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CROSS-CULTURE COMMUNICATION

PRESENTED BYVibhor Agarwal

BBA 3rd b

INRODUCTION :

Cross-culture communication involves understanding culture difference and overcoming language problems.Communicating across cultures effectively improves your productivity and efficiency and promotes harmonious work environments.

ROLE OF CULTURE :

Culture is “the shared ways in which groups of people understand and interpret the world.The customs, ideas, and social behavior of a particular people or group. Culture is a shared system of symbols, beliefs, attitudes, values, expectations and norms for behavior.

PROBLEMS OF CULTURAL DIFFERENCES :

Two of dimensions that impact communications are the cultural differences in :

Body Positions and Movements.Views and practices concerning various factors of human relationships(time, space, intimacy, odors, frankness, values, emotions).

Body Positions and Movements:

Body positions and movements differ among cultures and the differences can effect communication.Some of the movements have no definite meaning even within a culture. But some have clear meanings and they differ by culture.

COMMUNICATION WITH BODY PARTS :

'OK' to a Westerner, 'money' to a Japanese, 'zero' to the French and ‘insulting’ to the Turks and Brazilians.

This can mean 'two' to an American ,'Victory' to a German and 'Up yours' in Britain.

COMMUNICATION WITH BODY PARTS :

EYE MOVEMENTS :The meanings that movements of our eyes convey also vary by culture.In North America we are taught to maintain eye contact in giving formal speech. But in Indonesia , it is considered to be disrespectful.

SMILE :In our culture, smiles are viewed positively in most situations. But in some other cultures (notably African cultures), a smile is regarded as a sign of weakness in certain situations.

High-context is that “most of the information is either in the physical context or initialized in the person, while very little is in the coded, explicit, transmitted part of the message.”

low-context communication is “the mass of information is vested in the explicit code”.

High and low context:

High context refers to societies or groups where people have close connections over a long period of time. Many aspects of cultural behavior are not made explicit(Clear) because most members know what to do and what to think from years of interaction with each other.

Low context refers to societies where people tend to have many connections but of shorter duration or for some specific reason. In these societies, cultural behavior and beliefs may need to be spelled out explicitly so that those coming into the cultural environment know how to behave.

High and low context culture:

Higher Context Cultural Countries

MexicoChina Japan

India

Brazil

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Lower Context Cultural Countries

America

Scandinavia

Swaziland

Germany

Australia

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Views and Practices Concerning Factors of Human Relations :

Differing attitudes toward various factors of human relationships cause communication problems.For illustrative purposes, we will review seven major factors:

TIME : Views about time differ widely. Some cultures stress punctuality and some do not.

SPACE : Space is viewed differently by different culture. In some cultures, people want to be far apart and in other cultures, they want to be close.

ODORS : Some cultures view body odors as bad and others view them as normal.

Views and Practices Concerning Factors of Human Relations :

FRANKNESS : Low-context cultures are more frank and explicit than high-context cultures.

INTIMACY OF RELATIONSHIPS : In many cultures, strict social classes exist and class status determines how intimately people are addressed and treated in communication.

VALUES : Each culture has different values concerning such matters as attitude towards work, employee-employer relations and authority.

EXPRESSION OF EMOTIONS : Social behavior varies by culture, such as practices concerning affection, laughter, and emotion.

PROBLEMS OF LANGUAGE :

The people on earth use more than 3,000 languages.Communication problems are caused by the existence of many languages.

LACK OF LANGUAGE EQUIVALENCY :Differences among languages make equivalent

translations difficult.Grammar and syntax differences add to the difficulty.The problem of multiple word meanings .Like English, other languages have more than one meaning for many words.

LACK OF LANGUAGE EQUIVALENCY :

Even words with the same meaning can differ in usage by culture.

Overcome such language problems by knowing languages well and by questioning.

A General Suggestion For Communicating Cross

CulturesUse simple, basic English.

Continually check the accuracy of the communication.

THANK YOU

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