Test Your Intercultural Communication Knowledge

Intercultural Communication: A Detailed Summary

• Intercultural communication is the study of communication across different cultures and social groups, and how culture affects communication.

• It focuses on mutual adaptation between different cultures, promoting cultural sensitivity and empathic understanding across cultures.

• It is studied in social sciences such as anthropology, cultural studies, linguistics, psychology, and communication studies.

• Intercultural communication is important in international businesses, and several cross-cultural service providers assist in developing intercultural communication skills.

• Acculturation is the process of adopting certain cultural values and practices, and young Yun Kim has identified three personality traits that could affect someone's cultural adaptation: openness, strength, and positivity.

• Cross-cultural business communication is helpful in building cultural intelligence through coaching and training in cross-cultural communication management and facilitation, cross-cultural negotiation, multicultural conflict resolution, customer service, business and organizational communication.

• Ethnocentrism plays a role in intercultural communication and avoiding it is the foundation of intercultural communication competence.

• The Intercultural Praxis Model by Kathryn Sorrells, Ph.D. shows how to navigate through the complexities of cultural differences along with power differences.

• Negotiations are more and more intercultural as businesses across the globe increase their exchanges.

• Cross-cultural communication is an interdisciplinary field that combines anthropology, cultural studies, psychology, and communication.

• The study of languages other than one's own can help in understanding social relationships and developing a critical awareness of social relationships.

• Understanding social relationships and the way other cultures work is the key to successful intercultural communication.Intercultural Communication: Understanding the Basics

• Language socialization is essential for successful intercultural communication and involves understanding the grammar of a language and how language elements are socially situated.

• Semiotics and the evaluation of sign systems are crucial for comparing cross-cultural norms of communication, but there are potential problems with overgeneralization or labeling cultures with subjective characterizations.

• Verbal communication involves messages being sent and received continuously, with the tone in which the message is relayed determining how the message is received and in what context.

• Factors that affect verbal communication include emphasis on certain phrases, vocabulary choices, and nonverbal cues such as gestures, facial expressions, and tone of voice.

• Nonverbal communication accounts for between 65% and 93% of interpreted communication, and includes body language, posture, clothing, time, eye contact, and paralanguage.

• Minor variations in body language, speech rhythms, and punctuality can cause differing interpretations of the situation among cross-cultural parties.

• Kinesic behavior varies across countries, and clothing and the way people dress is used as a form of nonverbal communication.

• Object language or material culture involves how people communicate through material artifacts such as architecture, office design and furniture, clothing, cars, cosmetics, and time.

• In monochronic cultures, time is experienced linearly and in polychronic cultures, people tolerate many things happening simultaneously.

• Occulesics includes eye contact and the use of the eyes to convey messages, while proxemics concerns the influence of proximity and space on communication.

• Misunderstandings with nonverbal communication can lead to miscommunication and insults with cultural differences.

• A methodology for investigating how an individual uses language and other semiotic activity to create and use new models of conduct should be incorporated into the study of language socialization.