Intercultural Communication: Definition, Purpose, Effects & Elements

What Are Intercultural Communication Skills?

Intercultural communication skills are those skills that a person uses while interacting and communicating with people and groups from another culture.

Language skills are one of the most important and widely used skills in intercultural communication but they are not the only skills used. The intercultural skills require us to understand that different cultures have a different set of requirements, social norms, and mores and social expectations, etc.

It also involves respecting the cultural values, beliefs, and practices of other cultures. Effective intercultural communication skills lead to greater mutual respect between different cultural communities and an understanding of the ways of living of different groups of people around the world.

What Is Intercultural Communication Theory?

There are many intercultural communication theories. These are-

1. Social science theory social science theory focuses on the social science aspect of studying people from a different culture. Under this theory, a person is studied as a representative of the whole community. It also focuses on how a person adjusts his or her behavior around different people. E.g. a person would behave differently around his or her family and friends.
2. Interpretive theory- the interpretative theory is about knowing a culture by way of making attempts to collect stories both community stories as well as individual stories to get an insight into their cultural values and beliefs. Ethnography is the main tool that is issued in this theory to ascertain the culture of particular speech. The individual is the main focus of this study. Therefore, the individual context is used to understand cultures as per this model. The findings are not generalized in this theory as the results are individual-based.
3. Dialectical theory- this theory studies culture by way of six dichotomies like cultural v individual, contextual v personal, similarities v differences, past- present and future, privilege v disadvantage, dynamic v static, etc. This theory studies cultures in a complex way and in a manner that looks at different aspects of culture. It is, therefore, more wholesome than other theories. This helps in categorizing all aspects of cultures into certain categories. This makes us study the different aspects in detail looking into the harmonizing and conflicting factors of all aspects and come to a conclusion about how each will work with the other in a given setup.
4. Critical theory- This theory is used by the researcher to compare the culture he belongs to with some other culture. This is generally an attempt to distinguish the culture in question from the portrayal of media by the same. The critical approach as the name suggests gives a good understanding of the cultures because a critical analysis of the subject's culture gives us a deeper understanding of the culture.

Why Is Intercultural Communication Important?

In a globalized world, the importance of studying intercultural communication is increasing day by day. Intercultural communication is important for living in a world where every community is in constant communication with every other community. Intercultural communication helps in breaking down barriers in communication amongst the different cultures and communities and results in more growth, economic, cultural, etc.

1. Improves negotiation skills.
2. Remove cultural barriers.

How To Improve Intercultural Communication Skills?

There can be some intercultural communication difficulties skills, but they can be improved in the following ways-

1. Be agile- to be able to have inter-cultural communication, it is important that the people in communication are open to each other and each others energy. Therefore, be flexible to receive the information and accept different belief systems, one which is different and opposite to one's own. One has to be aware of the prejudices that one follows and to see that the same are not repeated in one communication. Moreover, organizations need to be able to adopt flexibility to grow as an organization and take risks. One has to step out of the comfort zone and choose the path that makes communication easier, lucid, and productive.
2. Be open-minded- Being closed-minded is also similar to the above. If a person is closed off to new information or a different belief system than theirs, free communication does not take place. Asking questions, looking for opportunities, and being receptive to other people's ideas will help you to be more open-minded.
3. Engage in meaningful communication- to have a meaningful conversation means to be able to communicate in a manner that facilitates the flow of information that adds to the knowledge of the person.
4. Be aware- once you decide to communicate with someone from another culture make sure that you have a good idea of the culture you are going to talk about even if you are not the main speaker in the conversation. Being aware of the culture and self makes you appear more receptive to the information and will help you have at least a background to start working on.

What Is The Purpose Of Intercultural Communication Skills?

The main purpose of the intercommunication skill is to improve understanding of different cultures amongst the people around the world. This tidy involves three aspects of studying cultures which are- culture-specific, culture general, and intercultural communication. The cultural specific deals with specific cultures and their specifications, the cultural general deals with commonalities with culture, and intercultural interactions focus on studying both amongst different cultures.

What Are The Elements Of The Intercultural Communication Skills?

1. Communicators- a communication is supposed to be between at least two parties. Generally, it is believed that in communication there are two people, sender, and receiver. The sender and receiver concept limits communication to a particular way of conversation.
2. Noise- noise is not to be taken literally. It means anything that disrupts the message or communication. It can be the low voice of the speaker, noise in the surrounding, miscommunication body language, disinterest, uninterest, jargon, etc.
3. Message- message means the content of the communication. Message can be sent either verbally or by way of body language. The body language sometimes may give off a message that people don't want to reveal.
4. Feedback- as mentioned above, communication is not one way where the sender sends the message and the receiver is nonparticipative. The receiver also communicates information which is termed as feedback, feedback includes the takeaway of the message of
5. Context- context is another element of communication. Context may be about a place or social position. The social positions include the role and responsibilities of the sender and receiver while as about place it means the environmental context like whether the place is an office, home, etc.
6. Channel- channel means the mode of transmitting the message. The channel can be either physical face-to-face communication or through video conferencing or audio etc.

Challenges Of Intercultural Communication

1. Using jargon
2. Emotional or practical or technical barriers
3. Not having attention, disinterest, irrelevant information, noise
4. Physical disabilities of the sender or receiver
5. Differences in point of view
6. Differences in languages
7. Differences in culture
8. Prejudice and expectations

Effect Of Intercultural Communication

1. Increases general knowledge
2. Increases specific knowledge of the people
3. Increases tolerance for different views
4. Improves communication skills
5. Improves organizations knowledge about different markets
6. Makes people open-minded
7. This leads to openness and creativity

Types Of Intercultural Communication

The types of intercultural communication are-

1. Verbal- where words are used written or spoken etc.
2. Non-verbal- where gestures and body language are used.

Key Issues In Intercultural Communication

1. Not knowing what to expect in a communication
2. Not knowing how to react in a communication
3. Not being able to comprehend the information
4. Taking the information out of context

How Does Ethnocentrism Affect Intercultural Communication?

Intercultural communication is all about being receptive to new information without a bias to be able to make the most of that information. Ethnocentricism means feeling that one's values are more superior to that of others. The superiority complex hinders communication to a large extent. Thus, it can be said that ethnocentricism hinders the flow of communication and defeats the purpose of intercultural communication.

Why Study Intercultural Communication?

As discussed above, intercultural communication leads to an exchange of ideas and the reception of new information and new knowledge. This lets the organisation make informed decisions and makes a person more knowledgeable, open for receiving and accepting different and conflicting opinions, etc.

This was all about intercultural communication. Hope that this blog helped you clear your concepts of intercultural communication and will help you to write an assignment on intercultural communication in case you have to write one in the future. If you are still not confident about writing a communication assignment, then you can come to us and get communication assignment help or help with business communication assignment.

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