The Importance Of Intercultural Communication

Different social, professional and cultural contexts may affect relationships and the way people communicate due to of a lack of understanding or knowledge of one another’s background and culture. This could be through their race, religion, ethnicity or where they come from. Each one of these can have similar or very different ways to communicate. For example

ASSIGNMENT: Achieving competence as an interpersonal communicator in a diverse society is necessary to your personal and professional success. One way to enhance our understanding of interpersonal communication as a relationship-building activity is to engage in first hand dialogue with people from cultures other than your own. This assignment gives you the opportunity to engage in the dual perspective – honoring the perspective of the person with whom you are communicating as well as honoring your own perspective. You are also able to contrast your worldview with the perspective of someone with a different life experience than your

The first point in my theory is that you can better your skills as an interpersonal communicator by better understanding your own culture. DeVito states that there are. “several major cultural distinctions that are crucial for more effective communication” they are: individualism or collectivism, high or low context, high or low power distance, masculinity or femininity, high or low ambiguity tolerance, long or short term orientation, and indulgent or (p. 34). To be able to understand your or anyone else’s culture you must be able to understand the ways that these things affect communication. Once you understand the ways that you are oriented in these seven categories due to enculturation you can understand how you communicate and become a more effective

In our world of expanding technology and shrinking geography, people of different cultures have increasing frequency of contact and need for effective communication on a daily basis. Whether through travel, immigration, or international business, having the ability to communicate across many different cultures is an advantage in and of itself. Speaking a different language is an obvious obstacle to intercultural communication, but a greater and more difficult hurdle is to “speak” a different culture. To understand and comprehend and even apply these tiniest

Orbe, Mark P and Tina M Harris. Interacial Communication: Theory into Practice. 2nd . Losa Angeles: Sage Publications, Inc., 2008.

This text is a good reference point. This text is used to understanding communication within culture. This source also gave a better understanding

You know that feeling of home whether it’s with family members or even your loved ones? I don’t think that home is something that is automatically there, I believe that it is something that’s created. I learned that lesson through the eyes of one of my older friends who came from India with his brother when he was 16 in order to make a living. My friend Vikas, told me everything he had to do and the struggles he conquered in order to make his own successful business here in the U.S. Some things he told be reminded me of interpersonal communication, intercultural communication, and intracultural communication. He had to have a lot of communication with his friend who also happened to be from India and some new friends and colleagues he met through his journey. Of course there was homesickness and the occasional depression, but that didn’t stop him from creating his now successful business.

Today, we live in a culturally diverse society due to globalization. As our world grows, expands and become increasingly more interconnected, the need for effective interpersonal communication among differing cultures has become apparent. When people from different cultures interact with one another there is intercultural communication because different cultures create different interpretation and expectations about what is seen as competent behaviors that will enable the construction of shared meanings.

Intercultural communication is a relatively new subject that has had increasing popularity among managers in both the business and education sectors. This essay will focus on how a lack of intercultural communication knowledge will result in racism, stereotyping and misunderstandings among different cultures and how this can result in negative long term effects for some already disadvantaged groups such as Indigenous Australians. Without effective Intercultural Communication, particular groups will continue to be disadvantaged in their everyday lives. Firstly, this essay will discuss the role that language, particularly non-verbal, plays in communication and how this is an ongoing issue in the Australian criminal justice system. Following this the effects of racism and white privilege will be discussed and it will be argued that with more cultural acceptance and understanding these issues can be prevented. Finally, the problems that arise in multicultural workplaces will be examined. Intercultural communication has the potential to change many individuals lives to make them more comfortable and easier and it is a topic that should be compulsory in schools, especially when considering how quickly globalisation is taking place in society.

Many corporate are now conducting training on cross-cultural communication for their workforce. In the US, opinions of cultural experts are invited before taking a judicial decision. In short, every person or organization can make small steps to minimize this

Martin, J. N., & Nakayama, T. K. (2011). Experiencing intercultural communication. (4th ed., pp. 226-227). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

Previous researchers have found that for a person to achieve better and more effective communication competence, it is necessary to develop skills that allow an appropriate participation in specific situations. The ability to listen, ask questions, and express concepts or ideas effectively is an important part of communication competence. Intercultural communication presents an unexplored and challenging field that needs to be understood for a better development in communication. (Dillon and McKenzie, 1998). The variables of listening depend on the different perceptions that a person obtains through their cultural background. Furthermore, culture often affects the structure of consciousness in the act of listening. When a person seeks to

Intercultural communication competence refers to the ability of an individual to adapt and communicate appropriately and effectively across a wide array of cultural contexts. That is to say, for an individual to be considered an intercultural communicator they must understand other’s cultures as well as they understand their own, and apply this understanding to communication (Chen 1-2). With the increasing diversity at the workplace, school and other social settings, it has become increasingly important to learn how to communicate with people from a diverse array of cultures. More importantly, adapting to a more effective intercultural communication competence model provides us with learning opportunities occasioned by the interaction with people from other backgrounds. The intercultural communication competence model comes with some key components including tolerance for uncertainty, self-knowledge, and motivation. The greatest and most important of these aspects is motivation. An individual must be willing to foster relationships with people from a different cultural background. If an individual lacks the willingness to promote intercultural relationships, then other aspects of the intercultural communication model become moot.

Young Yun Kim’s Contextual Theory of Interethnic Communication comprises of four layers: the environment, the situation, the communicator, and the behavior. All of these layers work together in order to create what Kim calls a “communication event” (Kim, 2005). When interethnic communication occurs, the communicators identify some form of distinctiveness from the conversational partner in terms of ethnicity or other identity aspects. The environment layer describes the larger social setting, so aspects such as institutional influences. The next layer, the situation, is ingrained in the environment layer. According to Kim, the situation layer describes the actual interethnic meeting. In this context, the communicator will engage with their conversational partner(s) (Kim, 2005). Following the situation layer is the communicator layer. This gets more specific with the personal identities of the communicator and the people they are interacting with. The communicator layer will be the focus of this paper. Lastly, the behavioral layer

This intercultural relationship took place this year. it was with one of my co workers. We have a friendship relationship and clicked pretty well together and rather fast. When we work together we are very happy to see each other, as this is the only time we really see each other. Outside of work, we are both busy. This friendship is great, and is very balanced. We don’t always agree with each other and talk it out, but we also agree and feels good. With Kate our intercultural relationship changed within stages over time, developed feelings and situations through the relationship, and key concepts.