Personal, or person-centered/contextual style

Like directness and indirectness, personal and contextual communication styles also are related in cross-cultural studies to individualism and collectivism. Gudykunst and Ting-Toomey (1988) suggest these styles also express cultural differences in power distance (hierarchy). Person-centered communication style is informal and emphasizes the individual and equalitarian relationships. The person-centeredness is reflected, for instance, by the use of the pronoun I. The contextual style is status and role oriented. Formality and asymmetrical power distance is often emphasized. Personal pronouns are not often used. All information does not need to be explicitly expressed. Yet common background knowledge is assumed, or in essential parts conveyed during the interaction, often indirectly.

Instrumental/affective style

Instrumental and affective communication styles can be also related on one hand to individualism and collectivism, on the other hand to low- and high-context approaches, respectively. Instrumental communication style is goal oriented and sender focused. Affective communication style is process oriented and listener focused. Verbally this means explicitness (instrumental style) and implicitness (affective style). Instrumental style is gradually becoming the style of international business and other professional contexts, particularly in the Western world.

Cultural speaking rules

Communication is culturally patterned. Speaking rules in different cultures have been studied more systematically since 1960s, particularly in ethnography of speaking (or ethnography of communication), founded by Dell Hymes.

A typical example of this approach is the following characterization of Finnish speaking rules, proposed by Donal Carbaugh (1995):

· Do not say the obvious!

· When you speak say something worth of everybody´s attention!

· Do not bring forth conflicting or questionable issues! Try to keep harmonious relationships!

· Be personally committed in what you are saying!

· What you say forms a basis for the subsequent interactions!

According to Carbaugh these rules are very demanding. Speech becomes deliberate and perhaps scarce. When people using these kinds of rules meet others from different cultures, such as mainstream Americans, misunderstandings are possible.

Carbaugh goes further in describing that in the USA there are many cultures, each with their own speaking patterns and rules. According to him, in general it is important for the Americans to be able to express oneself by speaking. Everyone has the right to speak and to be heard. The social worth of the speech is less important than its personal significance. In these kinds of circumstances the amount of speech is large, and the topics of conversation are often personal experiences, thoughts and feelings. This may contribute to members of cultures representing other speaking patterns perceiving the Americans as being "superficial" (Carbaugh 1995).

Conversation has been a particular focus of linguists and discourse analysts for several decades. In intercultural studies, many regularities of conversation and joint features have been found. Conversation is like a ball game: It has its own rules. The participants need to know how to open conversation, to respond appropriately, to maintain conversation and to finish it. Turn giving and taking has been found to be systematic and is signaled by, for example, nonverbal means (e.g., eye contact, body position) or paralinguistically (e.g., intonation). In intercultural encounters, different conversational rules can cause misunderstandings. Pauses between turns, for instance, have been found to be longer in Finnish than in German conversation. This may lead to turn taking by Germans, which might be perceived by Finns as rude interruptions. Overlapping speech is common in Southern European conversation and is perceived as involvement and a sign of presence. In many Finnish contexts, overlapping speech is perceived as impolite.

- Politeness

Politeness is one of the central features of human communication. It is a human phenomenon, yet expressed differently in different cultures. Politeness is communicated both verbally and nonverbally. One of the well-know classifications of linguistic politeness is that of Brown and Levinson (1978). They talk about positive and negative politeness.

Positive politeness refers to an atmosphere of inclusion and mutuality created by linguistic means such as compliments, encouragement, joking, even the use of "white lies." Small talk is one expression of positive politeness; that is, creating linguistically a connection to other people.

Negative politeness involves respecting the privacy of other people and leaving a "back door" open, that is, showing some reservation. The use of distance-creating linguistic devices (e.g., passive forms), irony, or general vagueness is characteristic for this kind of linguistic politeness.

Developing the concept of politeness further, Scollon & Scollon (1995) distinguish two kinds of linguistic politeness strategies: involvement strategies and independency strategies. These strategies reflect the general human social needs to be connected to other people, yet to be independent and unique.

Some examples of involvement strategies include

· Paying attention to the other person or taking care of him/her (e.g., "You have a beautiful dress"; "Are you feeling better today?").

· Being optimistic ("I believe that we will make it").

· Being voluble (speaking as such already indicates a willingness to participate).

· Using the other person´s language or dialect.

- Perception, interpretation and evaluation

The interpretations people make about each other during an interaction are results of simultaneous functioning of various messages: verbal, paralinguistic and nonverbal. The information conveyed by these messages are present in a certain context. The context and earlier information about the other and all relevant aspects related to the situation influence interpretations.

Contextualization cues

During interactions, people process a large number of verbal and nonverbal cues, so-called contextualization cues (Gumperz, 1992). On the basis of these cues they make interpretations about each others´ intentions and their mutual relationship. Effective communication depends on how well people perceive each others´ intentions and how they interpret the messages. The perceptions, i.e., what is perceived and how that is interpreted, are culturally learned. One's own culture provides the measure for which something is evaluated, for instance, as being "beautiful" or "ugly", "polite" or "impolite".

People are, in their own culture, not particularly conscious of contextualization cues (sometimes also called orientation cues). When all parties seem to understand each other, and there is no obvious miscommunication, interpretation processes are not paid attention to. If misunderstandings occur, their origin is difficult to pinpoint. There is no widely accepted language for talking about, for instance, someone's conversational style. The following example by a Finn working in a multicultural organization in Mozambique illustrates this difficulty (Vasko, Kjisik & Salo-Lee 1998):

"I came back from the holiday, noticed that something had changed in the office, there was a new guy. He was a nice guy, something in his speech, or behaviour was such that it didn't fit there. He was eager and effective, maybe it was his way. I told him too that he should change but I couldn't say what it was".

Important contextualization cues in oral communication are, for instance, intonation, pitch or loudness. These are metamessages that tell how to interpret the verbal message. Decisive is not only WHAT is said but HOW something is said.

Linguistic awareness of cultures and recognition of cultural differences can be developed (e.g., Müller-Jacquier, 1993, 2003). According to Müller-Jacquier, linguistic awareness of cultures (LAC) means that "all cultural differences are ´hidden´ in linguistic manifestations. These expressions of cultural difference are found in all languages and they can be classified in different grammatical and lexical categories or even expressed non-verbally.... There is a source of mutual misunderstanding when these linguistic indicators or manifestations are not perceived by the interactors" (2003: 53).

Müller-Jacquier (2003) has elaborated LAC criteria for the analysis of communicative events. There might be cultural differences in interpretation along the following criteria:

· social meaning, lexicon

· speech acts, speech act sequences

· organization of discourse, conventions of discourse

· choice of topic

· directness/indirectness

· register

· paraverbal factors

· nonverbal means of expression

· culture-specific values/attitudes

· culture-specific behaviour (including rituals)

· behaviour sequences

 

2.3.2 Nonverbal Communication

Studies in nonverbal communication include following aspects:

· time

· space

· touching

· body language: expressions, gestures, movements, body position

· eye contact

· smell

· physical appearance

· clothing, artefacts

· living environment

Time

The structuring of time is a culture-bound phenomenon. The ways in which people locate their present relation to the past and the future as well as the ways in which they feel that time is available for a variety uses have a significant impact on how people order their lives.

Culturally different time concepts have turned out to be a considerable barrier in multicultural work. Differences surface, for instance, in punctuality requirements, adherence to schedules, attitudes towards cancellations and rescheduling, planning, methodical working, or what is found to be relevant or irrelevant to do within a certain time frame. In intercultural interactions, the differences in relation to time can be perceived by the representatives of different cultural groups as, for instance, unprofessional, an insult, or a personal trait (e.g., "an inflexible person").

In intercultural studies, various culturally different orientations to time have been identified. One of the most common one in antropogical studies is the classification into past, present and future time. We will discuss here Hall's classification of monochronic and polychronic time orientation. His classification has influenced also subsequent intercultural communication researchers (e.g., Trompernaars).