The Effect Of Intercultural Communication Cultural Studies Essay

As the world is becoming a global village, Intercultural communication or cross-culture communication is becoming necessary for a successful multicultural society such as Australia. For e.g. nature of the relationship between professional communication and other forms of organisational communication; the relationship between professional communication and organisational outcomes such as employees’ job satisfaction; and the consistency of these communication relationships across cultures. In a contemporary world intercultural communication is used to share ideas, views, technological innovations, resources locally and around the globe. The essay examines five questions concerning the significance of Australia intercultural communication in viewpoint of the world, intercultural communication purpose of social media such as Facebook, intercultural communication effects on communication proficiency, outcomes on social, political and culture values by intercultural communication and finally effect of various type of communication like verbal, non-verbal, written and visual on intercultural communication.

INTRODUCTION

Intercultural communication is defined the wide range of problems in communicating different religious, social, ethnic, and educational backgrounds. It is also synonymous with cross culture which means how different cultural background communicates is similar and how efforts they put in communicating across different cultures. Nowadays the world is on a path of becoming a global village. Hence, Intercultural communication in Australia is playing a vital role in sharing technologies, ideologies, thoughts etc. In this topic we will discuss the five key components of intercultural communication which are global view, social media such as Facebook, communication competence, social, political and cultural values and various type of communication like verbal, non-verbal, written and visual.

SECTION

With the development of globalization in the world it is becoming global village. Intercultural communication has played a big part in international summit by sharing views, business and economic activities, social, political and technologies innovations, resources locally and globally. However, with national societies becoming more diverse and international contacts becoming common, communication researchers can no longer assume a cultural or a uni-cultural stance. People are more frequently involved in situations where intercultural communication is required, and when intercultural communication is neglected, it’s difficult to recognize. In this essay we will focus on some creative perspectives and discussions on several aspects of intercultural communication. There are five components of intercultural communication need to be highlighted. Firstly, importance of Intercultural Communication in the global view of the world are (a) The situation of communication itself, e.g. the socially conventionalized roles adopted by participants, their expected norms of interactions and interpretation, the way they construct a shared sense of reality, (b) The stereotypes they entertain of each other, as individuals and as members of a social group, (c) Their non-verbal and para-verbal behavior is improved locally and globally through intercultural communication, (d) The way they save their own and each other’s face, (e) The way they structure their discourse to meet their communicative goals, (f) The attitudes, values and beliefs (called also ‘discourses’) they share with the social group they belong to which might also encourage them to improve their ethic as individual or society or culture, (g) The way their language reflects these deeper discourses, (h) They way members of different groups realize various speech acts (like making compliments requests or apologies). In Australia intercultural communication core importance of understanding other cultures is because the word in which we are is global village and we are interacting different culture people them in person or through technology. Another reason would be that Australia is the most multicultural society in the world. However, many of us are unaware of our own unique cultural background when we communicate ourselves, but when other people break particular rules, disappoint us or even offend us then we are aware of them. We believe that intercultural communication would inspire corporate culture, educational staff, human rights officers, employment equity managers, government policy makers and politicians to develop and maintain global organization. It is vital that each individual and group promotes intercultural communication events and encounters, only after they have undertaken a critical self-reflection of their own stereotypes and prejudices.

Second to discuss the role of social media such as Facebook in Intercultural Communication, with its distinctive features social media made human society to a highly interconnected and complex level, but at the same time, it challenges the very existence of human Communication in the traditional sense. Social media not only influences the form and content of information/messages, but it also affects how people understand each other in the process of human communication, especially for those from different cultural or ethnic groups. Facebook have enabled people from every corner of the world to represent themselves in a particular way and stay connected in cyberspace. It is obvious that the flexibility of information presented and shared in the social media will directly affect, either positively or negatively, the development of intercultural relationships in the virtual community through the creation of a network of personal connection. Educational potential of social network in intercultural communication, the use of Facebook as a social tool to aid the social aspects of the transition from school to university (Madge et al., 2009), the difficulties and benefits of social media for university students (Thelwall, 2008) and the identity-work students do on Facebook as they negotiate the expectations of peers, tutors and the university as an institution (Selwyn, 2009). Content analysis revealed that Facebook mainly used for two purposes. Firstly, for human contact (like chatting and banter) and second purpose is to seek advices, mentor and gather information from the practical experiences of others from groups or site. Mostly professionals would agree that social network such as Facebook has enabled us to communicate easily with our professional colleagues, both locally and overseas. Moreover, these social networks convenience have revolutionized in our business practice. On the one hand, intrinsically, the new culture emerged from social media because it’s creating a continuity gap between traditions and innovations within a culture. Before the social media arises, according to Bagdasaryan (2011), traditions and innovations in society co-existed vigorously, but the effect of the social media resulted in the inability of traditional values to keep pace with the new cultural values produced by interacting with different culture through social media. This cultural gap has caused difficulty in understanding or communication between generations and among people in the same culture.

Third aspect to discuss the impact of Intercultural communication on the communication competence, there is no denying that the various cultures of the world are far more accessible than ever before, and that the peoples of these cultures are coming into contact increasing day by day. These contacts ultimately developed based on interpersonal relationship. Whether it is the negotiation of an arms treaty, or the settlement of a business contract, class lectures, cultures do not interact, people do. Therefore, Communication competence is considered very broadly as an impression that behavior is appropriate and effective in a given context. Normally, competence is considered ability or a set of skilled behaviors. Competence cannot inhere in the behavior or ability itself. It must instead be viewed as a social evaluation of behavior. This social evaluation is composed of the two primary criteria of appropriateness and effectiveness. Appropriateness means that the valued rules, norms, and expectancies of the relationship are not violated significantly. Effectiveness is the accomplishment of valued goals or rewards relative to costs and alternatives. In figure 1 we can see the model of communication competence.

Figure 1

Impact of intercultural communication on communication competence can be divided into three levels of analysis (1) individual system, (2) episodic system and (3) relation system. The individual system possess those qualities as an individual that are competent in normative social sense such as communicator confidence increases, efficacy beliefs increases, approach dispositions increase, the relative cost/benefit ratio of a situation increases, communicator motivation increases. Communicative knowledge increases, communicative competence increases, task-relevant procedural knowledge increases, mastery of knowledge-acquisition strategies increases, identity and role diversity increases, knowledge dispositions increase, communicator knowledge increases. Communicator skills increase, conversational altercentrism increases, conversational coordination increases, conversational composure, adaptation and expressiveness increases. The episodic system includes those features of actor which show a competence impression over a specific part of cofactor in specific episode of interaction. Actor’s communicative status, motivation, knowledge, skills increases, contextual obstruction of Actor’s performance increases, Actor’s normative violation of Coactor’s negative expectancies increases, Coactor’s impression of Actor’s competence is a function of Actor’s fulfilment of Coactor’s expectancies, Actor’s fulfilment of Coactor’s competence prototype expectancies increases, Coactor’s impression of Actor’s competence increases, Actor’s receipt of valued outcomes increases, main impression of Actor’s competence increases. Actor’s extant-attributed communicative status increases. The relational system assessed a person competence across the entire relationship rather than a given episode of interaction. As mutual fulfilment of autonomy and intimacy needs increases, mutual attraction increases, mutual trust increases, access to social support increases, relational network integration increases, relational competence increases.

Fourth aspect to discuss is the effect of Intercultural Communication on social, political and cultural values. The political, economic, cultural, social changes caused by globalization have made an impact on communication in general and on communication among different groups of people in particular. Nowadays, globalization means openness to cultural changes, to new opportunities for a cultural (and inter-cultural) dialogue. But globalization also threatens the survival of cultural traditions which should be strengthened with the objective to safeguard national culture and especially the possibility for national culture, national identity to survive in the world of globalization. In order to carry out efficient intercultural communication, people should understand and focus on cultural identity more. Jameson stated that cultural identity which refers to a person’s status in a group includes six components: vocation, class, geography, philosophy, language, and biology. Jameson found that “economic, social and educational classes often define groups of people who share common values, behaviour, and attitudes; these cultural groups also cut across national and ethnic lines” (Jameson, 2007, p.212). 

CONCLUSION

In summary, the increase in international business requires the operator to grasp the knowledge of multicultural and cross-cultural communication skills. Obviously, cultural identity, as an important part of intercultural business communication, is a key factor that enterprises have to consider when they conduct the market development and business negotiation. Thus, the components of cultural identity, like the class, geography vocation has been attracted more and more attention by the companies.