Intercultural communication may be understood as:a. a phenomenon (跨文化交际)b. a discipline（跨文化交际学）As a phenomenon, it is called 跨文化交际. As a discipline, it is called 跨文化交际学. Some people make this distinction. Some people don’t; they just use 跨文化交际for both.So what is the definition of intercultural communication? It refers to the communication between different cultural backgrounds. If you talk with your American teacher, intercultural communication takes place. If you interact with your Japanese student, this is intercultural communication. It includes:a. International communication:e.g. Japanese Prime Minister〈--〉American president (this is the communication between two nations)b. interracial communication: e.g. Afro American 〈--〉White Americanc. inter-ethnic communication e.g. Tibetan〈--〉Han (they are from different ethnic groups)d. inter-regional communication:e.g. A northerner 〈--〉A SouthernerIntercultural communication as a phenomenon is really universal, i.e. it takes place everywhere. When you talk with a British lecturer, you are having intercultural communication with him. When you correspond with a westerner through e-mail, you are engaged in intercultural communication. When you watch a French film, or read a French novel, you are engaged in intercultural communication. Although you don’t see the person, the French person is actually talking to you through the book or the novel. So you are having the intercultural communication with him or her.Intercultural communication dates back to thousands of years ago. A long time ago, when people started intermingling with each other, when people were having trade relations with others, there were intercultural communications. A very good example is the “silk road”. A lot of traders from different countries interacted with each other in their business reactions. There was intercultural communication.Intercultural communication is a daily occurrence, i.e., it takes place everyday. In today’s world, intercultural communication has become increasing important, because it is so easy for people of different cultural background to come together and communicate.Intercultural communication has quickly increased because of these reasons:First, mobile means of transport. Now jet planes fly everywhere. It used to take months to travel from Shanghai to Los Angeles, but now it takes only 12 hours. It is now much easier for people to move from one country to another. People of different countries and races get together much oftener than before.Besides, people get in touch with each other in various ways, including the internet, the telephone, the satellite, etc. So sophisticated communication systems have also helped to increase intercultural communication.Also, there is globalization of world economy. This means multi-national companies now operate in many countries in the world. They employ people of different ethnic groups and of different countries. Actually, some multi-national companies make a point of employing people of different countries. They don’t use people from just one country. Because their company is themulti-national company and they want to use people from different countries.And finally there is mass migration. Millions of people now move across national borders every year.So all these contributes to the fact that intercultural communication is now a daily occurrence. Its importance now is being recognized by an increasing number of people.Intercultural communication as a discipline first started in the United States. And this is easy to understand because the US is a land of immigrants. People came from many countries in the world. They came from Africa, Europe, Asia and Australia. These immigrants came to the United States and had to communicate with each other, so there was a lot of chance of intercultural communication. And the now immigrant also arrive every year by the millions. Large numbers of foreign students and tourist also come to the United States. So in a big city like New York or Los Angeles you’ll find people of many different ethic groups and many people of different races. At a typical American campus, you’ll find students from different parts of the world. So intercultural communication is very common in the US.Besides, the US has many multi-national and transnational companies with employees and offices around the world. These employees are from different cultural backgrounds. So within these international companies, intercultural communication is fairly common.Intercultural communication as a discipline has a fairly short history. Edward Hall who wrote the silent language and had it published in 1959 is believed by some as the founder of the intercultural communication, because it was he who first published this important book. And this book had since become a classic of the intercultural communication studies.Of course in the US, there has been an anthropological tradition to study race and culture. Anthropologists like Sapir, Wolfe, Benedict, kluckhohn, Mead ---- they all studied race and culture. But cultural communication was studied separately until recent years. It was not until the early 70s that scholars began to study to relate culture to communication. It was in 1970 that the intercultural communication was recognized by the Intercultural Communication Association (ICA). After that there was a lot of change. Intercultural communication was offered as a course in the American universities. And in the early 1970s, cross-cultural training started. The first training actually started with peaceful members. Peaceful members were sent to countries in Asia and Africa in the 1960s and 1970s. Most of them were graduates, fresh from universities, and they wanted to go to work overseas. But when they arrived the places where they supposed to work, many of them had a cultural shock. There were many things that they were not prepared for culturally. Some of them had to be sent back. So the government soon realized that just sending them oversees would be no good. They had to be trained culturally before they were sent overseas.In 1975 an international association was set up. And this is SIETAR (Society for intercultural education, training and research). SIETAR probably is the biggest international organization engaged in intercultural communication. In 1977, an economic journal called International Journal of Intercultural Relations was published.Intercultural communication in China has a fairly short history. People started taking an interest in intercultural communication in the early 80s. Teachers of foreign languages started studying the relationship of language to culture. And Professor Xu Guozhang was the first whowrote about cultural loading words, i.e. the cultural meaning of words. Many articles, actually hundreds of articles were written on intercultural communication. And then there were followed by books (probably more than 20 books). And three conferences have been held. (first in harbin, second in Beijing, third in Shenzhen, a fourth will be in Xi’an) A national association called China Association for Intercultural Communication was set up in 1995. The scholars involved in this field of study include the teachers of foreign languages, teachers of Chinese as foreign language (对外汉语), linguists and psychologists.Books on intercultural communication published in China:✓关世杰：《跨文化交流》✓贾玉新：《跨文化交际学》✓林大津：《跨文化交际研究》✓胡文仲：《跨文化交际学概论》✓胡文仲、高一虹：《跨文化交际与外语教学》How useful is intercultural communication?As a discipline, it can be applied many ways. It can be applied in the training of business executive and technicians. Particularly for those who work overseas. They have to encounter a lot of cultural problems. So they have to be trained before they are sent overseas, otherwise, they could not work effectively. Then there is training of new immigrants and foreign students. This is done both by the US and the countries like Australia. And there is multi-cultural education, because at the American schools and the British schools, the pupils are from different ethnic groups. They have different cultures, so they have to be what is called multi-cultural education. In foreign language teaching, intercultural communication is very important. Finally it is important for improving general cultural awareness.Next, we’ll take up the definition of culture and its features:According to the Concise Oxford Dictionary, culture is “the arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively”. This is really referring to intellectual pursuit, like the art, music, and architecture. If you talk about Picasso, Beethoven, you’re talking about culture. But this is not the definition of anthropologist’s. To anthropologist, culture is “the customs, civilizations, and achievement of a particular time or people”. For instance, we have Greek culture, Egyptian culture, and in China, Yangshao culture. When we say Greek culture, we mean the customs, civilizations of the Greece about 2000 years ago.The following is some definitions by scholars.The definition given by Edward Sapir (a linguist and anthropologist): Culture may be defined as what a society does and thinks. Language is a particular how of thought.” What a society does covers a great deal. Everything that you do is covered by this. What the society thinks including beliefs and values. In another place in his book, he says “culture is the socially inherited assemblage of practices and beliefs that determines the texture of the lives”. Assemblage means collection. So culture is a collection of practices of what a society does and beliefs of what a society thinks. Socially inherited is used in contrast with biologically heritage. When you say socially inherited, it means you do not inherit it from your parents; you inherit it from society, from school, your friends, mass media; you get all these things from all these sources. This is very different from biological heritage.Another definition given by two anthropologists is this; this is a much longer definition. “Culture consists of patterns, explicit and implicit, of and for behavior acquired and transmitted by symbols, constituting the distinctive achievement by human groups including their embodiment and artifacts; the essential core of culture consists of traditional (i.e. historically derived and selected) idea and especially their attached values.”(Kroeber and Kluckhohn, 1952) This is a definition accepted by many people. What I would like to draw your attention to is “the essential core of culture consists of traditional idea and especially their attached values”, which means the core of culture is actually the traditional ideas and values.Geert Hofstede is a Dutch scholar. He published two important books. One book is called Culture’s Consequences, and the other is called Cultures and Organizations. He is very influential scholar in the field of intercultural communication. According to him, “culture is software of the mind”. This is an interesting definition because we all know what software is. Computers do what the programs tell them to do. Human beings do everything according to their culture. In this sense, culture is similar to computer software. But of course the human are not exactly the same as computers, and sometimes they may deviate from their programs, i.e. people can be creative, while computers can create.What is common to the definitions:There are a lot of definitions of the word “culture”. It may be one of the most difficult words in English. It has more than 160 definitions. But what is common to definitions is culture is what distinguishes human being from animals. It is human endeavor and its outcome, i.e. culture makes us human beings different from animals. Animals do not have culture, but we do. Culture includes patterns of behavior, beliefs and values, and artifacts. The patterns of behavior, that’s one thinks. The beliefs and values, that’s what society thinks, and finally the things made artifact. Culture is share by a group of people. When we talk about a culture, we talk about a group; we talk about the behavior patterns and ideas of this group. Culture is transmitted from generation to generation. We got some our ideas, actually most of our ideas, from ancestors.Culture is like an iceberg. Look at this picture of an iceberg. It is very beautiful but it is very dangerous, because most of the iceberg is under the water. We can’t see it. So what we can see above the water is only a very small part of the iceberg. Most of the iceberg is hidden from us. Culture is just like an iceberg. Look at this. This is an iceberg. What we can see, for instance, is food, dress, paintings, architecture, and dance. These are apparent to the eye. But a greater part of culture is hidden, something that we can’t see. For example, views about life, one’s attitude, one’s preferences, one’s love and hate, people’s customs and habits. All these things can’t be seen. They are out of our awareness. This makes the study of culture difficult, because most of what we see is only a small part of culture, and a larger part of culture is what we can’t see.Now here we have a diagram.This diagram shows the relationships of the different parts. The outer layer is symbols. Symbols include language, and also other codes. In the further inside we have heroes. “H eroes”here means “hero worship”, i.e. what kind of people you worship. For instance, in China we worship our national heroes like Wen Tianxiang and Lin Zexu. In the US, they worship George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Martin Luther King. And further inside there is rituals. Symbols, heroes and rituals are all practices, i.e. is what you do. But these practices are decided by the core the culture, i.e. values. So values form the core of the culture.Now let’s look at this. This shows the normal distribution of cultural characteristics. Most of the people are in the middle. They share the characteristics of this particular cultural group. People who are in the middle are more or less what we call typical people. But there are some people they are not typical. They share some the characteristics, but on the other hand, they have some other characteristics. So when we talk about the Chinese, we are actually talking about most of the Chinese people; we are not talking about everyone. We say the Chinese are modest, but there are some people who are not so modest. They are in the minority, but they are still Chinese. So this chart is very important for us to understand culture.Culture is acquired instead of hereditary. What does this mean? It means culture can be learned. Rush Benedict who is the American anthropologist, says this, “All over the world, since the beginning of human history, it can be shown that peoples have been able to adopt the culture of peoples of another blood. There is nothing in the biological structure of man that makes it even difficult. Man is not committed in detail by his biological constitution to any particular variety of behavior.”(Benedict, 1935) Now what he says is this, culture is learned; culture is acquired. It is not difficult for people to learn another culture. For instance, a child, a boy in China of Chinese parent is taken to US, and is brought up there. Now what kind of culture is he or she acquired? Most probably, he or she will acquire American culture. And it is not difficult for the child to learn the American culture, because culture is learnable. And this is basically what Rush Benedict tells us.Biological vs. CulturalNow here we make a distinction between nature and neture★Sneezing is biological while saying ‘god bless you’ is cultural.Everybody sneezes. In the west, when somebody sneezes, his friends will say “god bless you”. But in China, we don’t say this.★Feeling hungry is nature, while what we eat and how we eat it is cultural.Feeling hungry is nature. Everybody feels hungry at certain time. But the thing that what we eat and how we eat is cultural. (31:48)CommunicationHuman communication is very old as man kind. At first, human beings did not have language. How did they communication with each other? They use the facial expressions. They used exclamations, i.e. they shouted; they made a lot of noises to communicate. This was made basically 100,000 years ago.30, 000 years ago, there was the use of cave paintings. Cave paintings were discovered in Australia. These cave paintings were done by Abriginos to record life.About 20,000 years ago, the use of language to communicate started.About 5000 years ago, people began to use script to communicate, that is writing. So our history of writing is really a short one.Definition of communication:There are many definitions of communication like culture. Samovar & Portion have given one definition of communication. And there is this:Communication occurs whenever meaning is attributed to behavior or the residue of behavior.This definition means when something happens, and when you give meaning to it, then there is communication. For instance, you tape the fingers on the desk. If taping the fingers is your habit, e.g. while working, then there is no meaning. It is not communication. But sometimes in a restaurant, you ordered your food, but food does not come, so you get impatient, and you start taping your fingers on the desk. When you do this, you are really communicating with a message. You’re telling the waiters that you’re getting impatient. In Guodong, people tape their fingers when somebody calls wine or tea for him. This is not to express impatience. This is actually to express one’s gratitude.Another definition given a Chinese scholar, professor Zhang Guoliang of Fudan University, is this:Communication refers to the act and process of sending and receiving messages among people.This is a definition that is very easy to understand. When you start to send a message to another person and another person starts to receive the message from you, then communication takes place.The word “communication” may be translated differently, like 交流，沟通，传通，交际，传播. 传通and 沟通may be used by Hong Kong and Taiwan. 交际is used mostly by people with linguistic background. 传播is used by people who are in communication studies. So that is why we tend to use 跨文化交际in stead of 跨文化沟通. But there are people use 跨文化传通or 跨文化交流for intercultural communication.Types of communicationThere are many types of communication.●Intrapersonal communication (自我传播). E.g. if you talk to yourself●Interpersonal communication (人际传播). That is communication between one personand another person.●Organizational communication (组织传播). E.g. Within a big company, you havecirculars and messages. These are part of organizational communication.●Mass communication (大众传播). E.g. magazines, TV, radio, newspaper, etc.Classification of communication:This is a very famous model used in communication studies. Basically what he said is this: what sender through what message through what channel to what receiver with what effects. This is 5-W. This model has been used by a lot of communication experts. But later it is been found that there is no feedback in this model, i.e. it’s linier model.So later people have revised this model, have edited feedback. Then here we have Osgood-Schramm’s Circular Model.The person who sends the message is encoder, i.e. he or she puts what he means into a particular code, and this is called encode. And the person who encodes it is an encoder. So he encodes his meaning into a message. Then this message goes to a second person who gets the message and has to decode it, i.e. he has to understand it, he has to read the message. If it’s in English he’ll have to decode this English message. If it is a Chinese message, he’ll have decode this Chinese message. After he’s got this message, he decides to send some feedback. And he himself will become the encoder. So he will send the message to the first person who sent the message. This time, this person becomes a decoder. So here we have a basically a circular model. And this person can again send a second message and going through a same kind of journal. This seems to be a more desirable model of communication.Components of communication:What are the components of communication? Some scholars say there are five. Some say there are eight. They are: Sender, Encoding, Message, Channel, Decoding, Recipient (receiver), Response, feedback.Encoding and decoding are areas where misunderstanding is likely to occur, because in this process we have elements of culture which will be at work. For instance, ways of greeting will be very different across cultures. In China, we say to someone, “Where are you going?”This is a greeting in Chinese, but in English this is a real question. When you want to greet someone, you encode your greeting into a message which is “where are you going”. When this person, an American or British person, decodes it, he finds it’s a real question; it’s not a greeting. So this is where misunderstanding is likely to take place.In nonverbal communication, it is also possible to have mistakes. For instance, in Chinese culture when you do this (类似OK的手型), everybody knows it is “three”. But for someone who is from western cultural background and who doesn’t understand Chinese culture, when he sees it, his understanding is “it’s ok”. Because in most of western culture, this gesture means “OK” when you say to someone far away who can’t hear you. So here we have the misunderstanding which is caused by the encoding and decoding process, because when you want to say “three” you encode it into this gesture, but when he decodes it, he uses his own cultural background, so he gets the idea “it’s ok”. Both the verbal communication and nonverbal communication it’s possible made in the process of encoding and decoding.Reasons for misunderstanding:●Encoding and decoding do not take place in a vacuum. (它们不会在真空当中进行。
