The essence of ethnocentrism and its role in Intercultural Communication

During the contact with the other cultures majority of people judge about foreign cultural value, using as sample and criterion, cultural values of their own ethnic group. Such type of judgments is called ethnocentrism. Ethnocentrism implies peculiar psychological arrangement of people to perceive and value other cultures and behavior of their representatives through prism of their culture.

Most often ethnocentrism implies that people’s own culture exceeds other cultures, and in this case it is estimated as the only right one, exceeding all others, which, thereby, are underrated. Everything that deviates from customs, systems of valuables, habits, types of behavior of their own culture, is considered as low-grade and classified as substandard. Culture of the people is put in the centre of the world and considers itself as measure for all things. Ethnocentrism means that values of the other cultures are considered and evaluated from the point of views of own culture.

Ethnocentristic vision of the world has deep roots in human history. As far back as in antiquity, Greeks divided all people into Hellenes and Barbarians. Such disparaging attitude to the other nations/tribes and their culture is founded on belief that they are "inhuman", "alien". This attitude can be found among many people around the world. The superiority of their own culture seems natural and has a positive estimation, while "foreign" culture seems as something strange, unnatural.

The feeling of superiority was brightly displayed by European colonizers: majority of Europeans considered the non-European inhabitants of the colony as inferior in social, cultural and racial aspects, but their own lifestyle, of course, seemed as the only true to them. If the natives had different religious beliefs, they became the pagans, if they did not share the opinion of colonizers, they were named stupid. Proclaiming their own standards absolute, Europeans condemned any deviation from European lifestyle, not realizing that natives could have their own standards.

Studies of ethnocentrism, carried out by D. Campbell and his colleagues, have shown that it is typical for ethnic groups

· to consider all phenomena in their culture to be natural and correct, but other cultures are unnatural and wrong;

· to consider the customs of their group as universal: what is good for us, that is good for others;

· to perceive the rates and values of their ethnic group as undoubtedly true;

· to help to the members of their group;

· to act in interest of their group;

· to feel the hostility to the other ethnic groups;

· to be proud of their group.

The majority of cultural anthropologists agree that ethnocentrism is characteristic to all cultures. In many of them it is accepted to consider that to look at the world through prism of their culture is natural, and this has both positive and negative moments. Positive aspect is concluded in that ethnocentrism allows unconsciously separate the representatives of one ethnic group from another one. Its negative side is concluded in conscious aspire to insulate one people from others, form the pejorative attitude of one culture to another.

As it was already noted, culture of any nation is a complex system of values and the manifestation of cultural activity and relations of its representatives can be found there. Each element of this system has determined sense for one or another social community. The process of cognition of the culture under such approach includes discovery of value importance corresponding to subject, phenomena, and relations. The results of this cognitive activity are consolidated in minds of the people as corresponding to sense. The sense is an element of the mind of the individual, in which essence of the subject or phenomena under study, its characteristic and the forms of cultural activity are revealed.

In the process of intercultural communication interacting sides face the need to comprehend foreign culture and there are certain particularities. The purpose of comprehension of the foreign cultural phenomena differs from comprehension of home cultural phenomena. In this case, it turns out that attempts to use the system of norms and values of home culture are unacceptable since this inevitably brings about inadequate result. Conversely, attempts to comprehend foreign culture by methods typical to it also bring the same invalid results.

Interpretation (the explanation) of the phenomena of foreign culture results from collision of accustomed and unaccustomed conceptions. This creates the situation of discharge, in accordance with which understanding of something new, unknown occurs by comparisons with accustomed and familiar phenomena of the similar sort from home culture. Depending on this interpretation can be adequate or inadequate.

Importance of ethnocentrism for process of intercultural communication is valued ambiguously by scientists. Rather big group of the researchers suppose that ethnocentrism as a whole is a negative phenomena, equivalent to nationalism and even racism. This estimation of ethnocentrism reveals itself in trends of inability to comprehend the cultures of all other ethnic groups in combination with high estimation of one’s own group. But as any social-psychological phenomena it cannot be considered only negatively. Though ethnocentrism often creates the obstacles for intercultural communication, but at the same time it executes the useful function for ethnic group to maintain identity and specificity of the group.

The researchers of ethnocentrism note that it can reveal itself in greater or smaller degree. The last depends on particularities of the culture. So, the data exist that representatives of collective cultures are more ethnocentric, than the members of individual cultures. At analysis of ethnocentrism it is also necessary to take into account the social factors because system of the social relations and condition of interethnic relations in given society influence on degree of its expression.

If in the given society non-critical attitude on all spheres of vital activity of ethnic groups is wide-spread and there is an attempt to understand and value foreign culture it is a good-natured, or flexible, variety of ethnocentrism. There is also another type of ethnocentrism which reveals itself in brightly expressed forms of ethnic conflict. Such ethnocentrism is called militant. People do not only judge about foreign values proceeding from home culture values, but also obtrude their own culture to another ethnic group. Militant ethnocentrism is expressed, as a rule, in hatred, mistrust, accusation of the other group in their own failure.

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.