a middle-aged female convenience store cash register operator in Gothenburg; 2) to indicate rhythm and tone; 3) to indicate what units belong together in meaning; 4) to indicate feelings and attitudes. Not least the latter function seems to show great differences related to culture. The way of expressing emotions using prosody is probably not the same in all languages and cultures. In a study of how prosody is interpreted, Abelin & Allwood (1985) got the following two main results: 1. There seem to be culturally given, relatively stable patterns for indicating emotions using prosody. The way of interpreting the emotional expression in the voice does not vary much from person to person. 2. Our way of interpreting expressions of emotion in the voice is dependent upon linguistic and cultural background. Groups with different cultural and linguistic backgrounds make their interpretations in different ways. As prosodic patterns are for most people probably on a low level of awareness, this means that there is a great risk for incorrect interpretations about which one is not aware in communication with people from other cultural and linguistic backgrounds. The differences between different writing systems are often more obvious than differences in sound systems. A main division of the world’s writing systems can be made between 1)ideographic, where each written unit in principle expresses a morpheme (smallest meaning bearing language unit), and 2) sound-based system that either can be phonemic, based on phonemes (the smallest meaning differentiating linguistic sound), or syllabic, based on syllables. The differences between writing systems can be less obvious, for instance when two languages use the same written letters but in different ways. Vocabulary and phraseology The difference between different languages, which people who learn several different languages become aware of, is the difference between the vocabulary of different languages in terms of words and phrases. In every culture, the words and phrases of everyday language mirror the needs, values and attitudes that have been common and strong and have thus been necessary to communicate about. People who live in a desert have in their everyday language a vocabulary that allows a differentiation between many different types of sand, while people who live in areas with a great deal of snow instead develop a vocabulary that allows a differentiation between many types of snow. A difference in vocabulary that has been investigated the most has to do with differences between the words for color in different languages. The figure below shows the great differences that can exist in this area (Source: Berlin & Key 1969). Jale Tiv Hannuoo Ibo Tzeltal Lowland-Tamil Nez Perce Swedish New Guinea Nigeria Philippines Nigeria Mexico India North America European List of References 1) Hall, E T: 1959. The Silent Language, Garden City, NY, Doubleday. 2) Sacks, H, Schegloff, E A and Jefferson, G: 1974. “A Simplest Systematics for the Organisation of Turn-taking for Conversation” in Language 50/4, sid 696-735. 3) Marcel, A J: 1979. “Conscious and Unconscious Reading: The Effects of VisualMasking on,Word Perception” in Cognitive Psychology 4) Basso, Keith:1979. Portraits of'The Whiteman': Linguistic Play and Cultural Symbols among the Western- Apache. London, Cambridge Univ Press. 5) Berlin, B & Kay, 1969. P: Basic Color Terms - Their Universality and Evolution.University of California Press. Berkeley & Los Angeles 6) Messner, W. & Schäfer, N. (2012), "The ICCA™ Facilitator's Manual. Intercultural Communication and Collaboration Appraisal", London: Createspace. 7) Wiseman, Richard L. (2003), "Intercultural Communication Competence", in: Gudykunst, William B (ed.), Cross-Cultural and Intercultural Communication, 191-208, Thousand Oaks: Sage. | |
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Вторник, 2024-11-19, 1:20 AM
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