Intercultural

Communication
Ethics and
Competence
CHAPTER 2: LESSON 3
A lot of who you are depends on where you
are, or at least on where you come from, as
well as on the groups you belong to and how
they expect people to behave. You are not
alone: You belong and you don't always have
a choice. Simply being a Filipino both
constrains and enables certain behaviors and
styles.

These norms are transacted in

communication as respect for elders,
IDENTIFYING YOUR CULTURE

Certain geographical locations, nations,

races, and regions are important factors
in talking about society and cultural
identity, but the simple connection or
identification of a nationality with a
culture is a problem for many reasons.
IDENTIFYING YOUR CULTURE
Identifying society and culture in such
ways makes the simple mistake of
assuming, for example, that everybody
from the same nation or country has the
same set of assumptions and beliefs. Yet
most countries have regions regarded as
different and distinctive (Ilocanos,
Bicolanos, Davaoenos, Kapampangan).
The belief systems in this smaller and
diverse groups are often recognized as
somewhat different and distinct from
 You were born into a society, a
nationality, and a heritage; you
live somewhere; you follow
certain rules that exist in that
society (for example, you drive
l a n g u a g e s eti h t haet r opnr e vt ha ei l r itghhetr eo;r tyhoeu l e feta)t;
p a r t i c u l a r fyoooud s p aenak d ac apna r ti d i ceunl tairt yl a n
" egtuhangi ec
c u i s i n e s " o fo rostehte ro fn a t i o n s . I t i s i m p o r t a n t
to recognize that, within any given nation
or society, many cultures amount to
different relational groups that transact
their business in communicative patterns,
Your talk indicates or displays
your cultural membership.
Your culture is written in your
voice not only in the language
you speak but also the
thoughts you express and the
assumptions you make.
ETHICS ACROSS CULTURES (Kale,
1997) address people of
Ethical communicators
other cultures with the same respect that
they would like to receive themselves.
Intercultural communicators should not
demean or belittle the cultural identity of
Ethical through
others communicators seek
verbal or to describe the
nonverbal
world as they perceive it as accurately as
communication.
possible. What is perceived to be the truth may
vary from one culture to another; truth is
socially constructed. This principle means that
ethical communicators do not deliberately
ETHICS ACROSS CULTURES (Kale,
1997) encourage people of
Ethical communicators
other cultures to express themselves in their
uniqueness. This principle respects the right
of people to expression regardless of how
popular or unpopular their ideas may be.
Ethical communicators strive for identification
with people of other cultures. Intercultural
communicators should emphasize the
commonalities of cultural beliefs and values
rather than their differences.
The Language and Ethics of Prejudice and Racism
Communication can play a role in either
spreading prejudice and racism or
stopping their spread. Prejudice and
racism are commonly viewed as being
rooted in the child's early socialization
and fostered in communication with
other people who are prejudiced or racist
(Adorno et al., 1950). Out of realizations
that speech can cue prejudiced behavior
in others, some have attempted to
restrict that type of speech, often
 The Language and Ethics of Othering
The bipolarizing tendencies of language
and research present an ethical
challenge. Othering refers to the
labelling and degrading of cultures
subgroups outside of one's own (Riggins,
1997). Indigenous peoples, women,
lesbians and gay men, and ethnic groups
have been "othered" by other groups in
language.
COMMUNICATIO
N APPROACH TO
INTERCULTURAL
COMMUNICATIO
N
Personality Strength
The main personal traits that affect
intercultural communication are:
 Self Concept
 Self-disclosure
 Self Monitoring
 Social Relaxation
Communication Skills
 Message skills

 Behavioral flexibility

 Interaction management

 Social skills
Psychological Adjustment

Effective communicators must be able to

acclimate to new environments. They must be
able to handle the feelings of "culture shock,"
such as frustration, stress, and alienation in
ambiguous situations caused by new
environments.
Cultural Awareness

To be competent in intercultural
communication, individuals must understand
the social customs and the social system of
the host culture. Understanding how people
think and behave is essential for effective
communication with them.
 Barriers to
Intercultural
Communication
CHAPTER 2: LESSON 4
There is no way that you can learn all the
rules governing appropriate and
inappropriate behavior for every culture and
subgroup with which you come into contact.
You'd always be doing something wrong;
you'd always be offending someone. Your
communication would likely to suffer as your
violation of norms would be a form of noise
limiting the effectiveness of your
communication.
A better approach is to examine on a general
level the barriers to intercultural
communication. LaRay M. Barna (1997) has
developed a list of six such barriers: anxiety,
assuming similarity instead of difference,
ethnocentrism, stereotypes and prejudice,
nonverbal misinterpretations, and language.
 1.
The first barrier is high anxiety. When

ANXIET
you are anxious because of not knowing
what you are expected to do, it is only

Y present in the communication

natural to focus on that feeling and not
be totally
transaction. For example, you may have
experienced anxiety on your very first
day on a new college campus or in a new
job. You may be conscious of being new-
and out of place-and focus so much of
2. A S S U M I N G S I M I L A R I T Y I N S T E A D O F
The second Dbarrier
I F F E R E NisC Eassuming
S similarity
instead of difference. When you have no
information about a new culture, it might
make sense to assume there are no
differences, to behave as you would in
your home culture. But making that
assumption could result in
miscommunication. Each culture is
different and unique to some degree.
3. ETHNOCENTRISM
The third barrier to effective intercultural
communication is ethnocentrism, or
negatively judging aspects of another
culture by the standards of one's own
culture. To be ethnocentric is to believe
in the superiority of one’s culture.
Another name for ethnocentrism is the
anthropological concept of cultural
relativism. It does not mean that
everything is equal. It does mean that we
4. STEREOTYPE
The term stereotype is the broader term
commonly used to refer to negative or
positive judgments made about
individuals based on any observable or
believed group membership. The word
stereotyping was first used by journalist
Walter Lippmann in 1992 to describe
judgments made about others on the
basis of their ethnic group membership.
Today, the term is more broadly used to
NEGATIVE EFFECTS ON COMMUNICATION
Stereotypes are harmful because they impede
(STEREOTYPING)
communication in at least four ways:
They cause us to assume that a widely held belief
is true when it may not be.
Continued use of the stereotype reinforces the
belief. Stereotypes of women as ornaments or of
people of color as stupid or shameless or of gay
men as promiscuous reinforce a belief that places
individual women, African, Asians, and gay men at
risk. Popular television may reinforce those
stereotypes.
NEGATIVE EFFECTS ON COMMUNICATION
Stereotypes are harmful because they impede
(STEREOTYPING)
communication in at least four ways:
Stereotypes also impede communication when they
cause us to assume that a widely held belief is true of
any one individual. For example, if a group is
stereotyped as dishonest, that does not mean that any
The stereotype
one individual can
in that become
group a "self-fulfilling
is dishonest.
prophecy" for the stereotyped. Research by
psychologists Steele and Aronson (1995 shown that
a negative stereotype creates a threat that can
distract the individual stereotyped and lower
5. PREJUDICE
Prejudice refers to the irrational
suspicion or hatred of a particular group,
race, religion, or sexual orientation.
Whereas stereotypes can be positive or
negative, prejudice refers to the
irrational dislike, suspicion, or hatred of a
particular group, race, religion, or sexual
orientation (Rothenerg, 1992). Persons
within the group are viewed not in terms
of their individual merit but according to
CHARACTERISTICS OF INTERCULTURAL
COMPETENCE

Beyond knowing the specific rules of an

individual culture, there are also
attitudes and skills called "cultural
general" that help communicators build
relationships with people from other
backgrounds (Samovar & Porter, 2004) as
mentioned in Alder & Rodman (2009)
 MOTIVATION
The desire to communicate successfully with
strangers is an important start. For example,
people high in willingness to communicate
with people from other cultures report a
greater numberFOR
TOLERANCE of AMBIGUITY
friends from different
Communicating
backgrounds than with people
those from
who are different
less willing
backgrounds
to reach out. can be confusing. A tolerance
for ambiguity makes it possible to accept,
and even embrace, the often equivocal and
sometimes downright incomprehensible
 OPEN-MINDEDNESS
It's one thing to tolerate ambiguity; it's
another to become open-minded about
cultural differences. There is a natural
tendency to view others' communication
choices as "wrong"
KNOWLEDGE ANDwhen they don't match
SKILLS
The rules and
our cultural customs that work with one
upbringing.
group might be quite different from those
that succeed with another.
Communication theorist Cha Berger
outlines three strategies for moving
forward to a more mindful, competent
style of intercultural
 Passive observation communication:
involves noticing
what behaviors embers of a different
culture use and applying these insights
to communicate
 Active strategiesin ways that are
include most
reading,
effective. films, and asking experts and
watching
members of the other culture how to
behave, as well as taking academic
courses related to intercultural
communication and diversity.
 Self-disclosure involves volunteering
personal information to people from
the other culture with whom you want
to communicate. One type of self-
disclosure is to confess your cultural
ignorance: "This is very new to me.
What's the right thing to do in this
situation?"