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The culture-specific approach
All the above three approaches are culture-general explanations because they assume that regardless of the cultures represented in a interaction, generic characteristics or skills associated with intercultural competence will apply. With culture-specific approach, one can determine how well a particular person adapts her or his communication behaviors to the specific rules of interaction of a particular culture. This approach emphasizes a person’s knowledge of particular cultures and what behaviors are considered appropriate within them.
The culture-specific approach
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The trait approach
It attempts to identify the kinds of personality characteristics and individual traits that allow a person to avoid failure and achieve success in intercultural encounters. Those who have explored this approach have examined such characteristics as flexibility in thinking, worldmindness (which is a positive attitude toward people of other cultures), psychological and social adjustment in one’s own culture, and relativistic values (which means not being too rigid about the “correctness” of one’s value). A failed approach
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Hale Waihona Puke The behavioral approach
It suggests that it is necessary to go beyond what people think they will do in intercultural interactions and observe what they actually do. Intercultural cultural competence, from this perspective, is best studied by looking at specific communication behaviors during intercultural interactions. Specific behaviors necessary for intercultural competence will be discussed briefly in the following lectures.
And They live over the sea,
While We live over the way, But----would you believe it?----
But if you cross over the see,
Instead of over the way, You may end by (think of it!)
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They look upon We
As only a sort of They!
looking on We
As only a sort of They!
Source: Rudyard Kipling, “We and They” 3
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Approaches to Study of Intercultural Competence The trait approach The perceptual approach The behavioral approach
Introduction to Intercultural Communication
Lectured by Xu Mingwu
Necessity of learning this course
Our global village: If the world was a village of 1,000 people: In the village would be: 590 Asians 123 Africans 95 Europeans 84 Latin Americans 55 Former Soviet Union Members 53 North Americans They would speak: 155 Mandarin 53 Russian 26 Malay-Indonesian 80 English 35 Arabic 21 German 63 Hindi 33 Bengali 22 Japanese 61 Spanish 31 Portuguese 22 French 398 Other languages There would be: 329 Christians (187 Catholics, 67 Protestants, 75 others ) 178 Muslims 60 Buddhists 301 Nonreligious, or others
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The perceptual approach
It attempts to identify clusters of attitudes or perceptions that are related to intercultural competence (the ability to deal with psychological stress, to communicate effectively, and to establish interpersonal relationships) This approach underscores the importance of the emotional or motivational dimension in the skillful enactment of competent behaviors.
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Necessity of learning this course
Challenge of living in a culture mixing
Father, Mother, and Me, Sister and Auntie say All the people like us are we, And every one else is They. All good people agree, And all good people say, All nice people, like Us, are We And everyone else is They:
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Summary
The four approaches to intercultural competence, taken together, suggest that intercultural communication is a complex phenomenon. More importantly, they also suggest that to achieve interpersonal competence in interactions with people from different cultures, a variety of personal and interpersonal components must be considered.