Intercultural Communication

1. Intercultural communication

2. INDEX
 Introduction; What exactly is the intercultural
communication? How we can define it?
 Non-verbal communication
 Stereotypes
 Own identity
 The concept of time
 Taste

3. Culture:
”
➡ is linked to communication and a wide range of human
experience including feelings, identity and sense-making
➡ provides people with different ways of thinking, seeing,
hearing and interpreting the world;
➡ involves a number of man-made, collective artefacts
and is shared by the members of a social group;
➡ is something that shapes one‘s behaviour or structures
one′s perception of the world

4. Culture and communication
t Scout Law”
Culture is often
defined in
interrelation to
Communication
It means that Culture is passed on via communication and
communication reflects one′s culture!
“Culture is
communication
and
communication
is culture”

5. Intercultural communication
“We may say that intercultural communication is
the communication among those people who
have so different cultural references that they
perceive themselves as pertaining to differnent
cultures.”1
1Rodrigo Alsina, Miquel: “Comunicación
intercultural”, Anthropos Editorial, Barcelona 1999, p.
12

6. Non-verbal communication
The shortest way
between
two people is a smile

7. non-verbal language may have the
following basic functions:
1) to communicate attitudes and emotions
2) to support the sense of words
3) substitution of verbal language
Non-verbal communication

8. It means that
1) to communicate attitudes and emotions
2) to support the sense of words
This may take place in different ways:
 completing the sense of the words
 controlling synchronisation
(among the different speakers of a group)
 producing feed back
 maintaining the attention

9. 3) to substitute verbal language
 body language, gestures
 gaze behaviour
 ...
Non-verbal language, depending on
authors, makes from 50% to 70% of direct
communication among human beings.

10. Stereotypes
Stereotypes often reflect the differences in
socioeconomic status, religion or dialect;
➡ It is important to suspend judgement, avoid
misconceptions, narrow perspectives and
immature reactions;
➡ Stereotypes often contain a grain of truth, but
cannot characterize an entire culture;
➡ Getting the whole picture of culture needs
active participation;

11. Identity
 Identity Is the relationship between “the I” and
“the other”
 there is no identity without the “other”
 so: when talking about the own identity, we
also have to consider the foreign identity

12. Two kinds of identity
1. Personal identity:
based on the culture in which we were
socialized
2. Cultural identity
founded on the sense of belonging to a
community with certain characteristics
Two kinds of identity

13. TIME BEHAVIOUR:
THE CONCEPT OF “TIME”
Monochronic Cultures
•Also called: Rigid-time
culture
• Do only one thing at the
same time
•Appointments (time) are
inescapable
• Punctuality is a norm of
conduct
• Time is money
Polychronic Cultures
•Also called: Fluid-time
culture
• Do several things at the
same time
time engagements are
more flexible
• work is considered less
important than being polite,
nice, helpful, etc. with other
people
• Time is an opportunity

14. Two people, participating in the same task, one
monochronic and the other
polychronic:
 will consider the whole process from very
different points of view
 will have different objectives
 will have different priorities
It means that

15. What we have to take into account…
 There are no “better” and “worse” tastes
 There are different food customs
 Each culture establishes its culinary order and
marks food as “eatable” or “uneatable”
 Each culture marks certain food as
unacceptable
The concept of taste

16.  Food is an element of cultural
 identification. (We are what we eat.)
 British call French “frogs”
 Germans call Italian “Spaghettifresser”
The concept of taste

17. Spend few minutes at the end of this session
answering these three reflective questions:
!What did you learn today?
!Why is that learning important to you?
!How can you make use of that learning
tomorrow?

18. Thank you for your attention!