Cultural Differences in Cross Cultural Understanding

Cultural Differences in Cross Cultural Understanding

1. Cultural Differences Why CCU?

2. Celebrating Differences

3. Celebrating differences – why CCU? Constructive dialogue between people of different cultures is possible only when speakers and listeners understand that the meaning of any communication resides not just in the message but in the minds of the sender and receiver as well. when speaker and listener come from the same background, they may interpret a message differently according to their personality, their accumulated experience or even their mood at the moment. When speaker and listener come from different cultural backgrounds, the potential for the message to mean different things is increased greatly.

4. Effective intercultural communication Knowledge, sensitivity and appreciation of cultural differences Cultural differences have a major influence on communication in the early stage of a relationship Stuart Hall: cultural identity is not fixed but movable, something that changes continually as people interact with others Culture is more than learned behaviour . It is the result of ongoing, dynamic events and relationships affected by the environment and by individuals in countless ways.

5. Communication sending and receiving messages. Since understanding of meaning resides in people and not in the verbal or nonverbal language, messages will rarely if ever be identical for sender and receiver. to communicate effectively the sender and receiver must understand similar meaning in the message

6. A major problem exists when misunderstandings occur Behaviour may be interpreted in a way that was never intended  Arriving late for a function is seen as rudeness. For example: Winnie Mandela’s being refused admission to the opening of the International Women’s Conference in Beijing in September 1995 because she was late was reported on television throughout the world. Another example: The European is a close reasoner; his statements of fact are devoid of any ambiguity; he is a natural logician, albeit he may not have studied logic; he is by nature sceptical and requires proof before he can accept the truth of any proposition; his trained intelligence works like a piece of mechanism. The mind of the oriental, on the other hand, like his picturesque streets, is eminently wanting in symmetry. His reasoning is of the most slipshod nature  stereotype

7. Difference Responses spitting, treated as disgusting in most western cultures, can ‘represent an act of kindness among American Indians, for example the medicine man spitting on a sick person to cure him’. In Islamic cultures in which Muslims must fast from dawn to dusk during Ramadan, and may not even imbibe their own saliva, they may constantly spit, to the shock and horror of those from other cultures

8. Cultural Shock strain, a sense of loss, rejection, confusion, anxiety and feelings of Impotence  the fatigue of constant adaptation, irritable behaviour to the point of constant anger, insomnia, the sense of loss of friends, home comforts and familiar food, rejection of the host population or rejection by it, confusion of values or identity, discomfort at violation of values, and a feeling of incompetence at dealing with the environment coping with culture shock: fight, flight, filter (accepting the things you want to accept, so denying some aspects of reality and flex (trying everything in a positive frame of mind, is the only way that leads to final balanced acceptance of the new culture)

9. Process of Adaptation First stage – honeymoon – time of excitement (new and fascinating) Second stage – a time of distress – everything seems unduly hard and individuals from the same culture try to group together to share their sense of frustration with the difficult common host – can be a whole first year Third stage -- improved use and understanding of the host language and culture. Fourth stage -- worry-free and shows full acceptance and enjoyment of the host culture. At this final stage, the individual has passed through culture shock, to become truly intercultural.

10. What is culture? Culture is a human phenomenon; it is the way we are, both physically and mentally. It is both a state in which each of us exists and a process which changes constantly according to the individual, the time and the place. This combined state and process called culture affects us all as we respond to others, to events and to the environment. Culture changes within a community all the time, sometimes momentously but more often imperceptibly.

11. Definition of culture Learned Behaviour : what we are going to do about something, what we see and what we are blind to: ‘In its simplest sense, perception is the internal process by which we select, evaluate, and organize stimuli from the external environment.’ (Hall 1972) Sharing of Values: the collective programming of the mind’ (Hofstede 1984: 21), and ‘the software of the mind’(1991: 237), blurs the distinction between culture and values and may also encourage stereotyping. Dialectic Process: it recognizes differences among members of a group and throughout a single cultural system An Interactive Process: the result of a combination of the person’s personality, values and the context. ‘the sum total of ways of living’ ( Sikkema , 1987), ‘the total accumulation of an identifiable group’s beliefs, norms, activities, institutions and communication patterns (Dodd, 1991), or ‘the totality of beliefs and practices of a society’ (Nida, 1991)  culture is learned, transmitted by each generation to the next, capable of constant change, transmissible, encompassing the physical and the mental, and shared by a group

12. What is culture? Examples: an English person that he or she must eat with the mouth closed, quietly, an Indian knows that the mouth should be open while a person is chewing an African knows that to show appreciation it is important to make noises with gusto. Culture includes, among other things, appearance, clothes, food, shelter, attitudes towards family, work, leisure, time, dress, what is beautiful and what is ugly. In a familiar environment it helps people behave appropriately and understand the behaviour of others. Culture helps mould the individual but does not prevent individuals varying from one another within it. (Edward T. Hall 1972)

13. Cross-cultural Communication