Culture and intercultural communication

Communicationbetween people from different countries, in other words, from different cultures, isn’t something that is only relevant to politicians and representatives of the United Nations Organization (the UN).

The world is getting smaller. Global business, worldwide tourism, faster and more accessible ways of communicating – all mean that most of us, at some point in our lives, will come into contact with people from cultures that are very different from our own.

We don't actually notice culture very much until we meet someone from another culture. And in the first week or two or maybe even the first month or two, we might not notice any differences. But then a misunderstanding might suddenly occur (happen). The reason that something has gone wrong is that your culture and the other person's culture have collided.

When the Venezuelan president came to Spain for an official visit he came to the king of Spain and he hugged him. That’s something that you never do. You don’t go and hug the King of a country just like that. And the president of Venezuela did it because he was used to that and for him that was the normal thing to do.

Culture generally refers to the way of life widely shared among people of this or that country. As such, it includes codes of manners, dress, language, religion, norms of behavior such as law and morality, as well as the art.

Culture and language are tied together. Language isn’t just a tool to

help people from the same culture communicate effectively. It’s also a window into the way people from that culture see the world. Actually, the cultures begin to cross in the process of communication.

What do we need to learn to be able to communicate better with people from other cultures and so become ‘interculturally competent?’ We have to study the other culture when mastering a foreign language. Studying culture and intercultural (cross-cultural) communication can help make communication easier.

A businessman from Europe would definitely begin to immediately discuss things he wants to achieve in his business relations, and preferably within the minimum amount of time. In the Middle East, a businessman wouldlook at your business talk from a very different perspective. He usually sees that as a social interaction or as any meeting with friends: you are invited to sit down, you are served a glass of water, if it's hot, followed by a cup of coffee. You are expected to talk about your family, what you have been doing lately and it might be twenty minutes before the actual topic for the business meeting comes up.

But language – our verbal communication – is only one way we have of communicating. We also communicate non-verbally. We use body-language; we vary the sound of our voices to express emotions like surprise or anger. Our faces and gestures can communicate all sorts of things, as can our eyes.

Some researchers conducted an experiment on every day communication situations. And what they tested was how much of the communication was through facial expression, how much came through the contextand intonation. And finally how much of the meaning of the conversation was transmitted through language itself. Their extraordinary findings were that 55 % of the meaning came through facial expression, 38 % of the meaning came through intonation and what was understood from the context and only 7 % of meaning was transmitted through language itself. So, in fact, the actual verbal content – the words that you use in a conversation – are not as important as you might think.

Societies and cultures establish rules about how close you can stand to people in various different situations. There are rules about how close you can stand to someone if you are very familiar with them or how far it is polite to stand away from them if you need to keep a respectfuldistance. And these are very, very different rules again from culture to culture. So people belonging to Middle Eastern and Hispanic cultures tend to stand the smallest distance apart when they are having conversations, whereas Scandinavians or Scottish people stand relatively far apart. Some research shows that English people usually stand or sit about six to ten inches further apart than Dutch people do and in the Netherlands English people are seen by Dutch people to be quite distant whereas the English apparently see the Dutch as pushy and aggressive.

If you are someone who likes privacy, your own space, making your own decisions, you probably belong to a culture where the individual is central. Individuals in individualistic societies will be looking for individual freedom. They will be looking for money and success, they will be looking for personal goals, personal objectives to be fulfilled. Britain is a very individualistic society (“family” comes second). But if you like to have other people around you, your culture is probably one where the group - or the ‘collective’ – is the most important unit. In the collectivist societies there'll be much greater need for social harmony and there will be a lot of loyalty within those groups.

Learning about another culture is an effective way of beginning to be fully aware of our own. The urgent need to improve intercultural (cross-cultural) communication and reduce the opportunity of misunderstandings, especially in business and international relations, is a positive contributory factor for globalization.

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