Part I unit I cross-cultural communication

Lead-in

We all communicate with others all the time – in our homes, in our workplaces, in the groups we belong to, and in the community. No matter how well we think we understand each other, communication is hard. Just think, for example, how often we hear things like, "He doesn't get it," or "She didn't really hear what I meant to say." "Culture" is often at the root of communication challenges. Our culture influences how we approach problems, and how we participate in groups and in communities. When we participate in groups we are often surprised at how differently people approach their work together.

Think over the saying “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.” Try to find a similar saying in your language. Describe a situation which proves this saying.

Reading

Text 1

Read the following text. Give the main idea of the text. Answer the questions: Is it important to know the dominant culture of any group of people to understand their political, economic, and even personal behaviour? What does the culture include? What mistakes in culture can be made by people? What is culture shock? What are the main features of culture shock?

Introduction

To understand the political, economic, social and even personal behaviour of any group of people, we must first know the dominant values of their culture which are passed down from one generation to another through learning. There is no way to explain the behaviour of people unless you know their dominant or mainstream culture.

Culture is like an iceberg. The tip of the iceberg is the smallest part. Most of the iceberg is submerged. The same is true for a culture. That which you can easily see - the behaviour of people - is the smallest part of culture. It is external while the greatest part, internal culture, is beneath the water level of awareness. It is inside people's heads.

Internal culture includes our way of thinking and perceiving. Most importantly, it contains the values and beliefs unconsciously learned while growing up in a particular culture. These values and beliefs determine most behaviour. The illustration above represents two cultural icebergs coming together as people come together from different cultures. Note that the largest part of a person's culture is internal or beneath the water level of awareness.

As the two icebergs collide, most people would see the differences in behaviours. They might be overly concerned about such matters as greeting people incorrectly or wearing the wrong clothes. Mistakes at this level of culture are relatively minor. Most people expect those from other cultures to make mistakes at the behavioural level. On the other hand, the real collision of cultures occurs at the unconscious, internal cultural level where there are basic cultural values.

The collision of internal cultures causes us to become more aware of the differences and similarities between cultural values. More importantly, by understanding the internal culture, especially the significant values, we have a system for analysing and interpreting behaviour.

Some individuals, when they sojourn across a cultural boundary, especially for an extended period of time, experience a phenomenon called culture shock. Culture shock is the psychological reaction of stress that sometimes occurs when an individual enters a culture very different from their own. Whether or not you experience culture shock, you may find that communicating across cultural boundaries is stressful.

At least six phenomena contribute to the stress that some people experience when they move into another culture:

1.Strain resulting from the effort required to adapt psychologically to the new culture. 2.Sense of loss of friends, of status, of profession, of possessions, and so forth. 3.Rejection by (or of) the new cultural group. 4. Confusion of role and role expectation, of values, and so forth. 5.Emotional response to striking cultural differences. 6.Feelings of impotence resulting from the inability to cope with the new culture.

Text 2

Read the text. Divide it into logical parts. Find the key sentence of each part. Summarize the text