ibc slides 1

8/10/2019 IBC Slides 1

1/30


2/30

Intercultural Business Communication

Topic 1

Understanding the Notion of Culture


3/30

Introductions

Introduce yourself:

What is your background?

What are your expectation of this module?


4/30

Class Content

Module topics:

1. Understanding the Notion of Culture

2. Cultural Systems

3. Understanding the Notion of Intercultural Business

Communication4. Cultural Heterogeneity

5. Module Assessment


5/30

Warming up exercise

Five Tricks

To explore

Co-operative learning

Competitive playing


6/30

Instructions

Form groups of four and sit around a tableas far from

the other groups as possible!

Learn Five Tricks:

a) Read the instructions

b) Choose your partner

c) Study the instructions collaboratively and practise a few

rounds

Make sure you only speak to your own group members!


7/30

Tournament!

Play Five Tricks

Keep score

Essential:

NO talking or writing

YES Gestures and facial expressions


8/30

Task 1

Reflecting on your experience of Five Tricks

What did you real iseduring the game?

How did you feelwhile playing the game?

What did you doin order to win?

Source of game: Thiagarajan, S. (2006). Bargna: A simulation game on cultural clashes(25thAnniversary

edition). London: Intercultural Press


9/30

Task 1 (continued)

Relating the Bargna experience..

Tables

Rules of the game

No-speaking order

Feelings

(change) of strategy

To Intercultural Communication

Cultural contexts

Cultures

Barriers to communication

Emotions and judgments

(adapted) behaviour

C(ognitive)A(ffective)

B(ehavioural)

The ABC model ofIntercultural

Communication

(Ward et al, 2001)


10/30

Task 2

Your understandings of culture:

How do you say culture in your mother language?

How do you understand culture?


11/30

ConceptualisingCulture

The visible products that represent the creative

accomplishments of a group of people (e.g. art, literature,food, monuments etc.)

The everyday behaviour, customs, values and beliefs of

people from different places

(Shaules, 2007)

Culture/ objective cultureculture/subjective culture

(Bennett, 1998)


12/30

Competing Conceptualisations

17thCentury: The potential for human development as

shown by the etymological traces of the word (cultivate

and agriculture) and used to refer to the process of beingcultured

19thCentury

1. To describe a set of desired qualities, some people are

more cultured than others

2. To describe the world being divided in any number of

cultures, each with intrinsic value


13/30


Early to Mid 20thCentury

Racial Determinism:

Physiological differences determine human behaviour and

are indicators of industrial improvement and advancement

(Shaules, 2007)


14/30


First half of 20thCentury

1. Behaviour is shaped by our social and cultural environment2. Different cultures represent self-contained and alternative

valid worldviews

(Boas, 1928; Benedict, 1934; Durkheim, 1938; Levi-Strauss,1958; Mead, 1961; Weber, 1968)


15/30


Culture or civilizationincludes knowledge, belief, art, moral, law,

custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a

member of society (Taylor, 1871)Behaviournot given at birth butmust be learned anew from grown people by each generation

(Benedict, 1943)

The learned and shared patterns of beliefs, behaviour, and values of

groups of interacting people (Bennett, 1998) Culture refers to the cohesive thinking and behaviour emerging from a

group of people (Holliday, 1999)

culture to us is like water to fish (Shaules, 2007)


16/30

Culture is

Shared

Learned

Implicit


17/30

Problematising Culture:The Essentialist View (I)

the assumption that culture is a causal agent something which makes people act in a certainway

(Shaule, 2007)

Individuals are considered as passive recipient(s)of cultural influences who either represent ordeviate from the essential standards and norms oftheir cultures.

(Crane, 1994; in Holliday, 2000)

17


18/30

Problematising Culture:

The Essentialist View (II)

From an essentialist perspective, culture is

seen as

a priori, normative

relatively fixed, bounded and static

typically equated with a country or ethnic group

Homogeneous

deterministic, defining and causal

18


19/30


The Non-Essentialist View

Culture can be associated with other

categories, including gender, regionality,socioeconomic class, physical ability,

sexual orientation, religion, organisation

and vocation.

(Bennett, 1998)

19


20/30

20


21/30


The Non-Essentialist View (continued )

We are not controlled by culture but rather see

through it (Hall,1959).

Individuals statements about their culture should

be seen as expressions of how they socially

construct their image of their own culture, ratherthan a direct description of their culture (Holliday,

1999).

21


22/30

We live in our subjective constructions

of the world

For example

22

What do you think

these colours are?

What do you thinkthese colours mean?


23/30

Social Construction

Our understanding of these colours is socially

constructed

Culture is also socially constructed. It gives us a

frame which tells us what is important and what is

not important.

This results in Selective Perception.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVVWmZAStn8http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVVWmZAStn8


24/30

The Elephant Metaphor of Reality:

Culture is socially constructedand interpreted

The story of six blind men and the elephant:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJVBQefNXIw&feature=related

24
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJVBQefNXIwhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJVBQefNXIwhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJVBQefNXIwhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJVBQefNXIwhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJVBQefNXIwhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJVBQefNXIw&feature=related


25/30


The Non-Essentialist View (continued )

From a non-essentialist perspective, culture is

seen as

emergent fluid and dynamic

non-size-oriented

complex

socially constructed, interpretive

25


26/30


Some Alternative Terms

cultural context

cultural communitycultural experience

cultural frameworks

community of shared practice and meanings

(Holliday, 1999; Shaules, 2007)

26


27/30

From Cultural to Intercultural

the notion of intercultural communication

study culture for intercultural purposes

intercultural contact and sojourner experience

cultural learning:

enculturation and acculturation

27


28/30

Some Conclusions

As participants in intercultural (business) communication, weneed to deal with intercultural learning challenges by:

1. Respecting others

2. Becoming an active observer of others and our own culturalcharacteristics

3. Being careful about cultural representations

4. Developing and contributing to communities of shared meanings and

practice

5. From should to could

6. Avoid the temptation to say This is strange!

28


29/30

Work cited in this presentation

Bennett (Ed.). (1998). Basic concepts of intercultural communication: Selected

readings. Yarmouth, Maine: Intercultural Press.

Hall, E. T. (1959). The silent language. Garden City: Doubleday & Company.

Holliday, A. (1999). Small cultures.Applied Linguistics, 20(2), 237-264.

Holliday, A. (2000). Culture as constraint or resources: Essentialist versus non-

essentialist views. IATEFL Language and Cultural Studies SIG Newsletter(18),

38-40.

Shaules, J. (2007). Deep culture: The hidden challenges of global living. Clevedon:

Multilingual Matters.

Thiagarajan, S. (2006). Barnga: A simulation game on cultural clashes (25th

Anniversary edition). London: Intercultural Press.

Ward, C., Bochner, S., & Furnaham, A. (2001). The psychology of culture shock.

East Sussex: Routledge. 29


30/30

.

ibc slides 1

Documents