Cross-cultural communication

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Cross-cultural communication (also frequently referred to as intercultural communication) is a field of study that looks at how people from differing cultural backgrounds endeavour to communicate.

1 Interdisciplinary orientation
2 Theories
3 See also
4 Organizations
5 Free online journals
6 External links

[edit] Interdisciplinary orientation

Cross-cultural communication tries to bring together such relatively unrelated areas as cultural anthropology and established areas of communication. Its core is to establish and understand how people from different cultures communicate with each other. Its charge is to also produce some guidelines with which people from different cultures can better communicate with each other.

For example, how does a person from China communicate with a person from America? Furthermore, what underlying mental constructs appear from both parties that allows for constructive communication?

Cross-cultural communication, as many scholarly fields, is a combination of many other fields. These fields include anthropology, cultural studies, psychology and communication. The field has also moved both toward the treatment of interethnic relations, and toward the study of communication strategies used by co-cultural populations, i.e., communication strategies used to deal with majority or mainstream populations. The introduction of power as a cultural communication variable leads to a body of critical scholarship (e.g., Mark Orbe and Ronald Jackson II).

[edit] Theories

The main theories for cross-cultural communication are based on the work done looking at value differences (or Cultural dimensions) among cultures, especially the works of Edward T. Hall, Geert Hofstede, Harry C. Triandis, Fons Trompenaars and more recently Shalom Schwartz. Clifford Geertz was also a major contributor to this field. The first Ph.D. in intercultural communication was awarded to William J. Starosta (Indiana University, 1973).

These theories have been applied to a variety of different communication theories and settings, including general business and management (Fons Trompenaars and Charles Hampden-Turner) and marketing (Marieke de Mooij, Stephan Dahl). There have also been several successful educational projects which concentrate on the practical applications of these theories in cross-cultural situations. Notably the European-funded research project media-net-works which illustrates ways in which virtual communities can be established to achieve an understanding of how people from different cultures communicate with each other.

These theories have also been criticised mainly by management scholars (e.g. Holden, Nigel) for being based on the culture concept derived from 19th century cultural anthropology and emphasising on culture-as-difference and culture-as-essence. Another criticism has been the uncritical way Hofstede’s dimensions are served up in textbooks as facts. There is a move to focus on 'cross-cultural interdependence' instead of the tradititional views of comparative differences and similarities between cultures and cross-cultural management is seen as a form of knowledge management.