Title PREPARATION FOR MIDTERM.docx ✅

CROSS COMMUNICATION CULTURE  You “learn” your culture via communication and that, at the same time, communication is a reflection of your culture.  Cultures are ways of thinking and ways of behaving, it consists of how we relate to other people, how we think, how we behave, and how we view the world. There is not one aspect of human life that is not touched and altered by culture.  Culture is difficult to define. Cultures are always changing. We can define culture is a set of human- made objective and subjective elements that in the past have increased the probability of survival, became shared among those who could communicate with each other because they had a common language and they lived at the same time and place. Moreover, cultures are the importance of language as a symbol system that allows culture to be transmitted and shared.  Features of culture are human-made, values, beliefs, attitudes, norms, and foundational behaviors.  The heart of culture involves language, religion, values, traditions, and customs.  Characteristics of culture: - Culture is shared: + Most distinctive features of culture are that it is shared. + Culture is a group worldview, the way of organizing the world that a particular society has created over time. This framework of web of meaning allows the members of that society to make sense of themselves, their world, and their experiences in that world. + As a shared set of ideas, values, perceptions, and standards of behaviors, culture is the common denominator that makes the actions of individuals intelligible to other members of their society. It enables them to predict how other members are most likely to behave in a given circumstance, and it tells them how to react accordingly. - Culture is transmitted from generation to generation: + Our culture determines what it means to be a husband or wife, child, work colleague, acquaintance, or even a stranger. + So strong is the need for a culture to bind each generation to past and future generation that it is often asserted that a fracture in the transmission process would contribute to culture’s extinction. - Culture is based on symbols: + Without the capacity of humans to think symbolically and express those symbols, culture could not be passed from generation to generation.
+ Symbols such as flags, wedding rings, gestures, words, dress, objects, statues, and religion icons all have message value. + Without symbols we would not be able to store the collective wisdom of past generations, and consequently we would be prone to repeat the mistakes of the past. Symbols tie together people who otherwise might not be part of unified group.  Culture is shared, transmitted from generation to generation, and needs to be internalized by all the members of each culture. - Culture is learned: + We seek to overcome that confusion and make sense of the world. + All people have learned and carry around an assorted fund of knowledge about communication. + Informal learning is often very subtle and normally takes place through interaction. Interaction, Observation, and Imitation are a part of "informal learning". + Formal teaching is far more structured and is often left to the various social institutions of the culture, such as schools and churches.  It is difficult to distinguish between informal and formal learning, as culture influences you from the instant you are born.  HOW TO LEARN CULTURE? - Learning about your culture usually takes place without your being aware of it. - The essential messages of a culture get reinforced and repeated. - We learn your culture from a large variety of sources, with family, school, church, and community being the four most powerful institutions of culture.  Learning culture through proverbs - Proverbs are an aspect of culture cherished all over the world and preserved in language which is the medium for expressing them. Also, proverbs have psychological, cosmological, and sociocultural roots. - These proverbs – communicated in colorful, vivid language and with very few words – reflect the insights, wisdom, biases, and even superstition of a culture. - Studying proverbs can offer insights into a culture’s worldview regarding such matters as education, law, business, and marriage.  Learning culture through folktales, legends, and myths - The customs, traditions, and beliefs expressed in folktales link people to their history and root them to their past. - Folklore constantly reinforces important cultural lessons. - We can study the myths of a culture; we are studying that culture.

understand how the members of that culture provide explanations for now the world operates and how they believe they fit into that process. - History: common culture creates a strong sense of unity and identity. - Values: are people’s beliefs about the goals or ways of living that are desirable for themselves and their society. Values have profound, though partly unconscious, effects on people’s behavior. Values provide standards to live by. Values help determine how people within a particular culture ought to behave. - Social organizations: these are institutions such as family, government, schools, tribes, and clans, the need for reality of interdependence. These social systems establish communication networks and regulate norms of personal, familial, and social conduct. - Language: we must learn language to share our ideas, feelings, and thoughts with other people. Language is the main vehicle of cultural transmission from one generation to the next. + Culture should be thought of as integrated wholes, the parts of which, to some degree, are interconnected with one another. Modes of communication brought about by digital technology and the internet have produced numerous problems associated with privacy, language, and the use of face-to-face communication. + The pull of culture begins at birth and continues throughout life – some cultures say even after.  Intercultural competence: - Intercultural communication competence is “behavior that is appropriate and effective in a given context”. The overall internal capability of an individual to manage key challenging features of intercultural communication: namely, cultural differences and unfamiliarity, inter-group posture, and the accompanying experience of stress.  The basic components of intercultural communication competence: - Motivation: a communicator who achieves his or her goals is effective, therefore, more competent. The goals “extrinsic or intrinsic”.  You must learn to go beyond personal boundaries and try to find reasons to be motivated. - Knowledge: this element is often referred to as cognitive flexibility, as it refers to the ability to augment and expand knowledge about people from cultures different from your own.  You need two kinds of knowledge to be competent: content knowledge and procedural knowledge. + Culture specific: this method assumes that the most effective way to improve intercultural communication is to study one culture at a time and learn all the distinct and specific communication features of that culture.  This approach assumes that the person is preparing to visit or work alongside members of another culture. It necessitates an in-depth culture-specific orientation. + Culture general: The rationale of the culture-general method of improving your intercultural competency aims to understand the universal influences of culture on human behaviors through different learning methods.  The basic assumption behind this technique is that there are some life experiences and communication traits (culture-general training classes, videos, textbooks, face-to-face experiences) common to virtually all cultures.  It is important to have knowledge that enables you to adapt to any culture.  Knowledge is of 2 kinds: we know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information on it. - Skills: + Develop intercultural listening skills: Listening involves being motivated, having knowledge about your communication partner, and possessing the specific skills to listen effectively.  First: this commonality has facilitated the development of standardized social behavioral protocols.