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1、Lecture 3 Improving Intercultural CommunicationCompetenceI. Potential barriers in effective intercultural communicationInteracting with people from diverse cultures is often difficult and more often than not frustrating, so much so that misunderstanding seems unavoidable. Efforts such as good intent
2、ions with a sweet smile, friendliness and kindness, even the offer of benefit, seem to be of little help. Why is intercultural communication so difficult?An important answer to this question is: many communicators naively take it for granted that all humans are alike and as a result, we can automati
3、cally communicate with people from different cultures effectively and successfully. Seldom do we know that the assumption of similarity among people hampers rather than helps effective communication. However, there are also other potential problems that lie in the process of intercultural communicat
4、ion. Identification of these problems will help us to avoid or to reduce breakdowns in intercultural communication.1.The assumption of similarityThe hazard assumption that we are all alike instead of being different seriously hinders effective communication across cultures. The notion that People ar
5、e people is as dangerous as it is sentimental. As a matter of fact, each member of a society is unconsciously socialized into his or her society, influenced unconsciously by his or her own cultural values, world views and norms. We must accept the fact that as cultures differ, we are unlike, and bei
6、ng unlike, we seldom know how people of different cultures behave, think, and feel. As we naively assume that people of other cultures are like us, we tend to automatically use the norms or rules underlying our thinking, behaving and feeling as standard to judge, evaluate and interpret the behavior
7、or message, both verbal and nonverbal, of people of different cultures, and in doing so, misunderstanding is inevitable.Even the same behavior can be interpreted differently. Eg. Students of different cultures interpret differently what may be called a greeting smile they receive by non-acquaintance
8、 American students walking on the campus. For a Chinese man in the U. S., a smile like this is likely to mean interest or affection. Or if a girl smiles at a male stranger in China, the man is likely to take it for interest. A smile from a boy in the street at a female stranger could possibly be ass
9、umed to be rude or a sexual maniac. For the Japanese students newly arrived in the U. S., it would be rude to smile at people they dont know. A smilefrom a boy would be interpreted as impolite behavior. For Koreans, they have to take time to get friendly with strangers. They seldom smile at stranger
10、s. A smile from an American student like this would likewise make Arabian students embarrassed and they may feel that they may have got something wrong with the way they get dressed. On the other hand, American students think that foreign students are very unfriendly. To them, it is natural to be sm
11、iling and friendly.2.StereotypingWater Lippmann (Public Opinion), a News reporter in America, called attention to theconcept of stereotyping as early as 1922, and he indicated thatstereotypeswere ameans of organizing our images into fixed and simple categories that we use to stand for the entire col
12、lection of people.Other definitions to stereotyping or stereotypes are:Stereotypingis a complex form of categorization that mentally organizes our experiencesand guides our behavior toward a particular group of people.(Samovar, Porter, Stefani,1998)Stereotypingis a way of thinking that does not ackn
13、owledge internal differences within agroup, and does not acknowledge exceptions to its general rules or principles.(Scollon &Scollon, 1995)Ideological statement or stereotyping often arises when someone comes to believe that any two cultures or social group, or according to Scollon and Scollon, two
14、discourse systems, can be treated as if they were polar opposites. Cultural ideologies in intercultural comparison are the fallacy of opposing two large cultural groups upon the basis of some single dimension. E.g. the introduction of topics in discourse and the sense of time.Stereotyping arises fro
15、m such ideologies by focusing upon individual members of cultural groups. It is the process by which all members of a group are asserted to have the characteristics attributed to the whole group. Stereotyping is simply another word for overgeneralization. The difference is that stereotyping carries
16、with it an ideological position. Characteristics of the group are not only overgeneralized to apply to each member of the group, but they are also taken to have some exaggerated negative or positive value. These values are then taken as arguments to support social or political relationships in regard to members of those groups.Eg. Conservative Bri
