That’s wayy too good.

I. Introduction

1. Me and We cultures

From the moment we’re born, we begun to develop our identities.

  • Who are we

  • what should be are about

  • how should we relate all theses people around us.

2. Individualistic and collectivist

Place more importance to individual - me

People in me culture belives each individual is responsible for thier own well being. Thier circle of responsibility extents only to thier inmediate family members. They build their responsibilities to others in society like neighbors and classmates as limited. After all they’re individuals that should take care of themselves.

A family of me culture might just consists of four people. Everyone would order the specific meal they want. When the food comes, they’ll trade a bite or two. For the most part, each person would eat their own meal. If someone’s late, people are expected to master of their own things, a family would likely to contribute to his lateness to some fundamental aspects of his personalities. Assume he’s lazy, or irresponsible.

Place more importance on the group -we

priorities strong social ties and belonging to a larger group. They strive group harmony and believe individuals should make the best decisions for the overall well beings of their groups. You take care of the groups, they’ll take care of you.

The family from we culture would require a much larger table. Multiple dished would be ordered for the whole table, they’ll be place in the center and all members of the family would share them. They’re more likely to see these behavior as largar context. They may assume external factors were involved. Accident, caught by taffic jam.

This tendency to either credit individual or the larger context acquires positive things too. ME: he would be celebreated as hero when his individual actions won the game, he would likely to speak about his hardwork determination and focus led him to this moment. WE: a team’s overall victory will be celebrated. His toast would more likely to focus on his teammates, coaches and mentors. support of the team school administrations or fanses. Both are true.

internal and external factors

3. Culture is just one of the factors that influences who we are.

Recognition - increase awareness of cultural differences

Respect - Appriciate cultural differences

Reconciliation - increase awareness of cultural differences

II. Understanding the concepts

1. What is culture

The coherent, learned and shared values beliefs, and behaviors of a group of interacting people.

Metaphors

​ Culture is like an iceberg

    - It hides much more than it reveals, and strangely enough what it hides. It hides most effectively from its own participants.
    - Hidden ones: value perception religion

​ Culture is like the water a fish swim in

​ Culture is the grammer of our behavior. it’s our software

- Collections of our mind. They're learned and not innate, dynamic and evolutionary.

​ Culture is an onion.

2. Culture Identity

Nation folk area gender class educational background religion age

If culture is mental programming, it is also a mental map of reality. It tells us from early childhood what matters, what to prefer, what to avoid, and what to do. Culture also tells us what ought to be. It gives us assumptions about the ideal beyond what individuals may experience. It helps us in setting priorities. It establishes codes for behavior and provides justification and legitimization for that behavior.

Basic human nature is similar at birth; Different habits make us seem remote.

Culture is coherent. Each culture, past or present, is coherent and complete within itself - an entire viewof the universe.

Culture is not something we are born with, but rather it is learned. We all have to be taught our culture. The process begins immediately after birth. Nobody has to remain for a lifetime locked inside only one culture. Not only learn, accurately get inside them and act according to what is expected in them.

Culture is the view of a group of people. A Culture is shared by a society. Everyone from whom they have learned thier culture, they have interpreted life experiecnes in ways that validate their own cultures views. Groups are motivated bt common views.

Culture rank what is important. What is of paramount importance to one group may be virtually meaningless to another. They enable us to evaluate what matters to us or to apply standards to our attitudes and beliefs.

Culture furnishes attitudes, which are feelings about things, based on values.

Culture dictates how to behave

3. Gender identity

Gender identity is the identification with the cultural notions of masculinity and femininity and what it means to be a man or a woman.

Considered more masculine or more feminine. Social roles for male are more technical, more social, more innovative and more ambitious, and more authoritative; while for the females, it could be less and less.

4. Context

The interrelated conditions of communication make up what is known as context. One aspect of context is the physical setting. A second aspect of context is historical, A third aspect of context is psychological. A fourth aspect of context is culture.

All aspects of a culture are part of the context, one of the most important aspects of clture is the establishment of the communication norms within the culture. Norms are the guidelines that we establish or perceive as established for conducting transactions. it varies within subculture and exist at the beginning of a communication encouter and grow, change, or solidify as people get to know one another better.

5. Participants

Participants in communication play roles of sender and receiver. Sometimes as in face to face communication, of the messages simultanesously. As senders, we form messages and attempt to communiocate them to others through verbal and nonverbal symbols. As recerivers, we process the message sent to us and react to them both verbally and nonverbally. Each of us is a product of our indvidual experiences, feelings, ideas, moods, occupation, religion, and so forth. Which may make meaning sent and meaning recerived are not the same. Three especially important variables affecting participants are relationship, gender, and culture.

6. Messages

They include the elements of meanings, symbols, encoding and decoding.

Pure ideas and feelings that exist in a person’s mind represent meanings.

The words, sounds, and actions that communicate meaning are known as symbols because they stand for the meanings intended by the person using them.

The process of transforming ideas and feelings into symbols and organizaing them is called encoding a message; The process of tranforming messages back into ideas and feelings is called decoding.

7. Channels

A channel is both the route traveled by the message and the means of transportation.

8. Noise

Noise is any stimulus external or internal to the participants, that interferes witrh the sharing of meaning.

9. Feedback

As receivers attempt to decode the meaning of messages, they are likely to give some kinds of verbal or nonverbal response.

III. Culture and perceptions

1. Perceptions

If we accept the belief that our past influences our view of reality and the corresponding tenet that each of us may have similar but not identical personal histories, then it should follow that another person’s picture of the universe will not be exactly like ours. Yet most of us act as if our way of perceiving things is the correct and only way.

In our daily activities these differences in perception appear between different groups. Various generations, minorities, occupations, and cultures have conflicting values and goals that will influence their orientation and interpretation of reality.

Our culture is a major factor in perceptual discrepancies. Culture helps supply us with our perspective of reality. It therefore plays a dominant role in intercultural communication.

ndoubtedly, we evaluate them by our group’s cultural standards. Our culture tells us, in a variety of ways, how to judge others and what to use as criteria for those judgments. The danger of such evaluations is that they are often false, misleading, and arbitrary. It is truly a naive view of the world to believe and behave as if we and our culture have discovered the true and only set of norms.

2. Definition

Perception is the means by which you make sense of your physical and social world.

“There is no reality except the one contained within us” — and it has been placed in us, in part, by our culture

Your perceptions give meaning to external forces. Perception is the process of selecting, organizing, and interpreting sensory data in a way that enables us to make sense of our world.nternal stimuli include our nervous system, desires, interests, and motivations. External stimuli are the sensations that come from the way we see, smell, touch, hear, and taste.

3. Steps

Human perception is usually thought of as a three-step process of selection, organization, and interpretation. Each of these steps is affected by culture.

Perception is selective and your perceptual patterns are learned. Perceptions are stored with in each human being in the form of beliefs and values. Theses two, working in combination form what are called cultural patterns.

4. Stereotypes

A stereostype is a predivtive generalization applied to a person or situation. Or, is a fixed idea or image that many people have of a particular type of person or thing.

5. Discourage

  • Watch your brains

    • Update constantly your inforamtion in your databank

  • Watch your way of thinking

    • Knowledge along couldn’t ganrantee you thinking properly.
  • Watch your words
    • Avoid strong words

6. Ethnocentrism

6.1 Definition

It is a belief that one’s own culture is superior to all others. That is, it means viewing the rest of the world through the narrow lens of one’s own culture. Using your own culture as the anchore for assessing othere cultures is called ethnocentrism.

It is Unisersal, leant and taught through education, and contributes to cultura identity

6.2 Levels

can be viewed as haveing three levels: positive, negative and extremely netative.

This is natural, and there is nothing wrong with the positive level.

At the negative level, you believe your culture is the center of everything and all other should be measured and rated by its standards.

In the last one, you also perceive your culture to be the most powerful one ,and even belive that your values and beliefs should be adopted by other cultures.

6.3 Dos

To remind ourselvs that culture is learned and also can be unlearned. We can adopt the perspectve of cultural relativism and recognize that cultures vary in how they think, act, and behavce as well as in what they belive and value.

IV. Cultural diversity

1. High and low context communication

The framework answers the question, “Where does meaning lie”?

Maening distraction procedure:

Literally, askign for my opinion (question mark) -> but people n higher positions generally don’t invite their subordinates, especially something about work, but inform directly. -> so it’s not an invitation but an order, therefore i should say yes.

Trying not tot be blunt and show his politeness. Social status, conventions, face, politeness are things very important in meaning interpretation, which are absent in the meaning distraction procedure.

One is based on meaning of the words, and the other is based on circumstances and background.

A HC communication or message is one in which most of the information is already in the person, while very little is in the coded, explicitly transmitted part of the message.

A LC communication is just the opposite; i.e., the mass of the information is vested in the explicit code.

We can see that our asian mode of communication is HC commu, is often vague, indirect and implicit.

1.1 Continuum

Co-cultures, organizations, or families may also differ in the general level of context people rely on. All cultures have high- and low- context situations, though there my be cultural preferences toward one mode or the other.

2. In group the outgroup cultures

Communication is indispensable in the modern society. If interpersonal communication competence is such a commodity as sugar of coffee, I will pay to buy it whatever the costly price is in the world.

Socal circle comes into being during communication.It refers to the group of socially interconnected people, the circle or the range when you talk with others.

The groups which we are taught to associate are referred to as ingroups.

While, the groups of people with whom we are taught not to associate are referred to as outgroups.

Attitudes varies and members of collectivitistic cultures draw a firmer distinction between in-groups and outgroups.

2.1 Chracteristics

In individualistic cultures:

- more groups
- not attached to any single ingroup
- Fewer distinctions
- individuals rather than groups

In collectivistic cultures

* fewer ingroups
* very attached to the ingroups
* Greater distinctions
* Groups rather than individuals.

The inner ring

Human’s desire to be part of and exclusive group and terror to be an outsider.

V. Culture and value

1. Inetrcultural values

Although each of us has a unique set of values, there also are values that tend to permeate a culture. These are called cultural values.

Visible culture: Dess traditions behaviors artifacts customs symbols heros

Invisible culture: Assumptions beliefs Perceptions values attitudes world views

2. Kluchhohn

1.What is the character of innate human nature? = Human nature orientation
2.What is the relation of man to Nature? = Man-nature orientation
3.What is the temporal focus (time sense) of human life? = Time orientation
4.What is the mode of human activity? = Activity orientation
5.What is the mode of human relationships? = Social orientation

Human nature ｜ Basically evil Mixture of good & evil. Neither good nor evil Basically good
Relationship of man to nature ｜ Man subjugated by nature Man in harmony with nature Man the master of nature
Sense of time ｜ Past–oriented Present-oriented Future-oriented

Activity ｜ Being (Stress on who you are) Growing (Stress on self-developing) Doing (Stress on what you do)
Social relationships ｜ Authoritarian Group-oriented Individualistic

This model is over simplified and can only give approximations of reality. Their use is in giving rough pictures of the striking contrasts and differences which may be encountered in societies where certain values predominate.

3. Hofstede

3.1 Classification
  • Power distance
    * Extent to which less powerful people in an organization will accept and expect power to be distributed differently
  • Uncertainty Avoidance
    * The way that a society deals with the factr that the future can never be known: should we try to control the future or just let it happen
  • Individualism/Collectivism
    * degree of inerdepedence a society maintains among its members.
  • Masculinity/Femininity
    * material assertiveness dominance/ strength money success | supportive caring relationship-oriented/ relationships quality of life 
* Whether gender roles are distinct
  • Long-term/Short-term
    * Value persistence perseverance, saving and being able to adapt
* Care more about immediate gratification

VI. Language and culture

1. Two sides of the same coin

Products

The products of a culture range from isolated objects, artifacts, or tools to places, complex social institutions, and other constructions, like art, literature, architecture, and music.

Remember, too, that language is a cultural product in and of itself. Words, expressions, and structures are continually added or discarded. When spoken and written, language takes on tangible and perceptible forms. We can see written language, and we hear language when spoken.

practice

Perhaps the most obvious use of language in culture occurs in cultural practices.

Perspctives

Language also reflects and embodies perspectives.

We use language to name and understand the perceptions, values, attitudes, and beliefs that govern our way of life.

Community

When we situate language in specific communities or groups, we see variations in forms, meanings, and use according to these social settings and circumstances. Communities develop distinct language to describe and carry out the particular practices and products associated with their group and its activities

Persons

Finally, language, like culture, is not only collective but also personal. We share it with others in our culture, yet each of us uses language in an idiosyncratic manner, based upon our background, experiences, social groups, our personal outlook, and our identity.