Understanding Understanding Intercultural Intercultural Communication Communication Second Second EditionEdition

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 MENUTODAY’S MENU

I. Defining Intercultural Communication:

A Process Model

II. Practicing Intercultural Communication Flexibility

III. Developing Intercultural Communication

Flexibility

IV. Deepening Intercultural Process Thinking

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)

I. Defining ICC: A Process I. Defining ICC: A Process ModelModel

I. Defining ICC: A Process I. Defining ICC: A Process ModelModel

II. Practicing Intercultural II. Practicing Intercultural Communication FlexibilityCommunication Flexibility

Introduction Section:

1. Flexible and inflexible intercultural communication

2. Ethnocentric and ethnorelative mindset

II. Practicing ICC FlexibilityII. 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 FlexibilityII. 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 FlexibilityII. Practicing ICC Flexibility

A. Three Content Components: Knowledge, Attitude, and

Skills

B. Three Criteria: Appropriateness, Effectiveness, and

Adaptability

III. Developing Intercultural III. Developing Intercultural Communication Communication FlexibilityFlexibility

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 Pretty Woman – Which stage are the women in at the store on Rodeo Drive? What lesson did Julia Roberts teach them?

III. Developing ICC FlexibilityIII. Developing ICC Flexibility

III. Developing ICC FlexibilityIII. 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 FlexibilityIII. 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.

NACIREMA Application NACIREMA Application ExerciseExercise

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 IV. Deepening Intercultural Process ThinkingThinking

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 IV. Deepening Intercultural Process ThinkingThinking

Mindfulness

Flexibility

Parting Thoughts…Parting Thoughts…

A traveler without observation is like a bird without wings…

~ Author unknown