Understanding Intercultural
Communication Second Edition
Chapter 2
What is Intercultural Communication
Flexibility?
Stella Ting-Toomey & Leeva C. Chung
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
PowerPoint Slides Designed by Alex Flecky and Noorie Baig
TODAY’S MENU
I.
Defining Intercultural Communication:
A Process Model
II. Practicing Intercultural Communication
Flexibility
III. Developing Intercultural Communication
Flexibility
IV. Deepening Intercultural Process Thinking
I. Defining ICC: A Process Model
Intercultural communication:
symbolic exchange (digital, analogic)
process (transactional, irreversible)
cultural community
negotiate shared meanings (content, relational,
identity meaning)
• interactive situation (relational, psychological,
physical)
• embedded societal system (multilayered
context)
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•
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I. Defining ICC: A Process Model
Person A’s
cultural
frame of
reference
Person B’s
cultural
frame of
reference
II. Practicing Intercultural Communication
Flexibility
Introduction Section:
1. Flexible and inflexible intercultural
communication
2. Ethnocentric and ethnorelative
mindset
II. Practicing ICC Flexibility
Ethnocentric mindset…
- Stuck in own cultural worldviews, using our own
cultural values as standards to evaluate others’
behaviors.
- Viewing our cultural way of living as “natural” and
what’s going on in other cultures as “unnatural.”
-
Evaluating the communication norms of our own
cultural group as more “proper.”
-
Acting in a conscious or unconscious manner
in favor of the ingroup standard to the exclusion of
outgroup standard.
II. Practicing ICC Flexibility
Ethnorelative mindset…
- Understanding behavior from the other
person’s cultural frame of reference.
- Suspending ethnocentric, reactive judgments
and engaging in a systematic cross-cultural
comparative analysis.
- Promoting a respectful, inclusive climate via
competent communication skills practice.
II. Practicing ICC Flexibility
A. Three Content Components:
Knowledge, Attitude, and Skills
B. Three Criteria:
Appropriateness, Effectiveness, and
Adaptability
III. Developing Intercultural Communication
Flexibility
A.
Staircase Model: Four Stages of Flexible
Intercultural Communication
1. Unconscious incompetence: blissfully ignorant
2. *Conscious incompetence: semi-awareness
3. Conscious competence: “full mindfulness”
4. Unconscious competence: “mindlessly mindful”
* Pretty Woman – Which stage are the women in at the store on
Rodeo Drive? What lesson did Julia Roberts teach them?
III. Developing ICC Flexibility
III. Developing ICC Flexibility
Movie Analysis: Outsourced film clip
Questions to think about:
 Which stage of the staircase model is Aunty-ji
operating from? How did Todd react to Aunty-ji’s
comments?
 Did you find Aunty-ji’s questions too intrusive? What
culture-sensitive information can you use to justify her
questioning?
 At what point in the clip did Todd switch from
unconscious incompetence to conscious
incompetence?
 Apply the three content components (knowledge,
attitude, and skills) from your chapter to help Todd and
Puro reach the conscious competency stage.
III. Developing ICC Flexibility
B.
A Mindful Perspective: Flexible Communicators:
Attune to their own internal assumptions, values,
and expectations.
• Attend to alternative assumptions, values, and
expectations of the cultural strangers.
• Learn to understand unfamiliar behaviors from
multiple cultural angles.
• Are committed to shift communication styles
when appropriate to the persons, goals, and
cultural context = ICC Flexibility.
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NACIREMA Application Exercise
Instructions:
-- Need 3 - 5 volunteers to take a walk outside and be
prepared to visit a new culture.
-- Inside the classroom: Get ready to play. Will give
you the Nacireman cultural values and rules.
-- Enjoy! Play out and dramatize your new roles.
IV. Deepening Intercultural Process Thinking
Realize that ICC often involves these principles:
•
Mismatched expectations stem from group differences.
•
Involves degrees of biased intergroup perceptions,
overgeneralizations, stereotypes.
•
Simultaneous decoding and encoding of verbal/nonverbal
messages.
•
Multiple goal transactions: content, relational, identity.
•
Calls for understanding of diverse communication
approaches and styles.
•
Often involves well-meaning culture bumps or clashes.
•
Always takes place in context and in embedded systems.
IV. Deepening Intercultural Process Thinking
Mindfulness
Flexibility
Parting Thoughts…
A traveler without observation
is like a bird without wings…
~ Author unknown