INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION

Part 1: culture as context for communication

Chapter 1: The dispute over defining culture

Globalization = worldwide spread of markets and democracy
Proponents • Economic systems based on private property and competition, are the most efficient.
• Democracy is the fairest political system in the world
Opponents • The corporation is the most powerful institution on earth.
• US wealth and dominance
• Growing ethnic identity -> interethnic group hatred (WTC 2001)

Culture

Definitions
19th century Culture was a synonym for western civilization. Their culture was superior to others.

Today Culture is not bound to political boundaries.
Culture is:
• A community or population sufficiently large enough to be self-sustaining.
• A totality of a groups - thought, experiences, patterns of behaviour, values, concepts and assumptions about life – that guides their behaviour and contact with other cultures.
• A process of social transmission of these thoughts and behaviours learned from birth in the family and schools over the course of generations.
• When these thoughts and behaviours are the same and a group shares this, it’s called cultural identity. You can identify yourself with a groups thoughts and behaviours.
-> but there is diversity within cultures and of course a difference between cultures.

Example: Hofstede classified the elements of culture (bolletje 2) into 4 categories:
1. symbols: verbal and nonverbal language
2. rituals: socially essential collective activities within a culture
3. values: feelings not open for discussion within a culture about what is good, bad, etc.
4. heroes: real or imaginary people who serve as behaviour models in a culture. The hero is expressed in the cultures myths.

Within a culture the individuals differ. The culture doesn’t provide complete and reliable information about that one person. Knowing another’s cultural identity does help us understand the opportunities and challenges that each individual in that culture had to deal with. But the way they deal with those things depend on the individual and isn’t the same for everyone in that culture.

What is culture?
• Behavioural norms
• Linguistic expression
• Patterns of thinking
• Beliefs and values
• World views
• Styles of communication

What is communication?
The process of intentionally stimulating meaning in other people trough the use of symbols.

What is intercultural communication?
Communication between people and groups of diverse culture, sub-culture or sub-group identifications.

Race
One’s cultural environment largely influences one’s physical and mental characteristics.
Biological definition: race = fixed
A race is a large group of people characterized by similarity of descent.
1735: Linnaeus -> humans are classified in for groups: Africans, Americans, Asian and Europeans.
19th century: different races have different kinds of blood.
20th century: No race-defining gene found by scientists. Popular indicators of race (skin color, air texture) were caused by climate and diet.
Socio-historical definition: race = unstable
Race is socially determined trough constant debate. For example: Japanese are classified “white” by Americans, but Chinese aren’t, although they’re both Asian. (p9-10)
Race is socio-historically defined by unstable social changes in definition and understanding

Cultural elements are learned trough interaction with others in the culture.
Culture is sharing experiences (sister separation example p.11).

Cultures within cultures
• Subculture = A large group of people within larger society that share distinctive cultural characteristics to distinguish it from others. They exist within dominant cultures and are often based on economic or social class, ethnicity, race or geographic region.
Social class: it’s traditionally a position in society’s hierarchy based on income, education, occupation and neighborhood. In the USA the basis of social class is income.
Ethnicity: the definition had changed with time like the definition of race.
Ethnic group can refer to a group of people of the same descent and heritage who share a common and distinctive culture passed on through generations. (Tribes = stammen) -> 5000 ethnic groups
Ethnic identity refers to identification with and perceived acceptance into a group with shared culture and heritage (= erfgoed).

• Co-culture = sub can mean inferior or secondary. So that’s why the word co-culture is suggested to convey the idea that not one culture is inherently superior to other coexisting cultures.

• Subgroup = Based on occupation, hobbies or special skills that, like cultures, provide patterns of behavior and values. They exist within an dominant culture and are dependent on that culture. -> Occupation: nurses, doctors, employees of large organizations. Doesn’t usually contain a large number of people.
Subgroups are linked to deviant, it means differing from the cultural norm. It’s not lower. Vegetarians and prostitutes both deviate from the norm and are considered subgroups.
Membership in a subgroup is temporarily, but doesn’t always have to be. (military, gay, girl scouts)
Individuals can hold on to values, attitudes and behaviors of groups of which they are not a member -> wanna-be behavior. An individual who imitates the behavior of a group he or she desires to belong to = wanna-be.
Reference group = refers to any group to which one aspires (striven) to attain membership.

Short definitions
• Culture: A self-sustaining community or population … can produce new generations of members.
• Sub-culture: culture within a culture which has distinctive values and norms and rules for behavior.
• Sub-groups: Groups formed based on vocation, hobbies, or special skills that provide patterns of behavior and values and a common vocabulary.

Rules and Norms
Rules = socially agreed-on behavior or individual guidelines for behavior.
Norms = specify appropriate and inappropriate behavior.
Example subgroup norms: army salutations
Superstitions: some cultural customs are labeled as superstitions. They believe the practices influence the course of events. You don’t always follow them, but you do recognize the superstitions of your culture. (13, konijnenpoot). Even subgroups develop superstitions -> winning jersey.

Chapter 2: Defining communication as an element of culture

Communication: the dictionary meaning of the word is – to share with or to make common -. Communication is an element of culture. That’s why it’s often said that they’re inseparable. The have to be studied together to understand them. You can’t understand the one without understanding the other.

A western transmission model accentuates the instrumental function of communication.
An example of a transmission model is Devito’s – Ten components of communication – These components are:
• Source: the person with an idea he/she desires to communicate.
• Encoding: putting an idea into a symbol (words, nonverbal).
• Messages: the encoded thought -> resulting object of the encoding.
• Channel: by which the message is transmitted -> media
• Noise: anything that distorts the message
- external noise: sight, sound, something that draws your attention.
- Internal noise: thought and feelings that can interfere (hungry, tired)
- Semantic noise: how alternative meanings of the source’s message symbols can be distracting.
• Receiver: the person who attends to the message
• Decoding: the opposite of encoding, you assign meaning to the symbol received
• Receiver response: anything the receiver does after having attended to and decoded the message.
• Feedback: the portion of the receiver response of which the source has knowledge and to which the source attends and assigns meaning.
Feedback makes communication a two-way or interactive process.
• Context: the environment in which the communication takes place and which helps define the communication. Depending on the environment some things are likely to be done and others aren’t. But culture is also context, each culture has it’s own worldview

Other models of communication accentuate a humanistic approach to understanding communication. In a transactional model you don’t just send and receive messages you bring your relationship with the person in de conversation. A transactional understanding of communication helps us recognize that the exact same words can be spoken to diverse people with different meanings. So it depends on the relationship with the person you’re talking to how he/she interpret the message.

Other definitions of communication
Hayakawa: decoding or listening seems to give the receiver a subordinate role to the source. When people speak other people stop at what they’re doing to listen. The source is viewed more active and important in the process. Hayakawa said that cultural beliefs affect how the process of communication is defined. So it actually differs from culture to culture if a listener is seen as subordinate role to that of a source.
Krippendorff: That other cultures define communication in diverse ways demonstrates that communication is an element of culture. For example, defining communication from a Confucian perspective accentuates other uses.
-> Confucianism: The Chinese scholar K’ung-Fu-tzu (Latinized as Confucius) lived from 550-478 before Christ. In this time China was collapsing. Confucius proposed a government based less on heredity than on morality and merit (value). The societies influenced by Confucius today are the Chinese communities such as China, North and South Korea and Singapore.
Confucius set up an ethical-moral system intended to oversee relationships in family, state and community. There are 5 relationships in society:
1. Ruler and subjects: the relation of righteousness -> state
2. Friend and friend: faithfulness -> community
3. Husband and wife: chaste conduct (pure behavior) -> family
4. Father and son: love -> family
5. Elder brother and younger brother: order (position) -> family
Confucianism accentuates virtue, selflessness, duty, patriotism (loyalty, nationalism), hard work and respect for hierarchy both familial and societal.
It brings guides social relationships and brings balance and harmony in relationships (in China).

The five effects that Confucianism has on interpersonal communication:
1. Particularism: There are no rules overseeing interaction with someone whose status is unknown. It’s not the same everywhere. Even though you know someone’s status, it’s likely that you’re still communicating in a wrong way with this person because it differs from culture to culture. So you have different communication patterns for different people (of different status)
2. Role of intermediaries: Rituals should be followed in establishing (beginning) relationships
3. Reciprocity: complementary obligations (the same commitment/ responsibility/ requirement) are the base of relationships.
4. ingroup/ outgroup distinction(difference): ingroup members engage in freer and deeper talk and may find it difficult to develop personal relationships with outgroup members. There can even be a different language code for ingroup members.
5. Overlap of personal and public relationships: business and pleasure are mixed.

Honorific: showing or giving honor or respect. When they ask someone to sit down it doesn’t vary. Status, ranking, age, etc. indicate what grammatical form they have to use. When they first meet they first determine the social position in order to know if they should use common or honorific language.
With Confucianism you respect the relationship through communication. This is more important than the information exchanged.

Communication studies approaches
There are many different approaches to the study of communication and culture:
• International communication: study of communication between countries or national governments, but also mass communication systems
• Global communication: the study of transborder transfer of information and data and opinions and values by groups, institutions and governments and the issues that arise from the transfer.
• Cross-cultural: comparing phenomenon (happening, events, experiences) across cultures. E.g. woman’s role.
• Intercultural communication: face-to-face interactions of people of different cultures.
The study originated in de US in 1946 -> foreign service institute to provide language and anthropological cultural training for foreign diplomats. When JFK created the Peace Corps in the early ’60 the interest grew in knowing more about communicating more effectively with people of diverse cultures.
Othering refers to the labeling and degrading of cultures and groups outside of one’s own (gay, lesbians, women, ethnic groups)

P 41 t/m 48 lezen

Chapter 3: Culture’s influence on perception

• Sensation

• Perception:
1. Selection
2. Organization
3. Interpretation

How does culture affect sensation and what are the steps of the perception process

Sensation = the neurological process by which you become aware of your environment
It occurs through the senses: Sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch. p 50

What you sense differs from culture to culture. A person from a rural area can sense crooked lines more accurately than urban people. This is a result of their different culture learnings.

Perception = the act of becoming aware of, knowing, or identifying by means of the senses
It has a three step process:
1. Selection = Refers to limiting attention only to part of the available sense data. You select the things that you are used to like your name.
2. Organization = the step in the perception process where sense data is organized in some meaningful way.
3. Interpretation = the step in the perception process where meaning is attached to sense data. (decoding)

High context versus lox context
Low context = cultures in which little of the meaning is determined by the context because the message is encoded in the explicit (clear/open) code. Verbal messages are detailed and specific.
High context = cultures in which less has to be said or written because more of the meaning is in the physical environment or already shared by people. More sensitive to nonverbal messages.
When you meet a stranger your communication is low context because you haven’t shared any experiences. With your brother or sister you use shared context. This is high context communication. You don’t have to explain facial expressions.

Face: low-context cultures (US) with a greater concern for privacy and autonomy tend to use direct-face negotiation and express more self-face maintenance. High context cultures (china) are more indirect and use intermediaries (tussenpersonen, hulpmiddelen). It reduces the risk of losing face because there is no direct face-to-face contact.

Taoism: perfect harmony with nature. It arose from the philosophy Loa-tzu. According to Taoists there is an underlying pattern or direction of the universe that cannot be explained verbally or intellectually. It’s “the way” that can’t be captured in words. They lead a simple, meditative, spontaneous life. They explore food to discover their life-giving elements.

Yin-Yang: belief in balance that oversees all of life and nature.
Yin = dark, moist, cool aspect of the cosmos (women)
Yang = bright, dry, warm aspect (men)
Food has also yin and yang aspects these have to be balanced. According to yin and yang you can get a fever from eating too much yang food.

Part II: Communication Variables

Chapter 4: Barriers to intercultural communication

Ethnography = the direct observation, reporting, and evaluation of the customary behavior of a culture. You observe and study a community.

Aboriginal = unassertiveness, avoidance of direct argumentation, avoid topics that produce disharmony. They think together. ↔ Western European = direct style, confrontational, individualistic.

LaRay M. Barna created a list of 6 communication barriers:
1. Anxiety: When you’re anxious (here: nervous) you focus on this feeling. You don’t know what’s expected from you. You might act different than your normal self (emotional response). You limit you interaction with other people because you’re focused on the fact that you’re nervous. You’re afraid you’ll say something wrong.

2. Assimilating similarity instead of difference: When you assume similarity between cultures you can be caught unaware of important differenced (Danish woman). Having no info about a culture doesn’t mean that there are no differences. Each culture is different from another. Display of emotions isn’t the same everywhere. The opposite can be a barrier as well: assuming difference instead of similarity.

3. Ethnocentrism: Ethnocentrism is negatively judging aspects of another culture by the standards of one’s own culture.
-> Cultural relativism = not everything’s equal. We have to try to understand other people’s behavior in the context of their culture before we judge them.

4. Stereotypes and prejudice: stereotyping is positive or negative judgments based on ethnicity or other group membership. Prejudice is irrational suspicion or hatred of a particular group, race, religion or sexual orientation.

5. nonverbal misinterpretations

6. language

Intercultural Barriers: china and the USA p 79-90

Chapter 5: Stereotyping and prejudice as barriers

Stereotype = negative or positive judgments made about individuals based on any observable or believed group membership.
Prejudice = irrational suspicion or hatred of a particular group, race, religion or sexual orientation.
The both refer to making judgments about individuals based on group membership

Stereotypes
Is stereotyping a mistake our brain makes like the mistakes it makes in perception of visual illusions? We only see, hear,… what we want to see and hear. When we think about heads of corporations we see tall, slender white males. Not women or colored people.
Is it always ethnic stereotyping or is it cultural sensitivity?
Is racial profiling stereotyping?
Profiling = a law enforcement practice of scrutinizing individuals based on characteristics thought to indicate a likelihood of criminal behavior. (E.g. person traveling alone is more likely to be a terrorist).
Stereotyping can also be positive. E.g. doctors are intelligent and wise.

Negative effects on communication
Stereotypes hinder communication in at least 4 ways:
1. We assume that a widely held belief is true when it may not be.
2. When we continue to use the stereotype we reinforce the belief
3. We assume that the belief is true of any individual in the group we stereotype.
4. The stereotype can become a self-fulfilling prophecy (prediction) for the person stereotyped.

Prejudices
Prejudice refers to irrational dislike, suspicion or hatred of a particular group, race, religion or sexual orientation. So it can’t be positive. Individuals are just by the group they belong to. The highly prejudiced individual has an authoritarian personality -> overgeneralize (zwart-wit beeld)
P99-102

Racism
= any policy, practice, belief or attitude that attributes characteristics or status to individuals based on their race
It doesn’t only involve prejudices but also the exercise of power over individuals based on their race. It can be conscious, unconscious, intentional or unintentional.
Gobineau = father of racism -> 3 groups: white – yellow – black.

The role of communication:
• Racism and prejudice is spread through communication. It’s rooted in the child’s early socialization and is advanced by communicating with other racists.
• The persistence (determination/ pushiness) of prejudice reason’s:
- Socialization: from parents to children
- Social benefits: It’s hard to break away from prejudices of family/friends (support)
- Economic benefits: when there is more competition for jobs prejudice is stronger.
- Psychological benefits: generate a feeling of superiority.
• Hate speech = threats, verbal slurs directed against specific group, physical acts.
Hate speech can push other people to prejudiced behavior. That’s why some try to restrict this type of speech. Others say that restricting this is in violation with the First Amendment (freedom of expression other than libel and obscenity). People who are against this argument that hate speech is more of an action than political expressions.
Relation to hate crime: An attitude like hate speech can grow into a hate crime. Hate crime is hostility against people that are different because of their race, religion, sexual preferences or ethnicity. Most of the hate crimes are committed by people under 21.
• Positive approaches:
- Your vocal opinions affect what others think and say. So is you say anti-racist things others will tend to have a more anti-racist opinion.
- The media confronts prejudice and racism. E.g. reporting human rights abuses
E.g. and by portraying all group fairly (balanced picture of minority life in the media).

Chapter 6: Nonverbal communication

Nonverbal communication = the messages you send without using words.
• It’s not coded into words.
• Gets meaning by the context (environment) of our communication.
• Gives information about how we feel about a situation.

Functions of NVC:
• Replacing spoken messages (traffic police officer)
• Sending difficult messages (When you have to go, slowly walking away will make it clear to the other person without being rude)
• Forming impressions that guide communication (dress a certain way for a job interview)
• Making relationships clear (relationship between communicators like boss and employee)
• Regulating interaction (You have to know when it’s your time to talk or you’ll be interrupting others constantly)
• Reinforcing and modifying verbal messages (you put action by your words -> how big the fish was you caught)

Nonverbal messages differ from culture to culture. That’s why nonverbal misinterpretations are often barriers. Gestures aren’t universal. E.g. the gesture for ok in the US means something very offensive in Brazil.

Nonverbal message codes
• Proxemics: Our relationship to fixed or personal space and territoriality. It means how we use personal space, how much space we want between us and other people. It depends on culture, upbringing (individual), situation and your relation with the person, how much personal space you need.
• Kinesics: gestures, body movements, facial expressions and eye-contact. They don’t mean the same in every culture.
• Chronemics: the way we use and perceive time. It varies from religion to religion (different calendars) and from culture to culture (When a party starts a 8 should you be there at that precise time or should you be fashionably late?)
• Paralanguage: Nonverbal elements of the voice.
-> Vocal characterizers (this means laughter, giggling but also crying or sobs)
-> Vocal qualifiers (for example intensity of the voice. Loud or soft voice. Or the pitch of the voice for example a woman is higher then a man’s voice which is most of the time lower.)
-> Vocal segregates like uh or uhm.
• Silence: Silence is also a form of non-verbal communication. Silence has different meaning in high and low context cultures. In high context people think that little has to be said. People are more open and sensitive. And they avoid direct confrontation. In low context cultures people use detailed messages, more verbal communication and they are very direct.
• Haptics: Communication by touch (men walking hand in hand isn’t considered something only gay men do in some cultures)
• Clothing and physical appearances: It varies what we mean by the clothes we wear.
By clothing you can see where people come from, and what subgroup they are in.
• Territoriality: how we use space and what message we send with it -> Feng shui: harmony in your environment to reach health happiness and balance.
• Olfatics: communication via smell -> smell can make you feel a certain way: fear, hunger, in the mood for sex (pheromones).
• Oculesics: Communicating with the eyes. -> Not the same for every culture: in some cultures it’s normal men cry in others it’s considered a weakness.

Chapter 7: Language as a barrier

Language = set of symbols shared by a community to communicate meaning and experience.
Language bounds people and reflects what those people saw, ate and thought (culture)

People have tried to trace all of the world’s languages back to a mother tongue (human’s first language).
It leaded to 2 assumptions
• Languages are dynamic and ever changing -> English (Shakespeare)
• Relationship between the sound of a word and its meaning is random. The sound of the word has no connection to the meaning.

Syntax = how words are arranged to express meaning. It’s the order of the subject verb and object.

Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
-> Differences in language across cultures
Divided in 2 interpretations:
1. Linguistic determinism interpretation = language controls thought and cultural norms. (We live in a world out language permits us to know -> The differenced between cultures are basically the differences between worldviews of different cultures).
2. Linguistic relativity interpretation = the difference between languages is not what can be said but what is relatively easy to say.
Applications:
• Vocabulary: If a language has more words for a thing or activity it’s very important in that culture (snow for Eskimo’s and rice for Asians). You can also assume that if there are very few words for an activity or thing it’s not that important in that culture (Yanomamo - culture with primitive technology – has only three numbers)
• Grammar and syntax:
Eskimo’s use more often if than when -> when is more certain
in Japanese not using a subject is normal, it’s not abbreviating, it’s the language. When we don’t use a subject we now we use a shortened version.

Language as a barrier: translation problems
Even when cultures have the same language there still may be problems
• Vocabulary: sometimes translations can not be made on a word-for-word basis because words that exist in one language may not exist in the other or it has a rich meaning. The word snow has a rich meaning for Eskimo’s.
• Idiomatic: idioms can’t be translated word-for wordt. The encouragement “break a leg” would get a whole different meaning.
• Grammar and syntax: you must understand the grammar of a language to know what’s being said. The position of a word in a sentence gives meaning to it. ‘Mouse eats cat’ means in some cultures the same as here ‘cat eats mouse’ means (Brazil).
• Experiential: When an experience or object doesn’t exist in a culture it’s possible that there is no word for it in the language.
• Conceptual: The same words can have a different meaning (e.g. freedom, human rights).
To improve this you use back translation = first translate it to the second language, and then translate it back to the first. Then compare it to the original.

Communication when there’s no common language
• Pidgin: trade language that has elements of the dominant language(s), but with a greatly reduced vocabulary and grammar.
(Mixture of two or more languages that formed a new, second language.)
• Pidgin is a second language. Creoles are pidgins that have become nativized. Their vocabulary and grammar are expanded to the point of being complete languages.
• The cultures will simply choose a language to use for communication purposes. Now it’s English. Esperanto is also an example (Latin grammar European words) it was developed as a universal language but wasn’t spread worldwide.

Language as nationalism
Cultural invasion = one group penetrating the culture of another group to impose its own view of the world.
Because language is a part of culture, many countries fear the influence on their own culture that the introduction of a new language may have -> limit influence (French try to keep the French language pure of foreign words)
Read p 163 -178

Part III: Cultural Values

Chapter 8: Dimensions of culture
We use measurements all the time to compare things. These measurements are called dimensions. The dimensions don’t compare physical things, but a culture’s values and attitudes.

Hofstede’s dimensions:
1. Individualism vs. collectivism: how do people define themselves and their relationships with others?
Individualism:
- the interest for the individual is bigger than the interest for the group,
- self-sufficient,
- when goal setting only close family is taken in account,
- loosely integrated
- defined by your individual accomplishments
- people are given jobs because of skills
- wealthy countries
- cold climate countries
- direct style of speaking

collectivism:
- the interest for the group is bigger than the interest for de individual (extended families),
- strong in-group that last for a lifetime,
- when setting goal whole groups are taken in account
- tightly integrated
- defined by your family’s name
- people are given a job because of family link
- countries with high birth rates
- Confucian countries
- indirect style of speaking
Lezen (als je zin hebt) p 187-194

2. Masculinity vs. Femininity: woman’s social role varies less from culture to culture than a men’s role.
masculinity:
- maximal distinction between what women and what men are supposed to do
- assertive, aggressive
- competition, goal orientation
- material success
- ambitious

femininity:
- overlapping social roles for women and men
- Quality of life
- interpersonal relationships
- concern for the weak
- modesty
- solidarity
- colder climate countries

Less powerful members of institutions and organizations within a country expect and accept that power is distributed unequally
3. Power distance: the way the culture deals with inequalities -> learned early in families
High power distance:
- children are expected to be obedient toward parents
- people are expected to display respect for those of higher status
- power and influence in the hands of a few people (centralized power)
- authoritarian (severe, strict)
- communicating in a way to limit interaction
- reinforce differences between people
- big salary gaps
- large population

Low power distance:
- children are being treated more or less as equals
- democratic organizations (the employees are asked for their opinion)
- big countries with a lot of room for everybody
- national wealth
- equal opportunity for power, wealth

4. Uncertainty avoidance: which people in a culture feel threatened by uncertain or unknown situations?
High uncertainty avoidance
- active
- aggressive
- emotional
- security seeking
- intolerant
- uncontrollable
- teacher has all answers, know everything
- hard working employees
- need for rules
- precision
- punctuality
- orthodox and Roman catholic Christian cultures
- cultures with a Roman language (Sp, Po, It, Fr)

Low uncertainty avoidance
- contemplative (think deeply)
- less aggressive
- unemotional
- relaxed
- personal risks
- relatively tolerant
- acceptance of teachers who admit they don’t have all answers
- only work hard when needed to
- no more rules than necessary
- precision and punctuality are learned
- protestant Christian cultures
- Eastern religions
- Confucian, Chinese countries

5. Confucian work dynamism (also known as Long-term vs. short-term orientation)
- persistence (go for something)
- Keeping face
- sense of shame
- ordering relationships (commitment)

Hall’s dimensions

Hall’s Cultural Contexts:
Context = the environment in which the communication process takes place and that helps define communication
• High context cultures
• Low context cultures

High Context Cultures
• Meaning in the context
• or meaning is internalized in the person
• Non-verbal communication
• Indirect
Low Context Cultures
• Meaning explicit in the code
• Elaborated messages
• Verbal Communication
• Direct
• Talk things through

Hall’s Time Dimensions
• Monochronic Time
• Polychronic Time
Monochronic Time
• Doing one thing at a time
• Plan the order and use of time -> Working with schedules
• Time as a commodity -> time is money
• Time is linear and inflexible
Polychronic Time
• Doing many things at once
• Importance of relationships instead of schedules
• Plans are flexible
• What won’t be done today will come tomorrow (middle eastern countries)
• Time is flexible, fluid and circular.

Monochronic people:
• Time decides level of importance
• Concentrate on the job
• Take deadlines seriously
• Adhere devotedly to plans
• Seldom borrow or lend
• Short-term relationships
• Low context

Polychromic
• Relationships decide level of importance
• Easily distracted from task
• Deadlines can be met, if possible
• Change plans often and easily
• Borrow and lens easily
• Strong tendency to build long-term relationships
• High context

Chapter 9: Dominant U.S. Cultural Patterns
Value = a central and basic motivating belief that shapes our goals and motivations
Attitude = an outgrowth of a value (our attitudes about controversial issues depend on the larges values we hold)
Emic knowledge = we learn what moral, competent and desirable behavior is in our culture
Etic knowledge = when the culture is learned by an outsider.

Dominant Culture
• The culture of the group that controls the society
• Their habits are the dominant cultural patterns
The USA is a great power due to large geographical size, rich natural recourses, growing population, nationalistic character and diverse cultural patterns (multiculturalism)

Value Orientation Theory
-> All human cultures are confronted with universally shared problems emerging from relationships with fellow beings, time, activities and nature
The 5 Basic Problems:
• Man-nature orientation (Worldview).
What is a human being’s relation to nature?
Worldview = beliefs about place in cosmos, beliefs about God, beliefs about nature and nature of humanity
USA: diverse religions and very religious, controls nature (course of rivers), right movements to protect nature, solving problems with a scientific-method, materialism (possessions are important, last year’s is not good enough).
Arabia: Their worldview is Islamic, physical world obeys Allah, faith in God is the basis for knowledge and truth, Islam doesn’t tolerate selfish and greedy capitalism.

• Activity orientation.
What is the modality of human activity?
Activity orientation = use of time for self-expression and play, self-improvement and development, and work
USA: they define themselves and others by occupation, very efficient (use time as efficient possible, do as many things in a short time), change is good (new is better than old, move a lot).
But values get lost in this efficiency: you go for short-term results, you don’t spend much time with you’re loves-ones, separate work and play.
Arabia: acceptance of all sorts of work as long as there’s no indecency or wrong involved, god gave human’s the responsibility to invest and spend wisely, what you make is your own possession (but God is the owner and the person is the responsible one), uncritical acceptance of progress and change.

• Time orientation.
What is the temporal focus of human life?
USA: phrases like time is money, clocks everywhere, they use time as a product, manage time, use it responsible, living in the future not in the present (less appreciation for what’s going on now), monochronic
Arabia: hijrah calendar based upon 12 lunar months (new moon till new moon), polychromic, human relationships are important.

• Human nature orientation.
What is the character of innate (instinct, nature, inborn) human nature?
USA: we are born with both good and evil, rationality (people act on basis of reason), mutability (human’s nature can be changed by society).
Arabia: people are born free of sin when they are mature they have to take responsibility fro their deeds an intentions, people are more good than evil.

• Relational.
What is the relationship of the individual to others?
= perception of the personality and the way society is organized.
USA: people define themselves based on occupation rather than on family, independence, individuality, passion for freedom, children are thought to be autonomous, weak family structures (singles), self-motivation, individual achievement, separation state and religion as social organization, equality (equal opportunities).
Arabia: social lives are organized around the family, no individuality but identification with family, you belong to your father’s family.

-> All cultures develop unique positions in the five value orientations

Chapter 10: Comparative Cultural Patterns -> Arab Culture
Lees p 233-245

Arabic cultural patterns -> worldview, activity orientation, time orientation, human nature orientation and relational orientation

Barriers:
• Political unrest: no line between religion and state. It’s hard to understand this for people who don’t have the same religion. You have to learn the religion first, and then you can understand the politics.
• Westernization vs. cultural norms: things that are normal in the west like divorce aren’t in de middle east. They have other values there and it’s not always easy to understand our values.
• Stereotypes: Arabs as well Western people have stereotyped each other.

Chapter 13: immigration and Acculturation
Sojourner = lives in a country for a limited period of time (6months – 5years).
Expatriate = noncitizen worker who lives in a country for an indeterminate length of time.

Immigration process:
Culture shock: it’s highly stressful that everything is different, even the easy things aren’t like at “home”. It has more stages.
The first stage is where everything is still exciting and new.
The second stage is when you become disintegrated of your familiar cues and you experience hostility and irritation with the differences in the new culture.
The third stage is when you start reintegrating in the new culture; you learn to function in it.
The forth stage is when you start to see the good and bad in both cultures.
The final fifth stage is when the person achieves biculturalism -> You feel happy and comfortable in both cultures.
Reverse culture shock = great cultural shock when you return to your home country. The new culture seemed better to you.
Third-culture kids: children in expatriate families that have a part of both cultures. They may not feel comfy in any specific culture.

Immigration: lees p 323-333

Acculturation = people learn to live in and adapt the norms and values of the new culture.
Several things affect how well a person acculturates:
• Similarity of culture: when the new culture isn’t all that different it’s easier to adapt.
• Personal characteristics: younger immigrants adapt easier than older ones this plays a part in their personality. Outgoing, curios and talkative people acculturate often better.
• Effect media and transportation advances: if you have had contact with the culture before through movies, TV, traveling you may adapt better

Categories of acculturation:
• Assimilation: giving up one’s own culture and participate fully in the new one.
• Integration: maintaining important parts of one’s original culture but also let the new culture be a part of you.
• Separation: maintaining one’s own culture and not participating in the new one. -> Strong sense of ethnic identity, it may lead to hatred.
• Marginalization: losing one’s own culture but also not having any psychological contact with the larger society he lives in.

Lees p 339-344

Chapter 14: Forces against Assimilation
Indigenous cultures = the original culture of the country
The people that enter the country want them to assimilate their culture and take the dominant culture.

Marginalization: the Hmong -> sort of primitive culture
Because of a war they were isolated from their home culture. Since they didn’t speak English they were also isolated from the US culture. (p350-352)
They are the highest welfare dependency of the US

Separation: The Amish
They chose voluntarily to live apart from the dominant culture and resist acculturation. Religion and life are one -> complete devotion to God. Every moment is a religious one. Use as less technology as possible -> farming community. (p 352-358)

From separation to Integration: Asian-American cultures
At first Asian immigrants experienced separation when they immigrated to the US. They were also treated like separates. The Naturalization act excluded Chinese from citizenship. But this act was banned when china became an ally in WWII. Recently Asians experience more integration. Asian-Americans have stronger cultural identities because of specialized media and segmented marketing. They have in NY already 5 daily and 4 weekly papers in Chinese. They have their own local radio and TV stations and also Chinese satellite and cable TV.
They have a greater income than the “white households” and more businesses are concentrated on china. They have their product in Chinese (language).

Chapter 17: Identity and subgroups
Communication of sub-groups:
Argot = specialized vocabulary of sub-groups
jargon= technical language of a professional subgroup (doctor)
Cant = specialized vocabulary of any non-professional sub-group (truck drivers)
Slang = specialized vocabulary of stigmatized subgroups (drug dealers, prostitutes, teenagers)

Member in the group provides an identity, the identity is language. If you don’t know the vocabulary you’re not a part of the group. Argot has a meaning for the subgroup, everybody knows exactly what is meant by a word. They have guiding values and patterns of behavior.
Subgroups examples (p414-420): the working class, hell’s angels, British punk, Corporate cultures,…

Labeling sub-groups: homo’s p439 summary -> from the intercultural perspective

Chapter 18: Multiculturalism
Multiculturalism = Understanding, acceptance and constructive relations among people of many different cultures and subcultures.

Leer p462 from the intercultural perspective