Comu1311 Examination notes

Comu1311 Examination notes

Ch.9 Developing relations and culturally different others

Components of culture (Dodd's model)

a) The inner core of culture -History: deposit and carrier of cultural heritage -Identity: a sense of "who we are" or "who I am"; person's subjective experience of her or himself in relation to the world -Geertz (1973) writes that a local or folk culture is comprised of the taken-for-granted and repetitive nature of the everyday culture of which individuals have mastery Theory: cultural theorists -Biological theorists: posit humans as merely "biological species", underplaying the significance of culture -Cultural theorists: understand culture as a powerful force that affects our behaviour and the ways we experience the world -Cultural theorists argue that culture is shaped by a society's dominant economic and political system -Research using cultural studies shows how media culture provides the materials for constructing views of the world, behaviour, and even identities Media culture: radio, television, film and other products of media culture provide materials out of which we forge our identities; our notion of class, race, ethnicity and nationality; our sense of "us" vs "them" Media is a profound source of cultural pedagogy, it contributes to educating us how to behave and what to think and what not to c) The outer layer of culture (institution within culture)

-Health system -Anthony D. Smith views myths and memories as part of a culture, remembered as part of a golden past and the commemoration and celebration of heroic events -According to Smith, every ethnic group has a mythologized version of its past in which heroic events and heroes occupy a prominent position these events and characters are often evoked during different occasions to inspire the members of the group, to build social cohesion among them b) Subculture defined by social class -Socioeconomic status (SES) can be the basis for a subculture -The Indian caste system example of hierarchically ordered social class ranking -Research also reveals differences between people of different SES with regard to friendship, prestige and trust c) Organizational culture -Each organizations has its ways of doing things and ways of communicating, which together constitute its organizational culture -Organisational culture give members a sense of identity d) Regional culture -Regional differences imply differences in social attitudes, lifestyle, food preferences and communication -We respond to sensory stimuli by selecting, organisating, interpreting them and from them we create a meaningful picture of our world -The process of human information processing is referred to as perception. It explains how we see or sense things around us -The first stage of information processing perception, which refers to how we see or sense things around us -According to psychologist Blaine Goss (1995): the information we manage every day has 2 origins: external and internal -People, events, objects are sources of external information -Knowledge, past experiences, feelings are internal world of information 2. Stages of the perception process -The perception process: not always based on true picture of reality, feedback about ourselves and others, we behave as though our perceptions are real a) The selection stage -Which information is received via the senses, then attended to and interpreted by the brain -We are bombarded with an enormous array of stimuli as part of our everyday lives, but we are limited in the number of stimuli we can meaningfully process selection process helps us to discern those stimuli which are immediately useful to us the tendency to presume that someone who has one good trait is likely to have other good traits)

-The second tradition of the theory focuses on individual differences in person perception (e.g. the tendency to look for evidence that is consistent with our first impression) c) Culture and interpretation -For instance: Red for Chinese represents splendor and wealth and is a wedding colour; Western white is a wedding colour because it is perceived as suggesting purity -People also try to explain an observed behaviour by attributing to either personal or situational causes -When we explain someone's behaviour in terms of personality, motivation, or personal preferences personal attributes -When we explain someone's behaviour in terms of unusual circumstances, social pressure or physical forces beyond their control, we are using situational attributes -When we make attributions of people's behaviours on the basis of either personality or situational factors, we are prone to biases -In particular, we engage in a self-serving bias, we tend to attribute a positive behaviour by ingroup members to internal factors and their negative behaviour to situational variables;

-In contrast, we tend to attribute positive behaviour by outgroup members to situational variables and negative behaviour to personality variables For instance: a student's failure to pass an exam could be attributed to a lack of intelligence on the part of the student (internal factor) or too much social or family pressure (external factor)

Perception and intercultural communication a) Ethnocentrism

-Highly ethnocentric people tend to engage in self-centred dialogue in which they use their own cultural standards to judge the experience of communicating with others -Ethnocentrism may lead to prejudice, stereotypes, or discrimination and thus Utilitarian: our prejudices may be rewarded economically or socially; for instance, prejudice against minority groups might put people from the mainstream culture in a more favourable position when competing in the job market Ego-defensive: prejudice allows us to avoid admitting certain things about ourselves; for instance: if you are unsuccessful in some pursuit, you could blame those who were successful and in doing so, avoid examining the reasons for your own failure and protect your self-esteem A value-expressive function: it allows people to highlight the aspects of life they value, such as an affiliation with a particular social group A knowledge function: allow us to organize and structure our world in ways that make sense to us and are relatively convenient -Brislin further categorized prejudice according to the internsity of action or response: verbal abuse, physical avoidance, discrimination, physical attack and massacre c) Stereotypes -Pre-conceived beliefs -Associated with a group or category of people, but may not be generalizable to the entire group -Can be formed from a false association between two variables -In its original sense, "stereotype" stands for "solid impression" -Stereotypes is a form of social consensus rather than individual judgments Theory: Self-fulfilling prophecy -It is a statement that becomes true by directly or indirectly altering actions --to what/whose ends power is used.

-He argued that communication rarely takes place between pure "equals", even though most of our models of understanding communication make this assumption -His work reveals an interest in questions about where power is located in a culture, who has and who doesn't have it, how power is distributed, how those in power obtain and keep power, and to what/ whose ends power is used -He believes that power is dynamic, flowing through individuals in various contexts and relationships -Importantly, people who are the subjects of power often find ways to resist this power, but this doesn't mean such resistance is easy d) Uncertainty avoidance -This dimension reflects a culture's tolerance of ambiguity and acceptance of risk.

-In high uncertainty avoidance cultures, members seek for information and certainty, and are actively securities seeking.

-In low uncertainty avoidance cultures, members are more comfortable dealing with diversity, ambiguity and risk.

-High uncertainty avoidance tends to be found in collectivistic cultures can be found in consumer behaviour For instance: risk perception is found to be negatively associated with Asian consumers' willingness to adopt online purchasing Similarly, Greek consumers have greater concerns for security than British consumers -Weber and Hsee contended that people from collectivistic cultures maybe more willing to take risks, because in a collectivistic society family and other ingroup members are expected to help a person bear the possible adverse consequences of risky choices e) Long term-short term orientations -This cultural dimension was developed by Hofstede and Bond, also labelled as

Confucian work dynamism

-Confucian work dynamism refers to dedicated, motivated, responsible and educated individuals with a sense of commitment and organizational identity and loyalty -Countries and regions high in Confucian work dynamism: HK, Singapore, Tw, South korea, Japan five economic dragons results, and a willingness to subordinate oneself for a purpose.

-Short-term orientation is consistent with spending to keep up with social pressure, less savings, and preference for quick results.

Hall's high and low context cultural dimension

-Hall divided cultures into low and high context this dimension refers to the extent to which we gather information from the physical, social, and psychological context of an interaction (high-context) as opposed to the explicit verbal code (low-context) -In high context cultures, information about procedures is not explicitly communicated by using language. The context is supposed to be a cue for behaviour -In high context communication, the listener is already contexted and does not need to be given much background information For instance: the word "unhappy" contains two morphemes: happy and the prefix "un" meaning "not" c) Syntax: the study of the grammatical and structural rules of language we combine words into sentences according to grammatical rules in order to communicate meaning d) Semantics: refer to the study of the meaning of words and the relationship between words and their referents  Linguists identify 2 types of meaning: denotative and connotative For denotative: refers to the literal meaning of a word or an object descriptive; for instance: a denotative description of a big mac would be that it is a sandwich sold by McDonald's that weighs a certain number of grams and is served with certain sauces For connotation: deals with the cultural meanings that become attached to a word or an object; for instance: the connotative meaning of a big mac may be certain aspects of American culture e) Pragmatics: concerned with the impact of language on human perception and behaviour focus on how language is used in social context Theory: structural linguistics -Structural linguists: the study of language based on the assumption that language is coherent system of formal units and that the task of linguistic study is to inquire into the nature of this systematic arrangement without reference to historical antecedents -The rise of structural linguistics largely due to the Swiss linguist, who compared language to a game of chess he noted that a chess piece in isolation has no value and that a move by any one piece has repercussions on all the other pieces -Structural linguistics also criticized for being too narrow in conception for instance: generative linguistics argues that it is necessary to go beyond a description of the location of items to produce a grammar that reflects a native speaker's intuitive knowledge of language -With each language system, a spoken or written word (the signifier) attributes meaning to objects, concepts and ideas (the signified-mental picture produced by the signifier) in the construction of reality  The relation between signifier and signified is based on convention  For instance: the linguistic sign "dog" (signifier) represents a "four-leggedm barking domestic animal" (signified)

-The critiques of the Saussure's model argue that abstract concepts like justice, truth and freedom cannot be tied directly to the outside world, and they mean different things to different people

Language and perception

Noam Chomsky's universal grammar -Noam Chomsky has claimed that all human languages share a universal grammar that is innate in the human species and culturally invariant -Nativists such as Chomsky argue that language acquisition involves triggering these models, so that only the details of a particular language must be learned -Constructivists grounded in the work of Piaget, oppose the idea that there is a universal grammar they argue that language acquisition involves unveiling the patterns of language and thus requires interaction with a structured environment The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis -Nominalists argue that our perception of external reality is shaped not by language but by material reality, any thought can be expressed in any language and can convey the same meaning -Relativists believe our language determines our ideas, thought patterns, and perceptions of reality -The relationship between language and thought is well captured in the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which purposes that language and thought are inextricably tied together, so that a person's language determines the categories of thought open to that individual -In 1931, Benjamin Lee Whorf study of the Hopi language, Whorf learned that in Hopi the past, present, and future tense must be expressed differently from English, as the Hopi language does not have verb tense lead Whorf to believe that people who speak different languages are directed to different types of observations of the world -The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis doesn't imply that people of one culture cannot think of objects for which another culture has plentiful vocabulary -The hypothesis shows that language, thought and culture are closely connected Theory: The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis -They claimed that a cultural system is embodied in the language of the people who speak the language this cultural framework shapes the thoughts of the language's speakers The hypothesis has two versions:

-Linguistic determinism (the strong version) the way one think is determined by the language one speaks -Linguistic relativity (the weak version) language provides the conceptual categorize that influence how its speaker's perceptions are encoded and stored An illustration:

-In South Africa, the Zulu language has 39 words for "green", whereas English has only one.

-In India, the Hindi language has different words for father's older brother, younger brother, mother's older brother, older brother-in-law and so forth. For instance: rather than simply saying that someone is thin, a comment such as "She is so thin she can walk between raindrops without getting wet"

Cultural variations in verbal communication

-The elaborate style tends to characterize low-context cultures, in which meaning is conveyed through verbal codes -Affective style: is receiver-focuses and process-oriented the speaker is more concerned with the process of communication than the outcome -In collectivistic cultures people are more conscious of other person's reactions and will attempt to sense meaning by situational cues, so that an effective style will be preferred Gender differences in communication -Deborah Tannen, a discourse analyst, further claimed that men and women express themselves differently because they have different cultures -In her influential "two cultures" theory, she states that men usually use verbal communication to report about the world, whereas women use verbal communication to create a rapport -The usual stereotype is that women are talkers and men are doers Theory: Gender-neutral language -It is a verbal communicative style that adheres to certain rules that were suggested by feminist language reformers in universities during 1970s -These rules discourage various common usages which are thought of as sexist, such as the generic use of masculine pronouns in referring to persons of either sex -The term "gender-neutral language" is also called inclusive language, gender-inclusive language, gender generic language and non-discriminatory language Pidgins and creoles -Pidgins are formed and used when two communities that do not share a common language come into contact and need to communicate -A pidgin has a reduced grammatical structure and a reduced lexicon and refers mainly to a small set of contexts-it is about situational use -When a pidgin is passed on to future generations who acquire it as a first language, it can develop and become creole -A creole is a new language developed from the prolonged contact of two or more languages it is a language that expands and regularizes its structural

Language and identity

-Speech patterns, dialect, and accent serve as a cue for listeners to assign certain attitudes or characteristics to an individual or a group of people.

-Identity based on ethnic language also hinges on an assumption that one's linguistic community is acceptable in a number of ways.

-Cultural invasion occurs when one group penetrates the culture of another group and impose its own language on another group. Gender constancy: the concept that a child born as a girl will always be female, will adopt female roles, grow up to be a woman -Yet, gender identity isn't necessarily limited to male or female -The native American berdache define as an individual with two spirits, both masculine and feminine; the berdache is believed to have supernatural powers -The hijra of India are recognized as a special caste they are born with male genitals, but do not accept specially male or female gender roles -Khanith in the the Islamic culture of Oman males who wear clothing that mixes masculine and feminine characteristics and who engage in sexual relations with males  They all are third gender and illustrate gender identity can be disconnected from gender roles Theory: interpellation -The process whereby a society creates individuals as particular kinds of people as a form of "interpellation" or "hailing" (as when someone calls out to you, asking you to respond) b) Ethnic identity -Ethnicity is different from race, but as a concept is often used interchangeably with or in relation to race -Ethnic identity refers to a sense of belonging to or an identification with an ethnic group -Ethnic identity is also concerned with the issue of salience -Salience refers to the likelihood that an individual will acknowledge his or her identity in a given context c) Cultural identity -It refers to those social identities that are based on cultural membership; they are our identification with and perceived acceptance into a larger cultural groups, into which we are socialized and with which we share a system of symbols, values, norms and traditions -Like ethnic identity, cultural identity also have value and salience content -Value content refers to the criteria that people hold to evaluate appropriate or inappropriate behaviours -Cultural identity salience refers to the strength of identification with a larger cultural group d) National identity -It refers to a type of identity that is characterized by one's individual perception of him as a member of a nation National identity has two characteristics:

-It is based on a set of common characteristics that hold members of the nation together it includes a common descent, a shared culture and language, a common historical heritage and a common legal and economic system -National identity always implies difference it involves not only an awareness of the ingroup but also an awareness of others from whom the nation seeks to differentiate itself

Identities and intercultural communication

Developing intercultural identity -Individuals who acquire an intercultural identity are willing to negotiate these differences -In "Development Model of Intercultural Sensitivity", Milton Bennett organized these observations into six stages of sensitivity to cultural differences, moving from ethnocentric, which characterizes the first three stages, to ethnorelative, which characterizes the last three stages

The nature of human relationship

-William Schutz claimed that we satisfy three basic needs through our interaction with others: inclusion, affection and control -Inclusion is a sense of belonging or of being involved with others, as well as of including others in our activities -Control refers to our ability to influence others, our environment and ourselves along with our desire to be influenced by others -Similarity attraction paradigm states that if we perceive our attitudes to be similar to someone else's, we are attracted to them because they validate our view of the world -We filter potential relational partners based on the extent to which we perceive that they are similar to us

Developing intercultural relationships

Creating an awareness of cultural norms governing relationships -In Australia: the term "friend" can be used to refer to neighbours or colleagues or even someone a person has just met Theory: anxiety/ uncertainty management theory -This theory argues that effective interpersonal and intercultural communication is based on how individuals manage the anxiety and uncertainty that they experience when communicating with others.

-The reduction of uncertainty leads to an increase in both the amount of communication and the level of interpersonal attraction.

Conflict management styles and approaches

Conflict management styles -The styles are strategies that people adopt to handles conflict Blake and Mouton first classified 5 conflict management styles: avoiding, competing, accommodating, compromising, and collaborating -Avoiding: is a physical withdrawal or refusal to discuss the conflict -Competing: is linked to a use of power to gain one's objectives, even though it means ignoring the needs of an opponent the outcome is that you win and the other person loses -Accommodating: refers to behaviours that conceal or play down differences by emphasizing common interests you would sacrifice your own interests to satisfy those of other party, that is, you lose and the other party wins -Compromising: aims to find a midpoint between the opposing parties-both parties involved in a conflict try to work out a solution so that everyone gets something this is a popular way to resolve conflicts as neither side wins or loses -Collaborating: the conflict agents are encourages to find a solution where both sides can win consider an ideal way to handle conflict in most situations, but it is not often used because it requires more time, a willingness to negotiate, assertiveness and cooperation

Conflict Management approaches

-Two major approaches are evident in the literature on intercultural conflict

The first one is conflict as normal this approach views any type of conflict as an opportunity to grow and build relationships -A melting-pot differences between "us" and "them" are reduced, in the hope that "we" become more like "them" and "they" see us less alien and more like "we"

-Melting-pot to the salad bowl to depict contemporary American society -As Waters stated, migrancy and transnationalism are the social process in which the constraints of geography and social and cultural arrangements recede and in which people become increasingly aware that they are receding Diversity and Multiculturalism a) Attitudes toward diversity and multiculturalism -The ideological asymmetry hypothesis suggests that hierarchy-attenuating ideologies such as multiculturalism appeal more to low-status groups than to high-status group, because the existing status hierarchy tends to be more beneficial for members of high rather than low status groups -The dialectic could also be described as engagement versus isolationism or globalism versus nationalism -The desire to preserve cultural uniqueness promotes isolationism and nationalism -Nation may also protect their people from perceived effects of the beliefs, values, norms and social practices coming from an exposure to "outside" cultural products this type of isolationism is illustrated by the censorship of imported movies in many countries -When sojourners enter into a new culture, they usually go through two processes to adapt to the host culture: self-regulation and self-direction.

-Self-regulation: sojourners try to resolve ambiguities and establish an integration of information by drawing upon their home culture schemas -Spontaneity in the workplace sometimes expresses itself in a tendency to "wing it" for instance: to witness a staff presentation which seems extemporaneous, it is obvious that the presenter is well grounded in the material and that the presentation has substance, but it clearly has not been though out systematically in advance -Spontaneity expresses itself in social encounters as a lack of inhibition if you want to invite someone to your home, you do so b) Positive attitude toward risk taking -The readiness to color outside the lines means that the individual working on the picture is willing to take a risk -In commercial and bureaucratic encounters, the positive attitude toward risk taking expresses itself in a willingness to test the rules c) Self-confident -Israelis are confident that going out of the lines will work, and even if it doesn't work, they are self-confident enough to take the risk -Baby talk is a simplified speech register… with high pitch and exaggerated intonation as the term implies, people often use it to talk to babies (termed primary baby talk) but such intonation is used, also, when talking to pets, inanimate objects, and adults (termed secondary baby talk) b) Effects of pseudopositive attitudes on older people -According to Arluke and Levin, infantilization creates a self-fulfilling prophecy in that older people come to accept and believe that they are no longer independent, contributing adults -The cumulative effect of hearing from others that one is "old" will eventually bring about older behaviour and an older self-image in the older individual