Intercultural communication Michał Wesołowski Wrocław, 02/02/2010

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

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

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”

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

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

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

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

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.

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;

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

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

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

Two people, participating is 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

What we have to take into account… There are no “better” and “worse” tastes There are different culinary 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

Food is an element of cultural identification. (We are what we eat.) 9 British call French “frogs” Germans call Italian “Spaghettifresser” The concept of taste

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?

Thanks for your attention!