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Sorrells, Intercultural Communication, Instructor Resources

Chapter 1

Opening the Conversation: Studying Intercultural Communication

Lecture Notes: Chapter Overview, Objectives and Outline

Chapter Overview

The first chapter, “Opening the Conversation,” invites readers to engage in a dynamic relationship with the content presented in the text and with the world around them. Students are encouraged to move from passive recipients to active participants in their learning process. The current context of globalization is a rapidly changing, deeply interdependent and increasingly inequitable world that requires skillful, informed and proactive intercultural communicators. To address the challenges and opportunities of intercultural communication today, three definitions of culture are introduced: 1.) the traditional anthropological definition where culture is viewed as shared meaning, 2.) the critical/cultural studies definition where culture is understood as a site of contested meaning, and 3.) the globalization definition where culture is seen as a resource that is bought, sold and capitalized upon for exploitation and empowerment. Each definition provides a different yet invaluable way of understanding culture in our complex age.

Critical concepts such as positionality, standpoint theory, and ethnocentrism are introduced to understand how our worldviews, perceptions, attitudes and actions are influenced by relationship of power. To become more effective as intercultural communicators, thinkers, and actors in the global context, intercultural praxis—a set of skills and practices for critical, reflective thinking and acting—is outlined in this first chapter. The six interrelated points of entry in intercultural praxis are: Inquiry, Framing, Positioning, Dialogue, Reflection, and Action. The purpose of engaging in intercultural praxis is to raise awareness, increase critical analysis, and develop socially responsible action in regard to our intercultural interactions in the context of globalization.

Chapter Objectives

To invite and encourage students to move from passive recipients to active participants in becoming effective intercultural communicators.
To introduce the challenges and opportunities of intercultural communication in the context of globalization.
To provide three different definitions of culture, which are central for understanding intercultural communication in the global context.
To understand how our social location and standpoint shape how we see, experience and understand the world differently.
To introduce intercultural praxis—a process of critical reflection and action—to increase awareness, critical analysis and socially responsible action.

Key Terms *indicated in bold and italicized letters below

High culture/Low culture Intercultural praxis

Popular culture Inquiry

Culture as shared meaning Framing

Symbols Positioning

Culture as contested meaning Dialogue

Hegemony Reflection

Culture as resource Action

Cultural identity

Positionality

Standpoint theory

Ethnocentrism

Introduction
1. Globalization is changing the ways we engage in intercultural communication.
2. Our lives are increasingly interconnected through technology and the global economy.
3. At the same time, the gap between the haves and have-nots is widening.
4. The book positions the study and practice of intercultural communication within the context of political, economic, and cultural globalization with an emphasis on the role of history, power, and global institutions.
5. This chapter introduces the key concepts in intercultural communication.

Definitions of Culture
1. Historically, the word culture was closely linked to processes of colonization.
  1. High culture: Culture of the elite class, or ruling class who have power.
    1. To have culture means to be civilized and developed.
  2. Low culture: Culture of the working class.
  3. Popular Culture: Culture that belongs to the “masses,” much of which was previously considered low culture.
2. Anthropologic Definition: Culture as a Site of Shared Meaning
  1. Edward T. Hall is considered one of the originators of the field of intercultural communication.
    1. In the 1950s, Hall developed training programs on culture and communication for diplomats going abroad on assignment.
    2. Hall’s applied approach, focusing on the micro-level of human interaction, established the foundation for the field of intercultural communication.
  2. Clifford Geertz emphasized the role of symbols in understanding culture. According to Geertz, culture is a web of symbols that people use to create meaning and order in their lives.
  3. From an anthropological perspective, culture is a system of shared meanings.
    1. Passed from generation to generation through symbols to allow people to communicate, maintain, and develop an approach and understanding of life.
    2. Culture allows us to make sense of, express and give meaning to our lives.
    3. Example: Different cultures give varying interpretations to a man in his late 20s who lives with his parents and siblings.

1. Cultural Studies Definition: Culture as a Site of Contested Meaning
  1. Culture as an apparatus of power within a larger system of domination.
  2. Informed by Marxist theories of class struggle and exploitation.
  3. Culture as a site of contestation where meanings are constantly negotiated.
  4. Cultural studies is a transdisciplinary field of study that emerged in the post-WWII era in England as a challenge to the positivist approaches to the study of culture.
    1. Cultural studies aims to develop subjective approaches to the study of culture in everyday life
    2. It examines the broader historical and political context within which cultural practices are situated, and to attend to relations of power in understanding culture.
  5. Hegemony
    1. Domination through consent as defined by Antonio Gramsci, an Italian Marxist theorist.
    2. Dominance without the need for force or explicit forms of coercion.
    3. Operates when the goals, ideas, and interests of the ruling group or class are so thoroughly normalized, institutionalized and accepted that people consent to their own domination, subordination and exploitation.
  6. From a cultural studies perspective, meanings are not necessarily shared, stable, or determined. Meanings are constantly produced, challenged, and negotiated.
    1. Example: Media representations of non-dominant groups in the United States are negotiated and contested.
    2. Culture is a site of contestation where the social norms are negotiated.
  7. A cultural studies approach offers tools to analyze power relations, to understand the historical and political context of our intercultural relations, and to see how we can act or intervene critically and creatively in our everyday lives.

1. Globalization Definition: Culture as a Resource
  1. Culture as embodied difference
    1. Arjun Appadurai (1996) suggests that we need to move away from thinking of culture as a thing, a substance or an object that is shared.
    2. The concept of culture as a coherent, stable entity privileges certain forms of sharing and agreement, and neglects the realities of inequality, difference, and those who are marginalized.
    3. Culture is not something that individuals or groups possess but rather a way of referring to dimensions of situated and embodied difference that express and mobilize group identities.
  2. Culture as a resource
    1. George Yúdice (2003) suggests that culture in the age of globalization has come to be understood as a resource.
    2. Culture is conceptualized, experienced, exploited, and mobilized as a resource.
    3. Culture is utilized as a resource to address and solve social problems like illiteracy, addiction, crime, and conflict.
    4. Culture is also used discursively, socially, and politically as a resource for collective and individual empowerment, agency and resistance.
  3. Example: Symbolic goods such as TV shows, movies, music and tourism, are a resource for economic growth in global trade. Mass culture industries in the U.S. are the major contributor to the Gross National Product (GNP).
  4. Example: African American urban culture has been appropriated, exploited, commodified, and yet operates as a potentially oppositional force.
  5. Example: How tourism in many parts of the world utilizes the resource of culture to attract foreign capital for development.
  6. Example: The Zapatista movement in Chiapas, Mexico that emerged in resistance to the oppressive and disenfranchising policies and practices of the NAFTA.
  7. Example: The ways that black youth in the favelas, poverty-stricken areas of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, use their funk music as a means to challenge racial discrimination and as a platform for activism.
  8. Textbox: Communicative Dimensions: Culture and Communication
    1. The textbox discusses the relationship between culture and communication based on three different definitions of culture.

Studying Intercultural Communication: Key Concepts
1. Cultural Identity: Our situated sense of self that is shaped by our cultural experience and social location.
  1. In recent years, many students find it highly challenging to articulate what their culture is.
    1. For students who come from the dominant culture, the response is often “I don’t really have a culture.”
    2. For those students from non-dominant groups, responses that point to their ethnic, racial, or religious group identification come more readily and yet, their replies are often accompanied by some uneasiness.
    3. Typically, people whose culture differs from the dominant group have a stronger sense of their culture and develop a clearer awareness of their culture.
    4. These responses reflect various definitions of culture. Their responses are also shaped by their cultural identities.

Positionality
1. One’s social location or position within an intersecting web of socially constructed hierarchical categories (i.e. race, class, gender, sexual orientation, religion, nationality and physical abilities).
2. Positionality shapes different experiences, understanding, and knowledge of oneself and the world.
3. Positionality is a relational concept.
  1. Shows how we are positioned in relation to others within these intersecting social categories.
  2. Shows how we are positioned in terms of power.
4. The socially constructed categories of race, gender, class, sexuality, nationality, religion and ableness are hierarchical systems that often define and connote material and symbolic power.

Standpoint Theory
1. Standpoint: A place from which to view and make sense of the world around us.
2. Our standpoint influences what we see and what we cannot, do not, or choose not to see.
3. Feminist standpoint theory claims that the social groups to which we belong shape what we know and how we communicate.
  1. Based on the Marxist position that economically oppressed classes can access knowledge unavailable to the socially privileged and can generate distinctive accounts, particularly knowledge about social relations.
  2. G.W.F. Hegel suggested that while society in general may acknowledge the existence of slavery, the perception, experience, and knowledge of slavery is quite different for slaves as compared to masters.
  3. One’s position within social relations of power produces different standpoints from which to view, experience, act and construct knowledge about the world.
4. People from oppressed or subordinated groups must understand both their own perspective and the perspective of those in power in order to survive.
5. The standpoint of marginalized people or groups is unique and should be privileged as it allows for a fuller and more comprehensive view.
6. Patricia Hill Collins’ (1986) notion of “outsiders within” points to the possibility of dual vision of marginalized people and groups.
7. Standpoint theory offers a powerful lens through which to make sense of, address, and act upon issues and challenges in intercultural communication. It enables us to understand how:
  1. We may see, experience, and understand the world quite differently based on our different standpoints and positionalities.
  2. Knowledge about ourselves and others is situated and partial.
  3. Knowledge is always and inevitably connected to power.
  4. Oppositional standpoints can form challenging and contesting the status quo.

Ethnocentrism
1. The idea that one’s own group’s way of thinking, being, and acting in the world is superior to others.
2. Derived from two Greek words, ethno, meaning group or nation, and, kentron, meaning center.
3. Conceptualized by William Sumner (1906).
4. Ethnocentrism leads to negative evaluations of others and can result in dehumanization, legitimization of prejudices, discrimination, conflict, and violence.
5. Ethnocentrism has combined with power—material, institutional, and symbolic power—to justify colonization, imperialism, oppression, war, and ethnic cleaning.
  1. Can blind individuals, groups, and even nations to the benefits of broader points of view and perceptions.
  2. Often marked by an intensely inward-looking and often near-sighted view of the world.
  3. Negatively impacts intercultural communication on both interpersonal and global levels.
  4. Example: In a 2001 poll, 58 % of global opinion leaders considered U.S. policies to be a major cause of the September 11 attacks, compared to just 18 % of U.S. respondents.
6. Ethnocentrism has no long-term benefits for effective or successful intercultural communication in the context of globalization.
7. Textbox: Cultural Identity: Constructing Cultural Identity
  1. The textbox provides the definition of cultural identity
  2. Discusses how the notions of positionality, standpoint theory, and ethnocentrism are related to cultural identity and intercultural communication.

Intercultural Praxis
1. The purpose of engaging in intercultural praxis is:
  1. To raise our awareness.
  2. To increase our critical analysis.
  3. To develop our socially responsible action in regard to our intercultural interactions in the context of globalization.
2. There are six points or ports of entry that direct us towards ways of thinking, reflecting and acting in relation to our intercultural experiences.
3. Intercultural praxis allows us to attend to the complex, relational, interconnected and often ambiguous nature of our experiences.
  1. Inquiry
    1. Refers to a desire and willingness to know, to ask, to find out and to learn.
    2. Inquiry requires that we are willing to take risks, allow our own way of viewing and being in the world to be challenged and changed.
      1. Be willing to suspend judgments about others in order to see and interpret others and the world from different points of view.
  2. Framing
    1. The use of multiple frames of reference to understand intercultural communication.
    2. “Framing” indicates that our perspectives, our views on ourselves, others and the world around us are always and inevitably limited by frames.
      1. We see things through individual, cultural, national, and regional frames that necessarily include some things and exclude others.
      2. It is critical that we become aware of the frames of reference from which we view and experience the world.
    3. To be aware of both the local and global contexts that shape intercultural interactions.
      1. To zoom in and focus on the particular and very situated aspects of an interaction, event, or exchange.
      2. To zoom out to view the incident, event, or interaction from a broader frame.
      3. To be aware of our frames of reference.
      4. To develop our capacity to flexibly and consciously shift our perspectives between the particular dimensions and the broader, global dimensions.
  3. Positioning
    1. Refers to understanding how and where we are positioned in the world.
    2. Positioning allows us to acknowledge that we are positioned differently with both material and symbolic consequences.
      1. Our positionality may shift and change based on where you are and with whom you are communicating.
      2. To interrogate who can speak and who is silenced; whose language is spoken and whose language trivialized or denied; whose actions have the power to shape and impact others and whose actions are dismissed, unreported, and marginalized.
      3. To question whose knowledge is privileged, authorized and agreed upon as true and whose knowledge is deemed unworthy, “primitive,” or unnecessary.
    3. To examine the relationship between power and what we think of as “knowledge.”
    4. Our knowledge of the world is socially and historically constructed and produced in relation to power.

1. Dialogue
  1. The word “dialogue” is derived from the Greek word “dialogos.”
  2. “Dia” means “through,” “between,” or “across.”
  3. “Logos” refers to “word” or “the meaning of the word” as well as “speech” or “thought.”
  4. Anthropologist Crapanzano (1990) suggests that “dialogue” necessarily entails both an oppositional as well as a transformative dimension.
    1. Given the differences in power and positionality in intercultural interactions, engagement in dialogue is necessarily a relationship of tension.
  5. Martin Buber suggests that dialogue is essential for building community and goes far beyond an exchange of messages.
    1. Dialogue requires a particular quality of communication that involves a connection among participants who are potentially changed by each other.
    2. I-Thou relationships, rather than I-It relationship.
      1. Regard for both self and other.
      2. Either/or thinking is challenged.
      3. The possibility of shared ground, new meaning and mutual understanding.
  6. Dialogue allows us to be cognizant of differences and invites us to stretch ourselves—to reach across—to imagine, experience, and creatively engage with others.

1. Reflection
  1. Reflection is the capacity to learn from introspection, to observe oneself in relation to others.
  2. To alter one’s perspectives and actions based on reflection is a capacity shared by all humans.
  3. Many cultures place a high value on doing activities and accomplishing tasks, which often leaves little space and time for reflection.
  4. Reflection is central to the process of inquiry, framing, positioning, and dialogue.
  5. Paulo Freire (1998) notes that critical praxis “involves a dynamic and dialectic movement between ‘doing’ and ‘reflecting on doing’” (p. 43).
  6. Reflection informs our actions.
  7. Reflection enables us to act in the world in meaningful, effective, and responsible ways.

1. Action
  1. The concept of intercultural praxis refers to an on-going process of thinking, reflecting and acting.
  2. Intercultural praxis emphasizes responsible action to create a more socially just, equitable and peaceful world.
  3. To be aware of what informs ours choices and actions.
  4. To think about the implications of our actions.
  5. To think about how our choices and actions are interrelated in the context of globalization and relations of power.
  6. Intercultural praxis offers us a process of critical, reflective thinking and acting that enables us to navigate the complex and challenging intercultural spaces we inhabit interpersonally, communally, and globally.

Summary
1. Definitions of culture
  1. Culture as shared meaning
  2. Culture as contested meaning
  3. Culture as resource
2. Key concepts
  1. Positionality
  2. Standpoint theory
  3. Ethnocentrism
3. Intercultural praxis: a set of skills, processes and practices for critical, reflective thinking and acting.
  1. Inquiry
  2. Framing
  3. Positioning
  4. Dialogue
  5. Reflection
  6. Action