And welcome to this lecture on culture or what is culture. Developing cross-cultural or intercultural understanding is essential if you want to do any type of business while abroad. Developing intercultural communication skills is necessary to establish good interpersonal skills or good interpersonal relations with people and to communicate effectively when cultural differences may exist. But before we get into intercultural communication skills, we should probably tackle the first problem, that is, what is culture? The word culture can mean different things for different people. And it can also mean different things in different contexts. For example, how would you define the Chinese culture to a North American? How would you differ that definition for a Chinese living in New York or a Chinese person living in Shanghai? When we talk about culture, we're talking about many things, such as national culture, ethnic culture, international culture, and even business culture. How much does the geography play a role in that? What about beliefs? What about values within the community? Many researchers often refer to Hofstede's work on cultural dimensional theory. For example, when trying to understand cross-cultural communication, in his book Culture's Consequences, he defines culture as the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one human group from another. Culture in this sense includes systems of values, and values are among the building blocks of culture. So there's one perspective on culture. Other scholars in communications like to refer to Edward T Hall's Iceberg Model of culture. Hall's Iceberg Model of culture suggests people only see a few elements or behaviors of a particular culture. This is what he calls the surface culture. But he would argue that the major essence of any culture is hidden from the general public. So at the surface, most people just see basic behaviors and customs, but if you dig deeper in a culture, and these are not often revealed to outsiders, you'll get to understand the attitudes, the beliefs, and the core values of the culture that you're looking at. This may be a good start, but it still doesn't explain the context of how culture exists. Quite often, it is the context and the relationships within that context that defines a culture. Melanie Moll in her book The Quintessence of Intercultural Business Communications uses this definition. Culture is the meaningful way in which people act and interact in other social contexts with one another. Moll also identifies what we call cultural patterns, the way in which people in a culture interact, socialize, and react to one another and their surroundings. But again, because culture is so complex, it is important that people don't overgeneralize when identifying cultural patterns. This is what is called stereotyping. Having an understanding of the complexities of cultures and the cultural pattern with them are important if you are to develop intercultural communication skills. It's not an easy task. Misunderstandings, overgeneralizations, and stereotyping can occur, which have a negative impact on any communication. So what might be included in intercultural communication skills? Well, you may need to understand the impact of directness or indirectness of speech. Turntaking norms within a culture. Orientations to power. Roles and relationships in face-to-face communication. The impact of non-verbal communication, the environment where communication takes place. The values and beliefs within the culture and the attitudes of the people within the culture. But also world views generally held by that culture. This list is not exhaustive, and there could be other elements you need to be aware of when participating in cross-cultural communication. We'll explore some of these theories and ideas in this module. And we'll have a look at Hofstede's cultural dimensions and how they can help inform people when participating in cross-cultural communication in a business sentence. Thank you for watching.
