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the Summary of Intercultural Communication (10)

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Barriers to Intercultural Communication

Ethnocentrism

Q: What is Ethnocentrism?
A: The act of judging another culture based on preconceptions that are found in values and standards of one’s own culture.

Ethnocentrism often leads to pride, vanity, belief in one’s own group’s superiority, and contempt for outsiders.

Stereotyping

Q: What is stereotyping?
A: It is a form of generalization, a way of categorizing and processing infomation we receive about others in our daily life.

  • Nazi Germany
  • Imperialism
  • Terrorism and Hate Crimes

In social psychology, a stereotype is an over-generalized belief about a particular category of people.

Stereotypes create a barrier that leads to prejudice, leading one to an assumption based on a stereotype.

Common Stereotypes

  • Racial Profiling
  • Gender Profiling
  • Culture
  • Group of Individuals

A negative attitude toward a cultural group based on little or no experience.

The behavior that result from stereotyping or prejudice:

  • Overt action to exclude
  • Avoid or distance oneself from certain groups based on stereotypes.

Prejudice

Irrational, preconceived opinion that leads to preferential treatment to some people and unfavorable bias or hostility against others, due to ignorance (or in direct contradiction) of facts.

Discrimination

In human social affairs, dicrimination is treatment or consideration of, or making a distinction in favor of or against, a person based on the group, class, or category to which the person is perceived to belong.

How to Overcome Culture Shock in a Foreign Country

  1. Keep an open mind
  2. Make an effort to learn the local language
  3. Get acquainted with the social conduct of your new environment
  4. Do not take cultural familiarity or knowledge at face-value
  5. Make sure you get to know people in your new environment
  6. Try to achieve a sense of stability in your life
  7. Most importantly, maintain a sense of humor

Course Notes

  1. Avoid using slang and idioms specific denotative meaning
  2. Ask for confirmation
  3. Accenting and intonation
  4. Local communication formalities and styles, watch for any changes in body language.
  5. Investigate perception
  6. Humor is risky

Attitudes

  1. Curiosity and openness
  2. Readiness to suspend disbelief and judgement with respect to others’ meanings, beliefs and behaviors
  3. Empathy
  4. Relativizing self and valuing others

Next Lecture

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