SPC1017 Final Exam

Interculture communication is when a message created by a member of one culture is processed by a member of another culture. IC is important for understanding your own identity. By developing a sensitivity to various cultural heritages and backgrounds you better understand your own identity. IC enhances personal and social interactions. The broader your outlook the more tolerant and accommodating you become. IC will open doors and resolve misunderstandings, miscommunications, and mistrust through honest, open, positive, healthy communication. IC enhances and enriches the quality of civilization. Recognizing and respecting ethnic and cultural diversity are important steps on the road to valuing the ways in which diversity enhances and enriches the quality of our civilization. IC is important for becoming effective citizens of our national communities.

Communication skills determine how well individuals, organizations, industries, and nations do in both acquiring and applying knowledge. Better communication=greater liklihood of success B/c of globalization and the importance of information, there is rising new category in the world known as the knowledge class. KC is supported solely by its participation in the new information industries with little, if any, reliance upon traditional manufacturing, production, or agriculture. The world today is characterized by an ever-growing number of communications between people with different linguistic and cultural backgrounds. Communication needs to be as constructive as possible to avoid misunderstandings and breakdowns.

Culture is the ever-changing values, traditions, social and political relationships, and worldview created and shared by a group of people bound together by a combination of factors which can include a common history, geographic location, language, social class, or region. Co-culture represents nonwhite, women, people with disabilities, homosexuals, and those in the lower soical classes who have specific patterns of behavior that set them off from other groups within a culture. Cultural identity, composed of ethnicity, culture, gender, age, life stage, beliefs, values, and assumptions, is the degree to which you identify with your culture, and it is determined by the values you support.

Power distance is a way of contrasting a group of cultures to another group of cultures by measuring social inequality in each. Continenets with high power distance include Africa, Latin America, and Near Eastern countries. Low power distance countries inclue the USA, germany, China, and Great Britiain. Feminity versus maculinity is a way of contrasting a group of cultures to another group of cultures that looks at the division of rules between men and women. High-feminine cultures believer women should be nurturant, concerned for the quality of life, reveal sympathy for the unfortunate, allow cross-gender behaviors, and include Africa and the Nordic countries of Europe. High masculine cultures beleive men should be concerned about wealth, achievement, challenge, ambition, promotion, and be assertive, competitive, tough, and recognize achievements. HMC maintian strict gender roles and include Latin America, Great Britain, Japan, and the US. Uncertainty avoidance compares tolerance for the unknown when contrasting a group of cultures to another group of cultures. Low uncertainty avoidance cultures need few rules and accept and encourage dissenting views and rish taking such as Latin America, Africa, and Japan. US is medium. HUA cultures feel threatened by ambiguous and uncertain situations and try to avoid them and prefer formal rules to control social behaviors. Individualism vs Collectivism refers to the degree of integration and orientation of individuals within groups. Individualistic cultures like Great Britain, USA, Canada, France, and Germany value self-expression, view speaking out as a way to solve problems, and use confrontational strategies to deal with interpersonal problems. Collectivist cultures such as Arabic, African, Asian, and Latin American countries have unquestioning loyalty to the group, and when in conflict they use avoidance, intermediaries, and other face-saving techniques. Long term orientation measures the trade-off between long term and short term gratificaiton needs, also labled as Confucian dynamism. China, Japan, and other asian countries are long-term orientation and admire persistence, ordering relationships by status, thriftiness, and having a sense of shame that emphasizes care for others and being loyal and trustworthy. Finland, France, Germany, and the USA have short-term orientation and value personal steadiness and stability, do not have as must respect for tradition because it prevents innovation, nor for saving face, which can hinder the flow of business, favor reciprocation of greetings, favors, and gifts. High context vs Low context contrasts how much information is carried in the context (high) and how much in the code or message (low). In HC communication, most info is alreayd in the person; very little info is in the coded, explicit, intentionally transmitted part of the message. Japan, Africa, Mexico, Asia, and Latin America cultures use this most. Most western cultures prefer low-context messages in which the majority of the info is in the communication itself.

Assimilation is droppping cultural differences and distinctive characteristics that would identify a person with the non dominant group. Nonassertive assimilation is is when the minority group emphasize what they have in common with the dominant group, acting positive, censoring remarks tha tmight offend the dominant group, and avoiding controversy. Assertive assimilation is carefully preparing fo rmeeting dominant group members, manipulating stereotypes, and bargaining. Aggressive assimilation is when minority group members want to fit into the dominant group at any cost. It is disassociating from one's own group, compying the dominant-group behavior, avoiding interaction with other co-cultural groups, and ridiculing oneself. Accomodation works toward getting the dominant group to reinvent or at least change the rules so that they incorporate the life experiences of the nondominant group. Nonassertive accomodation deals with avoiding stereotypes and increasing invisibilty. Assertive accommodation is achieving a balance between the ND and dominant group. They allow DG memebers know who they realy are, indetify and work with DG members who have similar goals, and identify members of the DG who can support, guide, and assist educating others. Aggressive accommodation is confronting members of the DG when they violate the rights of others and referring to DG oppression of NG. Separation strategy involves ND giving up and do not want to form a common bond with the D culture and separate into a group that include only memebers like themselves. Nonasseritve separation maintain barriers between NG and the DG and keeping away form places where DG members are found. Assertive seperation is when the NG assert their voices regardless of the consequences and make references to DG oppression with the goal of gaining advantage. Aggressive seperation is making direct attacks on DG members and undermining the DG by not letting its members take advantage of their privileged position.

The ILM provides a framework for assessing listening both systematically and developmentally. Listening includes the processes of listening preparation, receiving, constructing meaning, responding, and remembering. Listening preparation includes all the physical, mental, and behavioral aspects that creat a rediness to listen. Receiving is the process of taking in, acquring or accepting and occurs through various senses an dhappens wi/i sender-receivers as they receive all the cues, signals, and impulses. Constructing meaning is the complicated an dunique process o fmaking sense of the cues, signals, and impulses received. Responding means using spoken or nonverbal messages to exchange ideas or convey information. Remembering is done throughout the listening process and not just as a separate fifth step.

People, action, content, time-style. In a people listening styles, you are concerned with the other person's feelings. You seek out common interests with others and respond to emotions. In action listening style you want precise, error-free presentations, and you are likely to be impatient with disorganization. In a content listening style, you prefer complex and challenging information. This information is generally abstract, you can listen w/o emotional involvement and then evaluate info before you make a judgment. In time-style listening you prefer brief and hurried interaction with others and often let others know how much time they have to make the point.

If you experience laziness while listening you will avoid listening if the subject is complez or difficult and because it takes too much time. With close mindedness you refuse to maintain a relaxing and agreeable environment and to relate to and benefit from the speaker's ideas. Opinionatedness causes one to disagree or argue outwardly or inwardly with the speaker and becomo emotional or excited when the speaker's views differ from yours. With insincerity you avoid eye contact while listening an dpay attention only to the speaker's word rather than the speaker's feelings. With boredom you lack interest in the speaker's subject and become impatient with the speaker. you also daydream or become preoccupied with something else when listening. With inattentiveness you concentrate on the speaker's mannerisms or delivery rather than on the message and become distracted by noice from office equipment, telephone, and other conversation. Four other factors are cognitive dissonance, anxiety, control, and passiveness. CD occurs when you feel conflict because you hold two or more attitudes that are in oppostion to each other. Anixeity is a distrubance that occurs in your mind regaring some uncertain even, misgiving, or worry. Control is the desire to have governing influence over a situation. Passivness involves the suspension of the rational functions and the reduction of any physical functions to their lowest possible degree.

Active listening is a way of listening that focuses entirely on what the other person is saying and it confirms understanding of both the content of the message and the feelings underlying the message to assure accuracy. Dicriminative listening is the most important type and is they type that has you being sensitive to both verbal and nonverbal changes or the sounds and sights of communication. Comprehension listening is understanding what others are saying because you are aware of, grasp, and can make sense of the message. Appreciateve listening is one of the most used types and means listening for pleasure. Critical listening or evaluative listening is making judgements about what the other person is saying. Informative listening occurs when your primary concern is to understand the message. It is the most common kind of listening in college. Empathic listening is the process of mentally identifying with the character and experiences of another person. It involves the emotional projection of your self into another's life or thier life as revealed by and through their communication.

1. Be more assertive. Assertive behavior tends to be associated with positive outcomes. 2. Avoid idle chit-chat and friendly conversation and get to the point fast. Think about what you want to say, how you plan to say it, and what you want from the other perTry to change your vocal style. son. 3. Do your homeowrk. Know what you are talking about. Well-informed people tend to get the ear of others as opposed to those who either do not know what they are talking about or are simply willing to hear the ideas of others and make no significant contribution of their own. 4. Write down your most important points or questions and priortize them. A list of ideas has always been associated with a ratinal, judicious, well-thought-out approach. 5. Have some options in mind and be willing to listen. You are more likely to get the attention of others when you appear flexible and willing to listen yourself. 6. Try to change your vocal style.

The word is a symbol, it stands for the object or concept that it names. Words have denotative and connotative meanings. The ladder of abstraction is a diagram of how we abstract through language, classifications, types, categories and so on. At the bottom of the ladder are concrete words and each step up on the leadder is a broader, more abstract, less restrictive word. The more level 1 abstraction you use in your communication the more likely you will be understood by your listeners. The LOA is useful because it will help you better analyze your communications, understandings, and misunderstandings. It will help immunize yourself against political prpaganda, advertising, and vacant rhetoric. You will make a number a personal adjustments as you become more aware of your own abstracting. you will better differentiate between what happens, what you sense what happens, what you describe of what your senses sense, and what you infer from what you describe.

The language enviro is made up of four elements: people, their purpose, the rules of communication, and the actual talk used in the situation. Ritual language takes place in enviroments where a conventionalized response is expected of you. For any society to function it must have some sort of understanding about which words are inappropriate. Euphemisms are inoffensive words or phrase that are substituted for other wordss that might be perceived as unpleasant. Doublespeak refers to words deliberately constructed for political purposes, words specifically intended to impose a desirable mental attitude. Specialization- most language enviro have words that are specialized and are used only in those environments.

Women use rapport talk. This language is designed to lead to intimacy with others, to match experiences, and to establish relationships. Men use report-talk. The speaker's goal is to maintain status, to demonstrate knowledge and skills and to keep the center stage position. Men are more likely than women to look at problems in terms of "fixing them." Men are more likely to interrupt. Women use more personal pronouns and more intensive adverbs. Women use more questions and more justifiers.

Spoken language is accompanied by paralanguage-- vocal cues, or the way you say your words. It is a nonverbal component that influences your meaning. Its not easy to change written language. Reaction from audiences when writing is unusual and writers have no way of knowing if they have pleased or offended someone. Words must be chosen carefully. Writers have time to go over thier words, polish their phrases, and check their grammar.

Communication can go ineffective at various stages. The first thing you must consider is what you want to say exactly. Then you must consider how you want to say it. Clarity is that aspect of characteristic of style by means of which a thought is so presented that it is immediatly understood, depending on the precison and implicity of the language. Vividness is the aspect or characterist of style by which a thought is so presented that it evokes lifelike imagery or suggestion. You must consider to whom you are talking to. As you talk to people, beomce conscious of them as particular individuals for whom you need to adapt your message. Note the language enviro. Consider what metamessages you are sending. Metamessage is the meaning apart from what actual words express. They take many forms and don't have to involve words at all. Consider ethics. We can cause considerable damage to others by choosing the wrong words.