Concentric circles – to visualize a continuum of communication

1. Intrapersonal 4. Organizational
2. Interpersonal 5. Public/Media
3. Group/team 6. Intercultural
Macro-culture – all the arts, beliefs, social institutions, etc. characteristic of a
community, race, etc.
Micro-culture – The predominating attitudes and behavior that characterize the
functioning of a group or organization.
 Nation-states become more multicultural in ethnic makeup
 The dividing line between communities and groups or organization beco0me blurred
Ex. Wiseman (2005) suggested that US foreign policy in the middle east in the 2000s
was in conflict with the culture of diplomacy. With diplomacy being understood as
international community.
INTERCULTURAL
 A discipline that studies communication across different cultures or social groups, or
how culture affects communication.
Examples:
Negotiations – Culture A practices Haggling; Culture B believes prices on the price
tag is the price.
Payment of money or goods in a deal – Culture A sees it as favours, lubrication;
Culture B sees it as bribery, graft, corruption.

Paradoxes of intercultural communication

1. As one set of conflicts seems to dissolve, another set of conflicts seems to be on
the rise
2. As processes of multiculturalism, ethnic diversity, immigration and tourism
appear to offer opportunities for greater understanding and harmony between
cultures, new divisive forces based on cultural differences seem to be emerging
3. As the plurality of cultures becomes more widely recognized, the apparent
ascendance of the English language continues.
4. As the growth of greater understanding and the shrinking of ignorance and
xenophobia promises the end of global conflicts, the reality is that familiarity all
too often breeds contempt and violence. That some cultures may know each
other too well.
 5. As market economies and democracy are foisted on some societies, the result is
not so much freedom and peace as the stirring of ethnic tensions and global
instability

Acculturation – the process by which we interact with ‘the other’ in modes of varying
peacefulness, aggression, understanding, and confusion.
- The meeting of cultures and the changes which is a result from such
meetings.
 Bennett (Hammer, Bennett et Wiseman 2003) suggests that when people interact with
others from other cultures, they may acquire intercultural sensitivity which may then
allow them to develop intercultural competence. This process can best be understood
as a continuum of different phases
Intercultural sensitivity – The ability to discriminate and experience relevant cultural
differences.
Intercultural competence – The ability to think and act in interculturally appropriate
ways.
Bennett’s developmental model of intercultural sensitivity
 Ethnocentrism worldview
Denial – Defence reversal – Minimisation
 Ethnorelativism worldview
Acceptance – Adaptation – Integration
Denial – default condition for people socialized into only one culture; may treat ‘the other’
with indifference or aggression.
Defence reversal – occurs when a person of one culture perceives another culture as
superior; pays tribute to that culture by ‘going native’ or ‘passing’.
Minimization – occurs when a person begins to perceive universals or similarities between
‘us’ and ‘them’ but only on a superficial level.
Acceptance – People in this phase can experience others as different from themselves, but
as equally human. Acceptance does not mean agreement.
Adaptation – Experience empathy with another culture; it is the state in which the
experience of another culture yields perception and behavior appropriate to that culture.
Integration – when an individual begins to define their identity as being the margin of two
or more culture, central to none.
Positive – movements in and out of cultures are seen as a necessary and positive
part of one’s identity.
Negative – Separation from culture is experienced as alienation.

Deardoff’s (2006) pyramid model of intercultural competence

Desired External outcome – behaving and communicating appropriately (based on ones
intercultural knowledge, skills, and attitude) to achieve one’s goals.
Desired Internal Outcome – Adaptability, flexibility, ethno-relative view, and empathy.
Knowledge and Comprehension – Cultural self-awareness, deep understanding and
knowledge of culture (including contexts, role and impact of culture and others’ world
views), culture-specific information and sociolinguistic awareness.
Skills – Listen, observe, and interpret. Analyze, evaluate, and relate.
Requisite attitude – Respect, openness, curiosity and ambiguity.
This model builds on a number of specific abilities and behaviours
 ability to communicate effectively and appropriately in intercultural situations based
on one’s intercultural knowledge, skills and attitudes.
 ability to shift frame of reference appropriately and adapt behavior to cultural
context; adaptability, expandability and flexibility of one’s frame of reference/filter.
 behaving appropriately and effectively in intercultural situations based on one’s
knowledge, skills and motivation
 good interpersonal skills exercised interculturally; the sending and receiving of
messages that are accurate and appropriate.
Degree of intercultural competence depends on acquired degree of underlying elements.

 Brown’s (2009) study challenges the oft-claimed automatic link between international
sojourn and intercultural competence. The widely claimed that the international
 sojourn carries the power to produce the intercultural mediator, but her study found
that this potential was fulfilled by only a handful of exceptionally motivated students.
 Berry suggests that there are different dimensions of cultural variation that help
explain acculturation process:
1. Diversity
2. Equality
3. Conformity
4. Wealth
5. Space
6. Time
7. Religion

Hofstede’s model of culture

Hofstede (2001, p. 9) defines culture as ‘the collective programming of the mind which
distinguishes the members of one group or category of people from another’. He
describes cultures in terms of five dimensions.
1. Power distance refers to the different solutions to the basic problem of human
inequality.
 A measure of the inequality and equality within a culture,

2. Uncertainty avoidance refers to the level of stress in a society in the face of an

unknown future.
 A concept that helps explain how cultures respond to the uncertain nature of future
events
3. Individualism versus collectivism refers to the integration of individuals into primary
groups.
 Refers to the extent to which a person defines his or her identity according to group
or separate and private values
 Individualism is the extent to which a culture tolerates individual expression and
provides support.
 Collectivist sentiments may help bind a country together so that everyone feels part
of one big family, but equally such sentiments may be used by authoritarian
governments to impose conformity and stifle dissent.
4. Masculinity versus femininity refers to the division of emotional roles between men
and women.
 Masculine and feminine are terms used by Hofstede to describe approaches to sex
roles within a culture.
 Masculine: describes a culture in which traditional sex roles are observed
Feminine: describes a culture in which non-traditional sex roles are observed
5. Long-term versus short-term orientation refers to the choice of focus for people’s
efforts: the future or the present.
 In long-term orientations it refers to the time frames that a culture operates in,
specifically the time frames of the near-to-distant future.
 Cultures that score low on this dimension typically tend to operate on close time
horizons and may be more fixed in the ‘here and now’ than in the ‘there and then’.
 Hofstede notes that East Asian societies score high on long-term orientation and
suggests that this orientation or value set has been instrumental in the strong
economic growth of these societies in the past few decades

Limitations of Hofstede’s model

 Most of Hofstede’s data is based on surveys conducted from 1967 to 1973 of
116,000 employees of one US multinational (IBM), the employees being situated in
72 countries; and from a 1985 survey of students from 23 countries. The questions
to ask with this approach are:
 Is the data still relevant? ( Has things changed or remained the same after the survey
periods; organizational culture of IBM)
 Did the internal micro-culture of IBM overwhelmed the truth about macro-culture
outside IBM?
 Do people respond truthfully to surveys? (Base on how things really are or their
ideals)
 Is the sample for the survey too narrow?
 Other variables might exist beyond Hofstede’s five dimension; Other individual
attributes that will explain employees’ feelings or actions than cultural values

Some implications of this work for intercultural communication include:

■■ In intercultural encounters, such as negotiations, people from high power-distance
cultures will prefer to work with high-status negotiators or principals rather than
representatives.
■■ People from high uncertainty-avoidance cultures may prefer the reassurance of
structure and ritual.
■■ People from collectivist cultures like to build relationships over a long period of time.
 ■■ People from high masculine cultures may tend to try and resolve conflicts by force,
whereas those from feminine cultures may be more likely to resolve conflicts through
compromise and consensus.
■■ People from long-term orientation cultures may persevere longer, and sacrifice more, to
achieve desired ends.
Intercultural encounters demand language and communication skills to guarantee that the
messages sent to the other party/ies will be understood in the way they were meant by the
sender, both cognitively and emotionally.

House’s GLOBE model of cultures

 A larger and more complex study than Hofstede’s
 Developed by House and his associates (House 1998; House et al. 2004; Ashkanasy,
Trevor-Roberts & Earnshaw 2002; Gupta, Hanges & Dorfman 2002; Gupta et al.
2002; Javidan & House 2001, 2002; Kabasakal & Bodur 2002; Szabo et al. 2002;
Hofstede 2006; Javidan et al. 2006; Smith 2006; House, Quigley & Sully, 2010)
 The GLOBE approach draws more on management and leadership studies.
 The GLOBE project broke up the 62 societies surveyed into ten clusters (or groups)
based on geography, common language, religion and historical accounts.
1. Anglo
2. Latin Europe
3. Nordic Europe
4. Germanic Europe
5. Eastern Europe
6. Latin America
7. Sub-Saharan Africa
8. Arab
9. Southern Asia
10. Confucian Asia
 The GLOBE study builds on the work of Hofstede and others and examines cultures
in terms of nine cultural dimensions or attributes:
1. Assertiveness – society encourages people to be tough, confrontational,
assertive and competitive
2. Future orientation – society encourages and rewards future-oriented
behaviours such as planning, investing in the future and delaying gratification
3. Gender differentiation – a society maximises gender role differences
4. Uncertainty avoidance – The society’s reliance on social norms and
procedures to alleviate the unpredictability of future events
 5. Power distance – The degree to which members of a society expect power to
be unequally shared
6. Institutional emphasis on collectivism versus individualism – The degree to
which individuals are encouraged by societal institutions to be integrated into
groups within organisations and the society
7. In-group collectivism – The extent to which members of a society take pride
in membership in small groups, such as their family and circle of close friends,
and the organisations in which they are employed
8. Performance orientation – The degree to which a society encourages and
rewards group members for performance improvement and excellence
9. Humane orientation – The degree to which a society encourages and rewards
individuals for being fair, altruistic, generous, caring and kind to others

GLOBE and communication

 Effective cross-cultural communication involves finding integrated solutions, or at
least compromises, that allow decisions to be implemented by members of diverse
cultures. While this sounds simple, it can be quite complicated in cross-cultural
situations.
 Thus far, not all countries have been sampled in the GLOBE model, and there will
always be controversies about classifying countries into clusters. Is GLOBE, in fact,
insufficiently ‘global’? That is, is it too focused on North American values and
approaches (Hofstede 2006)? In spite of these limitations, GLOBE is a systematic and
solid project that provides new perspectives on culture, conflict and
communication.
 Hofstede’s fifth dimension, long-term orientation versus short-term orientation, was
only added later, based on the work of others, and does not fit perfectly with the
original four-dimension research design: ‘Such an incremental approach of adding to
the list of dimensions is due to the limitations of his original design and begs the
question: what other dimensions are missing because IBM was not interested in
them?’

Hall’s context model

 One of the most interesting schemas to classify cultures has been that developed by
anthropologist Edward T Hall.
 Hall (1977) argues that communication and culture are about not only words and
what is immediately tangible and visible, but also the context in which these things
occur. If context is real, then it can be measured, and it will vary from situation to
 situation and from culture to culture. Therefore, it is possible to argue that cultures
can be understood in terms of two extreme types of context: low and high.*
 Low context: describes a culture in which the context of communicated messages is
not as important as the communicated message itself.
 High context: describes a culture in which the context of communicated messages is
as important as the communicated message.
 High context cultures, for example, tend to be polychronic – that is, they embody
the view that there are multiple time frames and experiences, that time is not
necessarily a linear and measurable thing, that things proceed at their own pace,
and multitasking is possible and even desirable.
 Polychronic: literally, many times; an approach or cultural mindset that sees time as
having multiple dimensions and experiences, with the practical upshot of
emphasising slow pacing and multitasking.
 Low context cultures, by contrast, tend to be monochronic — that is, they embody
the view that there is only one experience of time, and norms like punctuality,
scheduling and doing one thing at a time are important.
 Monochronic: literally, one time; an approach or cultural mindset that sees time as
linear and measurable, with the practical upshot of emphasising punctuality,
detailed scheduling of activities, and doing only one task at a time
 time use can even be seen as a form of non-verbal communication.
 In terms of Hofstede’s model, high-context societies tend to be more collectivist
than individual, tend to have higher rather than lower power distances, and tend
to have long-term rather than short-term orientation. The correlations with
masculine–feminine and uncertainty avoidance are not so clear.

*two extreme types of context: low and high

Association
 High context – How things get done depends on relationships with people and
attention to group processes.
 Low context – Things get done by following procedures and paying attention to a
goal.
Interaction
 High context - High use of non-verbal elements; voice, tone, facial expression,
gestures and eye movements carry significant parts of conversation.
 Low context - Low use of non-verbal elements. Message is carried more by words
than by nonverbal means.
…

Context, understanding and misunderstanding

 The context idea, though fascinating and suggestive, is still relatively undeveloped
from a research point of view, and there are many exceptions to the rules.
 Context also depends on what generation within a culture we are talking about. It
also depends on the gender of the persons involved.
 Nevertheless, the context idea can perhaps suggest why communication works and
does not work when people from different cultures get together.
 The differing unspoken rules of cultures might lead to communication breakdowns,
and therefore it may make sense for us to at least try to analyse intercultural
situations to see whether the low context — high context model has something to
offer.

 Mintu-Wimsatt (2002), after analysing negotiations between people from a low-

context culture (North Americans) and a high-context culture (the Philippines),
suggests that persons from high-context and collectivist cultures may be less
confrontational, and tend to place greater emphasis on interpersonal
interactions compared to those from low-context and individualist countries;
whereas the persons from low-context individualist countries may tend to be
more (self-defeatingly) aggressive, hurried and win–lose in orientation.
 Du-Babcock (1999) analysed the structure of discussions in a high-context
language (Cantonese) and a low-context language (English) and found that the
structure of topic management and turn taking was more spiral in pattern in
the high-context language and more linear in pattern in the low-context
language. This may be evidence that members of high-context cultures view the
world in synthetic, spiral logical terms (a circular pattern), and members from
low-context cultures may view the world in analytical, logical terms (a linear
pattern).

Huntington’s clash of civilizations model

 Clash of civilizations: the idea (developed by North American political scientists)
that cultures now may be the basis of conflicts between nations.
 Huntington (Huntington 1996; Berger & Huntington 2002; Huntington 2004) looks at
cultural change and communication both within nations and between nations, and
the pictures he paints are not necessarily rosy.
 This alignment of people in terms of civilizations has, he suggests, considerable
potential for conflict, particularly conflict between the western and Islamic
civilizations, and western and Sinic (primarily Chinese) civilizations. This is, then, the
clash of civilizations that might become more prominent in the next few decades.
 Torn countries are a particularly interesting part of the Huntington model.
Example 1: Turkey, an Islamic country, seeking entry into the European Union, but
there is ambivalence (secular versus religious) within the country about this
historical path. There appears to be considerable debate within the European Union
about granting full membership rights — such as free movement of citizens
between European Union countries — to an Islamic country, and also an
ambivalence based on cultural, security and migration concerns.

Example 2: Huntington also sees Australia as a torn country — torn between its
history of European affiliation and its geography in the Asian area. He argues that
the attempt to integrate Australia into Asian cultures under Prime Minister Paul
Keating in the 1990s might be regarded by future historians as a major marker in
the ‘decline of the West’

Intercultural and intracultural clashes

 Huntington also investigated changes within nations, particularly the rise of
multiculturalism, diversity and large-scale ethnic or racial change. For example, he
notes that white North Americans will be in a minority in parts of the United States
within a few decades, with a combination of Black, Asian, Native American and
Hispanic subpopulations comprising a majority.
 Huntington (1996, p. 318) links this to the global level by stating opposition to the
forces of globalisation and westernisation leading to the imposition of a
homogeneous US-style civilisation across the planet
 Huntington argues that the way to maintain global peace is for civilisations not to
interfere in the running of other civilisations.
 Abrahamian (2003) argues that the ‘clash of civilisations’ idea is in fact quite weak,
and the waves of emotion unleashed by the horrors of 9/11 have given a flawed idea
a spurious authenticity, and have also made it all but impossible to mention ‘the P
word’ — Palestine.
 Aysha (2003) suggests that Huntington’s real concern is not with the clash between
cultures but the clash within the US culture itself — a concern with
 multiculturalism, immigration, the threat of ethnic separatism and ‘declinism’, such
as Schlesinger (1998), Steyn (2007), Blankley (2006), Buchanan (2002, 2006),
Ferguson (2006), Phillips (2007), and Fallows (2010)
 Inglehart & Norris (2003) contend that the real clash between Islam and the West
is not about democracy, but about sex. Fundamental differences in attitudes
towards divorce, abortion, gender equality and gay rights seem to exist between
Islamic and western countries, and this may prove to be another source of crisis and
conflict.

Diverse planet, diverse nation, diverse organization

 That much of what we are learning about intercultural communication can also be
applied to intracultural communication.
 Ethnic diversity – main drivers behind diversity in the workplace.
 Diversity – different things to different people, but it usually means greater
 representation within organisations of people from differing ethnic or racial
background, sex, age, disability, national origin, religion and sexual orientation.
Socioeconomic class may also be a factor that needs to be taken into account
(Valdata 2005).
Robertson (2006, p. 230), for example, gives instances of definitions of these terms used
by some organisations
 Diversity: ‘Diversity encompasses the many ways people may differ, including
gender, race, nationality, education, sexual orientation, style, functional expertise,
and a wide array of other characteristics and backgrounds that make a person
unique
 Inclusion: ‘A competitive business advantage that we build and maintain by
leveraging the awareness, understanding and appreciation of differences in the
workplace to enable individuals, teams and businesses to perform at their full
potential.’
 ,..