Beliefs, Attitudes, and Values

Lecture 1

The Concept of Culture

 

Plan

1. Definition of Culture

2. Cultural Markers

3. Beliefs, Attitudes, and Values

4. Cultural Clash

5. Collectivistic Versus Individualistic Cultures

Definition of Culture

Culture has been and is being studied in many fields. Therefore, there are many definitions of culture as well, depending on from which perspective the researchers approach it.

Below are some definitions:

· "Culture is communication" (Edward T. Hall)

· "Culture is the collective programming of the mind" (Geert Hofstede)

· "Culture is how things are done here" (John Mole)

· "All communication is more or less cross-cultural" (Deborah Tannen)

· "Culture is a kind of storehouse or library of possible meanings and symbols" (Ron Scollon).

Edward T. Hall defines culture as:...man's medium; there is not one aspect of human life that is not touched and altered by culture. This means personality, how people express themselves (including shows of emotion), the way they think, how they move, how problems are solved, how their cities are planned and laid out, how transportation systems function and are organized, as well as how economic and government systems are put together and function.So culture is defined as the total way of life of people, composed of their learned and shared behavior patterns, values, norms, and material objects. Culture is a very general concept. Nevertheless, culture has very powerful effects on individual behavior, including communication behavior. Do all tourists identify with Canadian traditions and values? Likely not. But the more interesting question is: Why not? The answer lies in the simple fact that most tourists come from different cultures: some vastly different like those from Japan and China, others less different, such as tourists from Eastern Canada or the United States. Even if tourists share the same language, they may have much different customs and values.

Cultural Markers

Many people have a culturally identifiable name and, perhaps, a physical appearance that conveys, or at least suggests, their cultural identity. For example, imagine a brown-skinned, dark-haired person named Augusto Torres. He identifies himself as Latino. But many individuals are not so easily identified culturally. Two million people in the United States are culturally mixed and may identify with one or two or with multiple cultures. A person named Susan Lopez might be expected to be Latina, judging only from her last name. “Lopez” actually comes from her adoptive parents, who raised her in the Latino tradition in the Southwest. But Susan’s biological father was a European American, and her mother is a Native American. Her physical appearance reflects her biological parentage. However, Susan is culturally Latina, preferring to speak Spanish, enjoying traditional food and music, and displaying other aspects of Latino culture. Here we see that blood ancestry does not dictate an individual’s cultural identification.

Many individuals have names that do not fit exactly with their self-perceived cultural identity. For example, consider three communication scholars named Fernando Moret, Miguel Gandert, and Jorge Reina Schement. Can you guess the culture with which each individual identifies? Do you think that their first name or their surname best predicts their cultural identification? In intercultural marriages, if the wife takes her husband’s surname, her cultural identity may no longer be conveyed by her married name.

When individuals change their religious or ethnic identity, they often change their name to reflect their new identification. For instance, when the world heavyweight boxer Cassius Clay became a Black Muslim, he changed his name to Mohammed Ali. Likewise, basketball player Kareem Abul-Jabbar was Lew Alcindor before he joined the Muslim faith. Some European immigrants had their names changed by U.S. immigration officials when they were processed through Ellis Island in New York. For example, “Stein” became “Stone”, “Schwarz” was often changed to “Black”. In many cases, the name change was to an Anglo-Saxon name that was easier to understand in the United States.

Cultural Clash

A cultural clash is defined as the conflict that occurs between two or more cultures when they disagree about a certain value. A cultural clash may involve strongly held values, such as those concerning religion. Cultural clashes occur frequently in cities, such as Miami, that are composed of a large number of ethnic groups. For example, Suni Muslims immigrated from the Middle East and Pakistan in the 1950s. These people have maintained their culture over the several decades of living in North Miami, resisting assimilation into the dominant general culture. This cultural maintenance of the Suni Muslims, however, frequently leads to the intergenerational cultural clash between youth and their parents. This conflict may center on the degree of individual freedom allowed young women. For instance, a fourteen-year-old asked her parents for permission to go to a shopping mall with her friends. They refused because of the Suni Muslim value that unmarried women should not be seen in public unless chaperoned by parents or older brothers. The adolescent daughter insisted on going to the mall, so her parents chained her to her bed.

     As the degree of intercultural difference becomes wider in human communication situations, information exchange is likely to be less effective. Meanings are less likely to be shared as the result of communication exchange. The message intended by the source participant has less probability of being interpreted predictably by the receiver if the two are culturally unalike. The basis for understanding one another narrows as cultural differences increase. For example, marriage advertisements in India might describe a prospective bride as “homely”, meaning she is expert in domestic matters, a good cook, and a charming hostess. To someone from the United States, the word “homely” describes an unattractive person.

     When each participant in a communication exchange represents a different culture, the likelihood of effective communication is lessened. Communication between unalike individuals does not have to be ineffective. For instance, if the participants can empathize with each other (that is, put themselves in the shoes of the other person), then they may be able to overcome the ineffective communication. Further, the individuals can try to learn about people of different cultures.

Lecture 2

 

Lecture 3

What is Communication?

Communication is the process through which participants create and share information with one another as they move toward reaching mutual understanding. Communication is involved in every aspect of daily life, from birth to death. It is universal. Communication is defined as a symbolic process whereby meaning is shared and negotiated. In other words, communication occurs whenever someone attributes meaning to another’s words or actions. Because communication is so pervasive, it is easy to take it for granted and even not to notice it. One way to understand the crucial role of communication in all human activities is to consider individuals who have had little or no human communication. Isolates are children who for some reason have grown up without talking to anyone. While physically human, such isolates cannot talk or read and are completely lacking in social relationship skills.

Communication is also a process involving several components: people who are communicating, a message that is being communicated (verbal or nonverbal), a channel through which the communication takes place, and a context. What are the main elements in the communication process through which participants create and share information with one another in order to reach a mutual understanding. Communication is receiver-oriented. Human communication is never perfectly effective. The receiver usually does not decode a message into exactly the same meaning that the source had in mind when encoding the message. A code is a classification such as a language used by individuals to categorize their experience and to communicate it to others. Decoding is the process by which the physical message is converted into an idea by the receiver. Encoding is the process by which an idea is converted into a message by a source. Noise can interfere with the transmission of a message. Noise is anything that hinders the communication process among participants. Perhaps the symbol that was communicated was interpreted differently by the receiver than by the source. When the source and the receiver do not share a common value regarding the message content, effective communication is unlikely to occur, leading to conflict. The more dissimilar the source and receiver, the more likely that their communication will be ineffective. A source is the individual who originates a message by encoding an idea into a message. A receiver is the individual who decodes a communication message by converting it into an idea. A channel is the means by which a message is transmitted from its origin to its destination. Feedback is a message about the effects of a previous message that is sent back to the source. So communication is symbolic. That is, the words we speak and the gestures we make have no meaning in themselves; rather, they achieve significance. When we use symbols, such as words and gestures, to communicate, we assume, that the other person shares our symbol system. If we tell someone to “sit down”, we assume that the individual knows what these two words (symbols) mean. Also, these symbolic meanings are conveyed both verbally and nonverbally. Thousands of nonverbal behaviors – gestures, postures, eye move ments, facial expressions – involve shared meaning.

Communication is dynamic. This means that it is not a single event but is ongoing, so that communicators are at once both senders and receivers. When we are communicating with another person, we take in messages through our senses of sight, smell, hearing – and these messages do not happen one at a time, but rather simultaneously. When we are communicating, we are creating, maintaining, or sharing meaning. This implies that people are actively involved in the communication process. Technically, one person cannot communicate alone – talking to yourself while washing your car does not qualify as communication.

 

Lecture 4

Gender Identity

We often begin life with gendered identities. When newborns arrive, they may be greeted with clothes in either blue or pink. To establish a gender identity for a baby, visitors may ask if it’s a boy or a girl. But cultural gender is not the same as biological gender. This distinction is important in understanding how our views on biological gender influence gender identities.

We communicate our gender identity, and popular culture tells us what it means to be a man or a woman. For example, some activities are considered more masculine or more feminine. Similarly, the programs that people watch on television – soap operas, football games, and so on – affect how they socialize with others and come to understand what it means to be a man or a woman.

Our expression of gender identity not only communicates who we think we are but also constructs a sense of who we want to be. We learn what masculinity and femininity mean in our culture, and we negotiate how we communicate our gender identity to others. As an example, think about the recent controversy over whether certain actresses are too thin. The female models appearing in magazine advertisements and TV commercials are very thin – leading young girls to feel ashamed of anybody fat. It was not always so. In the mid-1700s, a robust woman was considered attractive. And in many societies today, in the Middle East and in Africa, full-figured women are much more desirable than thin women. This shows how the idea of gender identity is both dynamic and closely connected to culture.

There are implications for intercultural communication as well. Gender means different things in different cultures. For example, single women cannot travel freely in many Muslim countries. And gender identity for many Muslim women means that the sphere of activity and power is primarily in the home and not in public.

 

Age Identity

As we age, we tap into (получить доступ и использовать) cultural notions of how someone our age should act, look, and behave, that is we establish an age identity. And even as we communicate how we feel about our age to others, we receive messages from the media telling us how we should feel. Thus, as we grow older, we sometimes feel that we are either too old or too young for a certain “look”. These feelings stem (возникать) from an understanding of what age means and how we identify with that age. Some people feel old at 30; others feel young at 40. Our notions of age and youth are all based on cultural conventions and they change as we grow older. Different generations often have different philosophies, values, and ways of speaking.

 

Racial and Ethnic Identity

The issue of race seems to be pervasive (всеобъемлющий, глубокий). It is the topic of many public discussions, from television talk shows to talk radio. Yet many people feel uncomfortable discussing racial issues. Most scientists now agree that there are more physical similarities than differences among so-called races and have abandoned a strict biological basis for classifying racial groups.

Instead, taking a more social scientific approach to understanding race, they recognize that racial categories like White and Black are constructed in social and historical contexts. Several arguments have been advanced to refute (опровергать) the physiological basis for classifying racial groups.

Racial categories vary widely throughout the world. In general, distinctions between White and Black, for example, are fairly rigid in the United States, and many people become uneasy when they are unable to categorize individuals. By contrast, Brazil recognizes a wide variety of intermediate racial categories in addition to White and Black. This indicates a cultural, rather than a biological, basis for racial classification. Racial identities, then, are based to some extent on physical characteristics, but they are also constructed in fluid social contexts. The important thing to remember is that the way people construct these identities and think about race influences how they communicate with others.

One’s ethnic identity reflects a set of ideas about one’s own ethnic group membership. It typically includes several dimensions: self-identification, knowledge about the ethnic culture (traditions, customs, values, behaviors), and feelings about belonging to a particular ethnic group. Ethnic identity often involves a common sense of origin and history, which may link members of ethnic groups to distant cultures in Asia, Europe, Latin America, or other locations. Ethnic identity thus means having a sense of belonging to a particular group and knowing something about the shared experiences of group members. For some Americans, ethnicity is a specific and relevant concept. These people define themselves in part in relation to their roots outside the United States – as “hyphenated (писать через дефис) Americans” (Mexican-American, Japanese-American) – or to some region prior to its being part of the United States (Navajo, Hopi, Cherokee).

 

Physical Ability Identity

We all have a physical ability identity because we all have varying degrees of physical capabilities. And our physical ability, like our age, changes over a lifetime. For example, some people experiences a temporary disability, such as breaking a bone or experiencing limited mobility after surgery. Others are born with disabilities, or have a sudden-onset disability. The number of people with physical disabilities is growing. In fact, people with disabilities see themselves as a cultural group and share many perceptions and communication patterns.

Part of this identity involves changing how they see themselves and how others see them. For people who become disabled, there are predictable stages in coming to grips (понимать) with this new identity. The first stage involves a focus on rehabilitation and physical changes. The second stage involves adjusting to the disability and the effects that it has on relationships; some friendships will not survive the disability. The final stage is when the individual begins to integrate disabled into his or her own definition of self.

Religious Identity

Religious identity is an important dimension of many people’s identities, as well as a common source of intercultural conflict. Often, religious identity gets confused with racial/ethnic identity, which means it can be problematic to view religious identity simply in terms of belonging to a particular religion. For example, when someone says, “I am Jewish”, does this mean that this person practices Judaism or views Jewishness as an ethnic identity? When someone says, “That person has a Jewish last name”, does this confer a Jewish religious identity?

Historically, Jews have been viewed as a racial group, an ethnic group, and a religious group. Drawing distinct lines between various identities – racial, ethnic, religious, class, national, regional – can lead to stereotyping. For example, Italians and Irish are often assumed to be Catholic.

Intercultural communication among religious groups also can be problematic. Religious differences have been at the root of conflicts from the Middle East, to Northern Ireland, to India/Pakistan. The traditional belief is that everyone should be free to practice whatever religion they want to, but conflict can result from the imposition of one religion’s beliefs on others who may not share those beliefs.

Religion traditionally is considered a private issue, and there is a stated separation of church and state. However, in some countries, religion and the state are inseparable, and religion is publicly practiced. Some religions communicate and mark their religious differences through their dress. Other religions do not mark their members through their clothes; for example, you may not know if someone is Buddhist, Catholic or Lutheran. Because these religious identities are less obvious, everyday interactions may not invoke them.

 

Multicultural Identity

Today, a growing number of people do not have clear racial, ethnic, or national identities. These are people who live “on the borders” between various cultural groups. While they may feel torn between different cultural traditions, they also may develop a multicultural identity – an identity that transcends (выходить за пределы) one particular culture – and feel equally at home in several cultures.

Sometimes, this multicultural identity develops as a result of being born or raised in a multiracial home. The United States, for example, has an estimated 2 million multiracial people – that is, people whose ancestry includes two or more races – and this number is increasing.

The development of racial identity for multiracial children seems to be different from either majority or minority development. These children learn early on that they are different from other people and that they don’t fit into a neat (чёткий, определенный) racial category – an awareness-of-differentness stage.

The second stage involves a struggle for acceptance, in which these children experiment with and explore both cultures. They may feel as if they live on the cultural fringe, struggling with two sets of cultural realities and sometimes being asked to choose one racial identity over the other. In the final stage, self-acceptance and assertion, these children find a more secure sense of self. This exposure to more than one culture’s norms and values often leads to a flexible and adaptable sense of identity – a multicultural identity.

 

 

Building Intercultural Skills

1. Understand the relationship between identity and history. How does history help you understand who you are?

2. What do you consider to be your identity? Describe your cultural identity. What is the most important part of your identity to you?

3. Notice how diverse your friends are. Do you have friends from different age groups? From different ethnic groups? Do you have friends with disabilities? Whose first language is not Russian/Kazakh? Think about why you have/don’t have diverse friends and what you can learn from seeing the world through their “prescription lenses”.

4. Look for advertisements in popular newspapers and magazines. Analyze the ads to see if you can identify the social values that they appeal to.

 

Lecture 5

"Foreignness" of cultures and ethnocentrism

Plan:

1. Nature and essence of the notions "home" and "foreign"

2. The essence of ethnocentrism and its role in Intercultural Communication (IC)

3. Stereotyping 

 

1. Nature and essence of the notions "home" and "foreign"

The modern types of the transport and communication facilities allow many people to realize the peculiarities and values of other cultures. From the very first contact with these cultures, people quickly perceive that representatives of these cultures react differently on the outside world. They have their own standpoint, system of values and rates of behavior, which greatly differ from the ones accepted in another culture. Thus, in situations of the divergence or mismatch of some cultural phenomena among the cultures, the notions of "home" and "foreign" appear.

The one who faces foreign culture, experiences new feelings and sensations at interacting with unknown and incomprehensible cultural phenomena. Their gamma is rather broad - from simple surprise to active resentment and protest. As the studies display, it is not enough to use only one’s own cultural knowledge and observe the behavior of foreigners. It is much more important to understand “foreign” culture, i.e. to comprehend the place and importance of the new unusual phenomena of the culture, and include the new knowledge in one’s cultural arsenal, in structure of one’s behavior and lifestyle.

Thereby, the notion “foreign” gains the key importance in IC. But problem is that, to these days the scientific determination of this notion is not worded yet. In all variants of the usage the notion “foreign” is understood on ordinary level, that is to say by separations and descriptions of the most typical signs and characteristics of this term.

Under such approach notion "foreign" has several meanings:

o "foreign" as not belonging to this place, residing out of the border of his/her native culture;

o "foreign" as strange, unusual, forming a contrast to usual and accustomed encirclement;

o "foreign" as unacquainted, unknown and inaccessible for cognition;

o "foreign" as something supernatural, omnipotent, in front of which a person is week;

o "foreign" as sinister, alien, carrying threat for life.

In the process of contacts between representatives of the different cultures various cultural-specific conceptions clash, under which each of communicants originally do not realize the differences from the first glance, each side considers their own ideas and conceptions normal. First, as this can be most often, incomprehension (something is not right) comes under which opinion and understanding do not coincide. As a rule, both sides do not call their own cultural-specific conceptions in question, but occupy ethnocentric position and ascribe foolishness, illiteracy or cruel intent to the other culture.

Figuratively, within the contact with the other culture the person feels like being abroad. He/she oversteps the accustomed situation, notions and find himself/herself in unacquainted, but attractive other world. The foreign country, on the one hand, seems to be unacquainted and even dangerous, but on the other hand, all new attracts, promises the new knowledge, and increases the outlook and life experience.

 

Stereotyping

Another barrier to intercultural communication is stereotypes, which develop as part of our everyday thought processes. Stereotypes are widely held beliefs about a group of people and are a form of generalization – a way of categorizing and processing information we receive about others in our daily life. They may be both positive and negative. The example of a negative one is the following: some people hold the stereotype that all attractive people are also smart and socially skilled. They can also develop out of negative experiences. If we have unpleasant contact with certain people, we may generalize that unpleasantness to include all members of that particular group, whatever group characteristic we focus on (race, gender, sexual orientation).

Why do we hold stereotypes? One reason is that stereotypes help us know what to expect from and how to react to others. We pick up stereotypes in different ways. The media, for example, tend to portray cultural groups in stereotypic ways – older people as needing help, or Asian Americans or African Americans as followers or background figures for Whites. We may even learn stereotypes in our family. Stereotypes often operate at an unconscious level and are so persistent, people have to work at rejecting them. This process involves several steps: 1) recognizing the negative stereotypes (we all have them), and 2) obtaining individual information that can counteract the stereotype.

Lecture 6

Verbal Communication

       Plan

1. Code-Switching

2. Turn-Taking

3. Self-Disclosure

4. Content Versus Relationship

5. Listening

6. Cultural Variations in Language

 

Language influences thought, and thus influences the meanings that are conveyed by words. Becoming fluent in a foreign language is a difficult and time-consuming task, but it is essential to gaining intercultural understanding of the society in which that language is spoken.

An individual’s perceptions are more important than objective reality in determining the individual’s behavior. These perceptions differ from one culture to another. One of the main propositions of intercultural communication is that culture shapes an individual’s perceptions, and thus behavior.

One of the important intellectual contributions of the Chicago School is a theoretical perspective (концепция) called symbolic interaction, defined as the theory that individuals act toward objects on the basis of meanings and perceptions that are formed through communication with others. The founder of symbolic interactionism was George Herbert Mead. Mead argued that no one is born with a self (a personality), nor does it develop instinctively. Instead, an individual’s self-conception evolves through talking with others (parents, teachers) during childhood. Mead suggested that human behavior could be understood by learning how individuals give meaning to the symbolic information that they exchange with others. Through such conversations, an individual forms perceptions which then determine actions.

Code- Switching (переключение с одного языка на другой)

Code-switching is the process by which individuals change from speaking one language to another during a conversation. Participants must be equally fluent in at least two languages. Intercultural communication scholars have investigated under what conditions code-switching takes place and its consequences. They have learned that code-switching has complex rules, although it usually happens naturally without the code-switchers being fully aware of why they switch when they do.

The language spoken may affect the meanings derived by the conversation partners. For example, two people fluent in both English and Spanish are having a conversation in Spanish. A third person joins them who can only speak English. The conversation rather naturally switches to English. No one states: “Okay, now let’s talk in English”. The change happens naturally. Now let’s assume the speakers do not know the third person who joins them, but they know his name is Jesus Martinez. They could continue speaking Spanish, assuming that Jesus knows the language, until they perceive that he does not comprehend what they are saying. This example illustrates code-switching as a desire to accommodate another participant.

Code-switching occurs more frequently in countries where many people are bilingual. Code-switching can be used in the opposite direction of the examples above. If the goal was to send a very different message, code-switching could be used to distance oneself from others. Refusing to communicate in a shared code sends a clear message that the conversation is closed to “strangers”.

 

Turn- Taking (взятие коммуникативного хода, смена ролей)

One important and necessary behavior in every face-to-face interpersonal exchange is turn-taking, defined as the process through which the participants in a conversation decide who will talk first, next, and so forth. Have you noticed how individuals in a conversation decide who will talk next? Nonverbal clues may be important, such as when an individual looks at the person who is expected to talk next in a conversation.

When two people who are talking do not share a common culture, they may misunderstand each other’s subtle clues as to when each should speak. As a result, both individuals may try to talk at the same time, or their discourse may be interrupted by awkward silences. As a consequence of these difficulties with turn-taking, both conversation partners may feel uncomfortable. For instance, when a Japanese and a North American talk in English, a pause of a few seconds’ duration may frequently occur before the Japanese speaker responds.

Self-Disclosure (процесс самораскрытия)

Self-Disclosure is the degree to which an individual reveals personal information to another person. An individual may not want to disclose such details as feelings toward another person who is a mutual friend, or some item of taboo information. Such topics are generally not considered acceptable in casual conversation because of social taboos and sanctions (запрещение, запретительное предписание). However, individuals may consciously break their silence on these subjects as a political act in order to change these taboos.

Research has been conducted on self-disclosure. Scholars have investigated whether or not women are more likely to disclose personal information about themselves than are men. Generally, personal and social characteristics are not related to the degree of an individual’s disclosure. The personal relationship between two or more individuals, however, does affect self-disclosure, with same- culture intimates (близкий друг).

Cultural factors strongly determine the degree to which self-disclosure is appropriate. Collectivistic cultures are not very disclosing, while individualistic are more self-disclosing. Europeans and Americans disclose more personal details about their health, thoughts than do the Japanese or Chinese. This distinction implies that an individual may often not disclose inner feelings to others. Asians believe that self-centered talk is boastful, pretentious, and should be avoided. So when an American discloses some personal information to an Asian, the latter feels uncomfortable and does not self-disclose in return.

Content Versus Relationship

Communication scholars distinguish between two dimensions (аспект, характеристика) of a message:

1) the message content, or what is said;

2) the relationship, or how it is said.

This distinction was originally formulated by Gregory Bateson while observing monkeys playing in the San Francisco zoo. He noticed that one monkey would nip another in a way that looked like real combat, but both monkeys understood that the nip was just in play. Bateson concluded that the bite message must have been preceded by another signal that established a playful relationship between the two monkeys. He called the relationship message metacommunication, that is communication about communication. Humans as well as monkeys, frequently engage in metacommunication. For example, one person is laughing while he makes a very offensive statement to a close friend, who thus understands from the smile that the remark is in jest.

The content versus relationship dimensions of communication are different in different cultures. Collectivistic cultures put greater emphasis upon the relationship aspect of a message. For example, individuals in a collectivistic culture form messages in a way so as not to offend or make another person lose face. Less important is the clarity of the message content because relationships are considered more important. In comparison, individualistic cultures stress message content over the relationship dimension of a message. If someone’s feelings get hurt by a communication message, too bad. Individuals generally feel that effective communication depends on being clear and avoiding ambiguity.

One of the important functions of interpersonal communication is to form and maintain interpersonal relationships (intimate or distant, etc). Culture defines the nature of these relationships between people and their intercultural interpersonal communication. Thus one of the most important dimension of interpersonal relationships, especially in most Asian cultures, is face, defined as the public self-image that an individual wants to present in a particular social context. Face is particularly important for the Japanese, Chinese, and other Asians and Asian Americans who share a collectivistic culture. These individuals are extremely concerned with how they will appear to others around them. They wish to avoid looking foolish or making a social error that could lead to guilt or shame. Much attention is given to maintaining positive interpersonal relationships with peers. In order to help another person maintain face, one should pay compliments, and offer frequent apologies for oneself. One should not criticize Asian persons in public situations, as this act might harm the individual’s face. For example, a North American teaching English as a foreign language in Japan playfully said in class to a favorite student: “You are a lazy student”. The student did not talk to the teacher for the next several weeks and was very hurt by the teacher’s joking comment. The student had lost face.

A distinction can be made between maintaining someone else’s face versus your own. In collectivistic cultures like Asia, the maintenance of other-face predominates. In individualistic cultures, attention to self-face is more important.

 

Listening

Communication is a two-way process, for every person speaking there is usually someone who is listening. The receiving role in the communication process is just as important as the sending role, although it has received much less attention from communication scholars.

Most of us are not very effective listeners, because we are passive instead of active listeners. One reason for our inattentiveness while listening is because humans typically speak at about 125 to 150 words per minute, while individuals can listen at a rate of 400 words per minute. During our spare time as a listener, we often let our mind wander to other topics. Such inattentive listening often occurs during lecture classes. Twenty minutes after a lecture, listeners can remember only about half of the message content. One hour after the lecture, remembering drops to 40 percent; one day later this figure is 35 percent, and after two days it is 30 percent. One week after the lecture, listeners can remember 27 percent, and after two weeks, 25 percent. These data reflect the abilities of average individuals.

One principle of listening is to listen through the words in order to detect central themes. A good listener demonstrates attentiveness, does not interrupt, and is cautious in asking questions of the speaker. A listener should control his/her emotions and avoid being distracted. Listening demonstrates caring for the speaker and the topic.

Active listening consists of two steps:

1) hearing, or exposure to the message;

2) understanding, when we connect the message to what we already know;

3) remembering, so that we do not lose the message content;

4) evaluating, thinking about the message and deciding whether or not it is valid;

5) responding, when we encode a return message based on what we have heard and what we think of it.

Cultural factors affect each of these five components of active listening. In many cultures that consider it impolite to ask a speaker a question responding may not be valued, and to disagree would be unthinkable. Many of the difficulties in communication between culturally unalike individuals may be due to cultural factors in listening behavior. It is often problematic as to whether one’s conversation partner is tuned in or not.

 

Lecture 7

Nonverbal Communication

Plan

1. Importance of Nonverbal Communication

2. Cultural Factors in Nonverbal Communication.

3. Types of Nonverbal Communication

a) Body movements

b) Space

Nonverbal Communication is defined as all types of communication that take place without words. As is generally characteristic of anything that is defined as the absence of something else, nonverbal communication includes a very wide range of communication behaviors – everything from a nod, to the wave of a hand, to a wearing a new suit. All of these activities and artifacts transmit meaning, so they are considered to be communication. None involve words, so they are examples of nonverbal communication.

Why is nonverbal communication so important?

1. Nonverbal communication is present everywhere. There is no way to avoid communicating nonverbally. Even the decision not to speak is a message, such as when you do not talk with the person sitting next to you in a bus. In other words, you cannot stop someone from making inferences (вывод, предположение) about your nonverbal behavior, even if you are not intentionally sending a message. This statement is certainly true of nonverbal communication. Much nonverbal communication is unconscious and unintentional.

2. Nonverbal communication usually comes first. Even before individuals open their mouths, they have communicated nonverbally by their posture, their clothing, and so forth. During the initial impressions between two or more people, when there is a high degree of uncertainty in the communication situation, nonverbal communication is particularly important. When strangers meet, nonverbal communication often determines whether or not verbal interaction will occur.

3. Nonverbal communication is especially likely to be trusted. When nonverbal communication contradicts verbal communication, nonverbal communication wins out. Because it is difficult for individuals to control their nonverbal messages, such messages are perceived as more valid. It is difficult to lie nonverbally. However, under certain circumstances, even nonverbal communication can be deceptive. Facial expressions, for example, are carefully watched in card games in order to determine if a card player is bluffing.

4. Nonverbal communication can lead to misunderstanding, especially when verbal messages are missing or limited. If two participants in a communication situation do not share the same meaning for a nonverbal symbol, the results will be miscommunication. The “language” of nonverbal symbols differs from culture to culture, just as verbal language does.

5. Nonverbal communication is especially important to intercultural communication situations. When verbal and nonverbal communication is redundant (многословный, излишний) misunderstandings are less likely to occur. Each type of communication can reinforce the other. When the verbal fluency of the communication participants is limited, nonverbal reinforcement may clarify the intended meaning.

 

Body movements

Kinesics is a type of nonverbal communication that involves body movement and activities (also called body language). The four main types of kinesic communication are: emblems, illustrators, regulators, affect displays.

Emblems are body movements that can be translated into words and that are used intentionally to transmit a message. One type of emblem that is particularly important, perhaps ranking second only to facial expressions, is hand gestures. People talk with their hands. Hand gestures like the thumbs up or the thumb and forefinger circle (okay) sign, the palm outward gesture (silence, or stop), and circling a forefinger near one’s head (crazy) all have a widely understood meaning. But the meanings of these emblems may be quite different in various nations.

Hand gestures can be very confusing interculturally. As with verbal language, nonverbal codes are not universal. There are gender differences as well as cultural differences in hand gestures. An emblem unique to Japanese women is the hand held in front of the mouth when smiling or laughing. People from the United States perceive this gesture as girlish, polite, and cute. Only women in Japan cover their mouth when smiling. Men never do.

In addition to hand gestures, head movements can also communicate nonverbally. Like hand movements, head movements differ from one culture to another. In India the head gesture for a positive response to a question is a sideways movement which is perceived by most non-Indians as a head shake meaning no. But after visiting India for a period of time, the typical foreigner is likely to have picked up the sideways head nod. When the person returns to the home country and uses shaking the head sideways to mean yes, further confusion occurs. In Turkey, an up-and-down movement of the head conveys a negative rather than a positive expression.

Illustrators are a type of kinesic behavior that accompanies what is said verbally. Hand and body gestures are a natural part of speaking for most individuals. Illustrators include gesturing with one’s hands, smiling or frowning. They are particularly noticeable when an individual is giving directions to a certain place. Illustrators differ from emblems in that they cannot be translated into words.

Regulators are kinesic behaviors that control turn-taking and other procedural aspects of interpersonal communication. A practical necessity in every conversation is to determine who is going to speak first, next, and so on. This process of turn-taking is mainly an unconscious process. Sometimes problems occur, such as when two or more people talk at once and no one can be understood. Usually this behavior occurs when individuals are excited or angry. In most conversations, turn-taking proceeds smoothly because of regulators like the turn of a head, gaze, and other body movements.

Affect displays are kinesic behaviors that express emotions. Facial expressions are one of the most important ways of communicating meaning to another person. For example, surprise is conveyed by arching (изгибать дугой) the eyebrows, opening the eyelids so that the white of the eye shows. In contrast, the emotion of fear is shown by raising the eyebrows and drawing them together, while tensing the lips and drawing them back. Disgust is conveyed by wrinkling the nose, lowering the eyebrows. The facial expressions for anger, happiness, and sadness are generally universal across all cultures, but other emotions are expressed differently depending on particular cultural constraints. Rules for expressing emotions vary depending on the culture. All cultures have display rules telling members when it is appropriate to show emotion and when to hide it. Affect displays can occur via crying, laughing, and even by one’s posture (поза).

Space

Proxemics is nonverbal communication that involves space. The word Proxemics derives from the same Latin root as proximity, implying that one dimension of space is how close or distant two or more people are located. How physically close or distant two people stand when they talk tells a great deal about their relationship.

A distance of only eight to thirteen inches (дюйм-2.5 см) between males, for example, is considered very aggressive. When a European American talks with a Latin American, the former feels that the Latin American is uncomfortably “pushy” or trying to be intimate, while the Latin American perceives the person from the United States as cold and remote. Arabic people from the Middle East do not feel that someone is friendly unless they are standing close enough to smell the garlic on the other’s breath. Clearly, there are strong cultural differences in perception of the appropriate space between people involved in interpersonal communication.

Religious values may affect spatial arrangements. For example, the Navajo always build their hogans (хижина) (six- or eight-sided one-story structures) facing east, in order to face the rising sun. According to traditional beliefs, a Navajo should begin the day by running toward the sun. Islamic people believe that the main entrance of important buildings should face in the direction of Mecca.

Space also affects who talks to whom. For example, employees in an office whose desks are located closer are more likely to communicate. Families who live in neighboring homes are more likely to become friends than those who live farther away, even though the spatial difference may be negligible (незначительный). New communication technologies like the Internet may overcome the effect of spatial distance on the frequency of communication. E-mail effectively removes spatial barriers whether two people are working in adjoining (соседний) buildings or are located across the world from each other.

 

Lecture 1

The Concept of Culture

 

Plan

1. Definition of Culture

2. Cultural Markers

3. Beliefs, Attitudes, and Values

4. Cultural Clash

5. Collectivistic Versus Individualistic Cultures

Definition of Culture

Culture has been and is being studied in many fields. Therefore, there are many definitions of culture as well, depending on from which perspective the researchers approach it.

Below are some definitions:

· "Culture is communication" (Edward T. Hall)

· "Culture is the collective programming of the mind" (Geert Hofstede)

· "Culture is how things are done here" (John Mole)

· "All communication is more or less cross-cultural" (Deborah Tannen)

· "Culture is a kind of storehouse or library of possible meanings and symbols" (Ron Scollon).

Edward T. Hall defines culture as:...man's medium; there is not one aspect of human life that is not touched and altered by culture. This means personality, how people express themselves (including shows of emotion), the way they think, how they move, how problems are solved, how their cities are planned and laid out, how transportation systems function and are organized, as well as how economic and government systems are put together and function.So culture is defined as the total way of life of people, composed of their learned and shared behavior patterns, values, norms, and material objects. Culture is a very general concept. Nevertheless, culture has very powerful effects on individual behavior, including communication behavior. Do all tourists identify with Canadian traditions and values? Likely not. But the more interesting question is: Why not? The answer lies in the simple fact that most tourists come from different cultures: some vastly different like those from Japan and China, others less different, such as tourists from Eastern Canada or the United States. Even if tourists share the same language, they may have much different customs and values.

Cultural Markers

Many people have a culturally identifiable name and, perhaps, a physical appearance that conveys, or at least suggests, their cultural identity. For example, imagine a brown-skinned, dark-haired person named Augusto Torres. He identifies himself as Latino. But many individuals are not so easily identified culturally. Two million people in the United States are culturally mixed and may identify with one or two or with multiple cultures. A person named Susan Lopez might be expected to be Latina, judging only from her last name. “Lopez” actually comes from her adoptive parents, who raised her in the Latino tradition in the Southwest. But Susan’s biological father was a European American, and her mother is a Native American. Her physical appearance reflects her biological parentage. However, Susan is culturally Latina, preferring to speak Spanish, enjoying traditional food and music, and displaying other aspects of Latino culture. Here we see that blood ancestry does not dictate an individual’s cultural identification.

Many individuals have names that do not fit exactly with their self-perceived cultural identity. For example, consider three communication scholars named Fernando Moret, Miguel Gandert, and Jorge Reina Schement. Can you guess the culture with which each individual identifies? Do you think that their first name or their surname best predicts their cultural identification? In intercultural marriages, if the wife takes her husband’s surname, her cultural identity may no longer be conveyed by her married name.

When individuals change their religious or ethnic identity, they often change their name to reflect their new identification. For instance, when the world heavyweight boxer Cassius Clay became a Black Muslim, he changed his name to Mohammed Ali. Likewise, basketball player Kareem Abul-Jabbar was Lew Alcindor before he joined the Muslim faith. Some European immigrants had their names changed by U.S. immigration officials when they were processed through Ellis Island in New York. For example, “Stein” became “Stone”, “Schwarz” was often changed to “Black”. In many cases, the name change was to an Anglo-Saxon name that was easier to understand in the United States.

Beliefs, Attitudes, and Values

Culture is stored in individual human beings, in the form of their beliefs, attitudes, values.

Beliefs are an individual’s representations of the outside world. Some beliefs are seen as very likely to be true. Others are seen as less probable. Beliefs serve as the storage system for the content of our past experiences, including thoughts, memories. Beliefs are shaped by the individual’s culture. When a belief is held by most members of a culture we call it a cultural belief. Culture influences the perceptions and behaviors of the individuals sharing the culture through beliefs, values and norms. They are important building blocks of culture. Not everyone in a society holds exactly the same cultural beliefs. In other words, an individual’s culture does not totally determine his/her beliefs. But the members of a society who share a common culture have relatively more similar beliefs than do individuals of different cultures. For instance, most Japanese believe that gift giving is much more important than do people in the United States. West African people believe in magic and in the religious sacrifice of animals more than do individuals in most other cultures.

     Attitudes, like beliefs, are internal events and not directly observable by other people. Attitudes are emotional responses to objects, ideas, and people. Attitudes store these emotional responses in the same way that beliefs store the content of past events. People express opinions, observable verbal behavior, and engage in other behaviors, partially on the basis of their attitudes and beliefs. Attitudes and beliefs form a storage system for culture within the individual. Attitudes and beliefs are internal and are not publicly observable. We cannot know your attitudes or your beliefs directly, but we can observe what we say (our expressed opinions) and what we do (our behavior). Many attitudes are based on cultural values. In the United States, freedom is a dominant value. In others, it’s just one value among others. The meaning of any value, including freedom, differs across cultures.

     Values are what people who share a culture regard strongly as good or bad. Values have an evaluative component. They often concern desired goals, such as the values of mature love, world peace. Values also concern ways of behaving that lead to these goals, such as valuing thrift, honesty, or speaking and acting quietly so as not to make noise that disturbs other people. Cultural values involve judgments (they specify what is good or bad) and are normative (they state or imply what should be). For instance, most people in the United States feel that bullfighting is disgusting and cruel. But to many Mexicans and Spaniards it is an important and exciting sport.

 

Cultural Clash

A cultural clash is defined as the conflict that occurs between two or more cultures when they disagree about a certain value. A cultural clash may involve strongly held values, such as those concerning religion. Cultural clashes occur frequently in cities, such as Miami, that are composed of a large number of ethnic groups. For example, Suni Muslims immigrated from the Middle East and Pakistan in the 1950s. These people have maintained their culture over the several decades of living in North Miami, resisting assimilation into the dominant general culture. This cultural maintenance of the Suni Muslims, however, frequently leads to the intergenerational cultural clash between youth and their parents. This conflict may center on the degree of individual freedom allowed young women. For instance, a fourteen-year-old asked her parents for permission to go to a shopping mall with her friends. They refused because of the Suni Muslim value that unmarried women should not be seen in public unless chaperoned by parents or older brothers. The adolescent daughter insisted on going to the mall, so her parents chained her to her bed.

     As the degree of intercultural difference becomes wider in human communication situations, information exchange is likely to be less effective. Meanings are less likely to be shared as the result of communication exchange. The message intended by the source participant has less probability of being interpreted predictably by the receiver if the two are culturally unalike. The basis for understanding one another narrows as cultural differences increase. For example, marriage advertisements in India might describe a prospective bride as “homely”, meaning she is expert in domestic matters, a good cook, and a charming hostess. To someone from the United States, the word “homely” describes an unattractive person.

     When each participant in a communication exchange represents a different culture, the likelihood of effective communication is lessened. Communication between unalike individuals does not have to be ineffective. For instance, if the participants can empathize with each other (that is, put themselves in the shoes of the other person), then they may be able to overcome the ineffective communication. Further, the individuals can try to learn about people of different cultures.