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Intercultural Communication

Intercultural communication is the study and practice of communication across cultural contexts. It applies equally to domestic cultural differences such as ethnicity and gender, and to international differences such as those associated with nationality or world region. Intercultural communication is an approach to relations among members of these groups that focuses on the recognition and respect of cultural differences, seeks the goal of mutual adaptation leading to biculturalism rather than simple assimilation, and supports the development of intercultural sensitivity on the part of individuals and organizations to enable empathic understanding and competent coordination of action across cultural differences.

Communication

Communication is much more than a simple transmission of information: it is the mutual creation of meaning. Information is not, in itself, meaningful; it is only when information is intended and interpreted in some way that it attains significance. For instance, if one person (Jim) is telling another (Susan) about a movie he just saw, Jim probably intends for Susan to understand what the movie is about as well as something about Jim's experience and evaluation of it. Jim poses the information in a language known by Susan, using references to concepts and other films Susan might know; and in conveying his feeling, Jim assumes that Susan is able and willing to access his experience. For Susan's part, she tries to interpret the information in the way Jim intended it by using common meanings for words and concepts and by recognizing both their common experience of similar events and the uniqueness of Jim's personal experience in this particular event.

Of course, the exchange described above is an ideal that is seldom achieved in one pass (or many). What usually happens is that Susan's interpretation is both more and less than what Jim intended. It is less in Susan's probable failure to assign exactly similar meaning to words and concepts that Jim uses, and it is more in that Susan probably projects many of her own feelings about similar events onto Jim's description. In Susan's response (feedback) to his message, Jim may recognize some of Susan's discrepant interpretation and correct it. Assuming that this is not Jim's first communication with someone like Susan, he may have already anticipated some of her likely misinterpretation by tailoring his message to her in the first place. Therefore, both Jim's intention and Susan's interpretation are in play as they attempt to negotiate a mutually acceptable match. The final meaning of the communication event is neither just Jim's intention nor simply Susan's interpretation; it is their mutual creation of an agreeable position.

Culture

The sense of “culture” used in intercultural communication is that of “worldview.” Culture is a generalization about how a group of people coordinate meaning and action among themselves. One way they do that is through institutions such as religious, political, and economic systems, and family and other social structures. But underlying these institutions is a habitual organization of how the world is perceived, and thus how it is experienced. These habits are often referred to as cultural assumptions and values, and they occur in all groups, not just national societies. In general, intercultural communication focuses on this worldview aspect of culture and not so much on the institutions of culture. Human communication is conducted by people, not institutions. The concern of any study of communication is therefore with the way that human beings organize meaning. All human beings are influenced by the institutional structures that they internalize as part of socialization, and understanding those institutions may give insight into how they habitually organize their perceptions, but in the end it is their human worldviews that generate meaning, not institutional structure.

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