Mid-Term Review

  1. Acculturation: A process of intercultural borrowing between diverse peoples resulting in new and

blended patterns

  1. Cultural Identity: based on several traits and values learned as apart of our national or ethnic origin. To include religion, gender, age, socioeconomic level, primary language, geographical

region, rural or urban living, and handicapping or exceptional conditions.

  1. Cultural Relativism: An attempt to understand other cultural systems in their own terms, not in

terms of one’s cultural beliefs.

  1. Enculturation: The process of acquiring characteristics of a given culture by learning and

generally becoming competent in its language

  1. Ethnocentrism: the inability to view other cultures as equally viable alternatives for organizing reality. One’s own group is the center of everything and all others are scaled and rated with

reference to it.

  1. Race: 200 years ago this term was used to describe groups of people by their physical attributes,

including hair texture, shape of nose, etc.

  1. Sub-cultures: Sub societies with their own rules, values, beliefs and norms that are quite apart

from the “normal” Culture/society.

  1. Pop-culture: refers to cultural practices employed by the majority classes in society.
  2. Intercultural comm.: is a symbolic process in which people from different cultures create shared

meaning.

  1. Intracultural Comm. Denotes the presence of at least two individuals who are culturally different from eachother in terms of attributes, values, communication codes, role expectations, and social

roles.

  1. Cross cultural Comm.: Involves a comparison of interactions among people from the same culture

to those of another.

  1. International Comm.: Interactions b/w people from different nations.
  2. Cultural Metaphors
  3. Melting Pot: This image represents the ideal blending of cultural groups. To create a great big assimilated culture that is stronger and better than the unique individual cultures of which it is composed.
  4. Single cultural entity has never existed
  5. Accommodations have been made
  6. Some practices have been adopted
  7. Tributaries: cultures maintain their unique identity as they surge toward their common destination.
  8. Suggests that it is acceptable and desirable for cultural groups to maintain their identities
  9. Also, suggests that their objective is to be apart of the majority

(Tributaries are small creeks that ultimately flow into a common stream, where they combine to form a major river).

  1. Tapestry: A decorative cloth made up of many strands that are woven together into an artistic design that may be pleasing to others and not to some.
  2. Is static and unchangeable
  3. Garden Salad: A complex array of distinct cultures that are blended into a unique, tasteful mixture.
  4. You can mix the salad differently
  5. Provides different textures, colors and tastes
  6. Always in a state of flux.
  1. Competence and Intercultural Communication: interaction that is perceived as effective in fulfilling certain rewarding objectives in a way that is also appropriate to the context in which the interaction occurs.
  1. Intracultural Communication Competence
  1. Perceived- competence is bases on the communicators
  2. Is specific to context of the relationship
  3. Appropriate- communicators use symbols that they are expected to use.
  4. Components of Intercultural Competence:

-Context

-Appropriateness/Effectiveness; Proper suitable behaviors

-Knowledge (Culture general/specific), Motivations (emotional associations/ feeling on intercultural comm. /intentions), Actions (actual performance)

  1. BASICS: Behavioral Assessment Scale for Intercultural Competence--8 Steps

1)Display of respect: Show positive regard for another person

2)Orientation to knowledge: terms used to explain yourself and your world

3)Empathy: behave as though you understand the world of others

4)Interaction Management: skill of regulating conversation

5)Task role behavior: initiation of ideas related to group problem solving

6)Relational Role behavior: behaviors associated w/ interpersonal harmony

7)Tolerance ambiguity: ability to react to new and ambiguous situation with little visible discomfort

8)Interaction posture: ability to respond to others in descriptive, non-evaluative, and nonjudgmental way

  1. “Men and women are not only themselves; they are also the region in which they were born, the city apartment or farm in which they learned to walk, the games they played as children, The foods they ate, the schools they attended, the sports they followed, the poems they read, and the God they believed in. W. Somerset Maugham
  1. Culture: A group of peoples whose shared beliefs and practices identify the particular place class and time to which they belong.

- Beliefs, understandings, practices, and ways to interpret experience that are shared by a number of people.

  1. Ethnicity: relating to a person or to a large group of people who share a national, racial,

linguistic, or religious heritage, whether or not they reside in their countries of origin.

  1. Stereotype: a mental category based on exaggerated and inaccurate generalizations, which are used to describe all members of a group.

-Stereotyping reduces the threat of the unknown world by making the predictable. Ernest Becker “Multicultural Communication”

-Why do we stereotype:

  1. Too much work not to.
  2. Because of the difficulty of the human brain to employ all of the information present in his/her environment about one group or another.
  3. Because we fear differences
  4. Because we fear not being able to continue, or support, our own actions or behaviors

-Stereotypic language: Categorizes individuals on the basis of the membership in a particular reference group.

  1. Hofstede’s Cultural Taxonomy
  2. Power Distance, Uncertainty Avoidance, High/Low Context, Masculinity/Femininity, Individualism/collectivism
  3. Cultural Identity
  4. Personal, Social, unexamined, …
  5. Cultural Biases
  6. Symbolic racism, tokenism, aversive racism, like/dislikes\
  7. Video: Race is….
  8. Presentation: Attributes from the Sioux culture
  9. Please review each definition and be prepared to answer questions that pertain to applying the definitions.