Introduction to Intercultural Communication
Do you know that drawing of the old and the young woman? The two drawings in one? You can see two women and it’s still one and the same drawing.
That’s how it is wit hall the things we see: there are different ways to look. The intense complex world makes it indispensable to put it into some kind of order! When my grandfather recently died, it was a sad moment for all of us, despite his age and illness. My 4-year old niece didn’t find it odd at all: he was old, right, so he died. People with grey hair are old and old people die. Life is simple, but it’s maybe the only way for a child to make sense out of the world around him.
Every person classifies the information he receives, to survive. The way you do that, the classification, depends to a certain degree on your culture, your background, your parents. Which values did your parents, your teachers, your peers pass you on? What is good and evil to yóu?
There are external elements that show a part of your identity: your clothes and hairdo’s for example. When I go to France for a few days, and I often adapt in some way to the local dresscode by wearing darker clothes. When you go abroad for a shorter or longer stay, you will probably not find it too difficult to adapt to the local codes.
This is what Hofstede calls the outer layer of the onion, the part of your identity that changes the easiest. The center of the onion represent your values. These are not visible on the outside, maybe just the effects. And they are not easy to change. It´s easy to wear another color coat, but not easy to change your beliefs and convictions.
And how do we do that, understanding those other cultures?
Many books have been written on this topic. One of the first must have been Edward T. Hall, who started writing several books in the sixties to prepare American businessmen going abroad. He developed a number of dimensions to understand the differences in expressions of other cultures.
One of them is looking at the way people deal with the concept of time: is the absolute time or duration essential, or is it overruled by social aspects? Imagine you are already late for a meeting at 11, and on the way you bump into an old friend you have not seen for a long time, do you excuse yourself and hurry to your meeting, or do you take the time to talk to this friend?
Another wellknown dimension is high-context/low-context. Do you put the message you want to pass on to the other into your words (like in the Netherlands), or into non/verbal aspects. People need to agree on these codes, to ‘read’ the message.
The most wellknown interculturalist is Geert Hofstede. According to the results of a research among the employees of the global network of IBM in the seventees, he developed 5 dimensions to analyse cultures: powerdistance, masculine/feminine, individualism/collectivism, uncertainty avoidance, time-orientation.
And what to do with all this knowledge?
The theory of Edwin Hoffmann speak the most to me, because he goes a step further by focussing on interpersonal communication. You need more than putting cultures into boxes to be able to deal with the differences.
————
Set-up used in workshops Introduction Intercultural Communication in the Peace Building Skills Trainings,
in The Hague, July 2006, for international youth studying/working in the Netherlands and
in Crimea, Ukraine, August 2006, for youth from Eastern and Western Europe.
