Intercultural Communication

Therefore, intercultural communication competence has become a theme which concerns everybody and which will even become more and more important in our world of globalization.

In order to avoid misunderstandings or even hostile attitudes ending up in conflicts, in order to live peacefully in the “global village” and be able to solve the growing number of global problems which do not stop at national borders, the ability to understand people from different cultures and to communicate competently with them has taken on an extreme urgency. However, achieving this aim sounds easier than it is. To communicate competently with people from other cultures, it is not enough to speak the same language as they do.

Even though two people speak the same language it is possible that they do not understand each other. This thesis becomes obvious in the following critical incident: A Japanese negotiating with a German business partner says that the deal will be difficult. When the German asks how his company can help to solve the problem, the Japanese is confused. While the Japanese meant that the deal is off, the German thought there were only some obstacles which can be overcome.

This phenomenon can be explained due to the fact that both speakers know the linguistic rules of the language such as grammar and vocabulary, but they are not aware of the cultural norms, attitudes and behavior of their communication partner. They have linguistic competence, but no intercultural communication competence. This lack of intercultural communication competence and the ignorance of cultural differences might cause many misunderstandings.

In order to understand the sources of misunderstandings and to be aware of intercultural communication problems, it is necessary to know and to understand the concept of communication.

Since it is not possible to transmit messages directly from one person’s brain to that of another person, we have to put our ideas into codes that can be transmitted. Consequently, communication can be described as an exchange of messages between a sender and a receiver. In this process the sender encodes the message, which means that he produces a set of symbols and the receiver has to decode the message, which means that he tries to understand the meaning of the symbols by interpreting or making sense of them.

However, the message the sender thinks he has sent might be very different from the message the receiver gets because (s)he has interpreted it differently. In other words,

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sent and received messages are never identical. This can be explained by the fact that communication is a very complex process in which symbolic messages can be conveyed from one person to another, but meanings cannot. Furthermore, communication does not only include verbal, but also nonverbal messages.

The spoken word is not the only form of communication. Messages can also be conveyed through nonverbal means such as gestures or facial expressions. The problem of non-verbal communication is that people from different cultures often assign different meaning to the same behavior. The same gesture, for instance may have multiple meanings: The sign where the thumb and the forefinger meet to form a circle means “okay” or “all right” in the USA, in Japan it means “money”, in France “zero” and in Tunisia “I will kill you”.

Touching a person is less frequent and accepted in some cultures and might be interpreted as aggressive whereas in other cultures it is an indication of warmth and friendliness. While keeping eye contact when listening or speaking to a person is normal in one culture, it is polite to look away in another.

Communication contains consciously as well as unconsciously sent messages. Nonverbal messages are mostly unconsciously sent messages, which means that the sender, even if he does not want to, sends messages he is totally unaware of.

It can be seen that the communication process includes many sources of misunderstandings and misinterpretations which increase with the differences in cultural background. The greater the differences in cultural background between sender and receiver, the greater the differences in meaning connected to special words and behaviors. This can be explained by the fact that words and nonverbal behavior may mean different things in different cultures. Therefore, one of the major factors influencing intercultural communication is culture.

But what is culture? How can it be defined?

Hofstede describes culture as the “software of the mind”. This metaphor expresses that culture is not inherited, but learned.

As there are more than hundred definitions of the term “culture” there is no consensus on one definition. According to Storti, culture can be understood as the “shared assumptions, values and beliefs of a group of people resulting in characteristic behaviors”.

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A more narrow definition characterizes culture in the sense of arts, literature, geography

and history. Culture in this sense means national culture.

The first definition however is, from my point of view, more meaningful because assumptions, values and beliefs are more significant than national aspects in binding people together.

Culture is always connected with communication. Hall even claims that “culture is communication and communication is culture”. This statement expresses that we communicate the way we do because we are raised in a particular culture and learn its language, rules and norms. When we communicate with people from other cultures we often are confronted with rules, norms, attitudes and behavior different from our own. In order to become a competent speaker and to avoid misunderstandings it is advantageous to know about these differences across cultures.

Differences as well as similarities across cultures can be explained with the help of cultural dimensions.

One of these dimensions is the concept of time. Cultures differ in the way how they regard and handle time.

In polychronic cultures people do several things at one time. Since time is regarded as limitless, there is always enough time for interruptions and plans change frequently depending on the current situation. The focus is on interpersonal relations, not on schedules or deadlines.

In monochronic cultures only one thing is done at one time with great stress on schedules and deadlines. As time is regarded as quantified and limited, people try not to waste, but to control it. This attitude can be characterized by the statement “time is money” which is typical of monochronic cultures. Resulting from that, meetings start on time, interruptions are avoided and being late is impolite.

The concept of time explains why Germans are often angry about the fact that Spanish people are always late and why Spanish people have the impression that Germans pay more attention to schedules and deadlines than to interpersonal relations.

A further dimension which often causes misunderstandings in intercultural

communication is the degree of directness. In direct cultures such as the USA people say what they mean and mean what they say. They are open and explicit. However, in some cultures such as Japan directness is regarded as impolite. Hence, Japanese are more implicit in order to avoid confrontation and save face. Saying “no” is considered

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