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Chapter 5: Culture and Communication
Test Bank
Multiple Choice
1. Individualist cultures are generally known to ______.
a. emphasize the importance of one’s place in the system
b. stress group benefit
c. emphasize acting for the common good
d. focus on personal goals and achievements
2. A person who comes from a monochronic culture would be most likely to ______.
a. arrive on time, if not early, for appointments
b. multitask on a regular basis
c. carry out multiple conversations at the same time
d. establish relationships before introducing business
3. A person who comes from a polychronic culture would be most likely to ______.
a. arrive on time, if not early, for appointments
b. think of time as a straight line from beginning to end
c. be less concerned about arriving on time for appointments
d. be more concerned about business than getting to know someone
4. Certain topics that people in a society never bother to persuade anyone else about
because their arguments are always raised against a background of common
understanding and shared beliefs are known as cultural ______.
a. persuadables
b. expendables
c. communities
d. entities
5. Believing that our own cultural way of acting is right and normal, and all other ways of
acting are only variants of the only really good way to act, is called ______.
a. ethnography
b. ethnocentric bias
c. egocentric bias
d. autoethnography
6. A smaller group of culture within a larger cultural mass is considered to be, according
to Duck and McMahan, a(n) ______.
a. subculture
b. nonculture
c. co-culture
d. insignificant culture
7. Your authors’ perspective that “society is a coded system of meaning” reflects the
belief that society is ______.
a. the hierarchical structure in which we live
b. the power structure in which we live
c. a set of beliefs, heritage, and way of being in which we live
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d. an illusion in which we live
8. According to your authors, children who learn the “rules” of how to talk to others also
learn the ______.
a. habits of their particular culture
b. most effective way to throw a tantrum
c. problems of human communication
d. lack of human culture
9. High-context societies are more likely to ______.
a. emphasize the actual words of the message rather than the context
b. consider relationships as important as, if not more important than, the actual
message
c. separate the relationships from the message
d. focus on the details and the logic of the message
10. Low-context societies are more likely to ______.
a. take more cues from their relationship with the speaker than from the message
b. pay attention to the details and the logic of the message
c. pay more attention to contextual issues such as nonverbal communication
d. pay less attention to the spoken words of the message
11. In an organizational setting, a low-context culture would emphasize ______.
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a. commitment to people
b. adherence to set plans
c. concern for relationships
d. open friendliness over privacy
12. In an organizational setting, a high-context culture would emphasize ______.
a. commitment to people
b. adherence to set plans
c. concern for others’ privacy
d. promptness
13. Collectivist cultures are generally known to emphasize ______.
a. the individual person
b. individual goals and achievements
c. the right to personal choice
d. acting for the common good
14. ______ cultures place a great deal of emphasis on the total environment or context
where speech and interaction take place.
a. Low-Context
b. High-context
c. Collectivistic
d. Individualistic
15. In ______ societies, people usually recuse (remove) themselves from decision-
making roles if a friend or family member is involved.
a. low-context
b. high-context
c. polychronic
d. monochronic
16. Within a ______ society, an individual who acts to achieve personal rather than
collective goals would be viewed as simply selfish and disrespectful.
a. low-context
b. high-context
c. collectivistic
d. individualistic
17. A large group like “Americans” can be broken down into smaller groups. These
smaller groups are examples of ______.
a. subculture
b. nonculture
c. co-culture
d. insignificant culture
Multiple Response
1. SELECT ALL THAT APPLY. Which groups are considered members of a unique
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culture?
a. Comic book fans
b. Farmers
c. Musicians
d. Fast-food employees
2. SELECT ALL THAT APPLY. The research that has been conducted about culture
from a structural standpoint, examining communication within and among nations or
physical regions, is usually referred to as ______.
a. nation-state communication
b. cross-cultural communication
c. transactional communication
d. intercultural communication
3. SELECT ALL THAT APPLY. Culture is not just structured but is also transacted in
communication by which means?
a. Heritage
b. A way of being
c. A coded system of meaning
d. A set of beliefs
4. SELECT ALL THAT APPLY. Which are considered cross-cultural characteristics?
a. Time
b. Conflict
c. Collectivism/Individualism
d. Context
5. SELECT ALL THAT APPLY. Which best describe the assumptions known as cultural
persuadables?
a. It is important to have a well-structured argument or well-delivered presentation.
b. Certain topics and ideas are taken for granted within a given society.
c. There is a background of common understanding and shared belief within a given
society.
d. There are norms that delineate a range of what may and what must be persuaded
within a given society.
6. SELECT ALL THAT APPLY. Which are true of transacting culture?
a. Culture goes beyond physical location.
b. Cultural groups are created through communication.
c. Cultural membership is enacted through communication.
d. Culture is embedded within your communication.
7. SELECT ALL THAT APPLY. Which is an indication that culture is embedded within
your communication?
a. Wearing “cultural clothes”
b. Speaking in a manner that prompts someone to ask, “Are you from the South?”
c. Speaking in a language that is not your native language
d. When someone says to you, “I love your accent”
True/False
1. Culture refers exclusively to geographical or ethnic differences between groups of
people.
2. Co-cultural groups and “social communities” often exist within the framework of a
larger culture.
3. Context has to do with the number of words in a message.
4. Collectivism involves placing more emphasis on the needs of the group over the
needs of the individual.
5. Individualism involves placing more emphasis on the needs of the group over the
needs of the individual.
6. Doing one thing at a time in a linear fashion is typical of monochronic time.
7. Cultures that emphasize polychronic time also emphasize being on time for
appointments.
8. Cultures are universally future oriented rather than being focused on the past or
present.
9. Culture is geographical.
10. Viewing culture from a transaction standpoint focuses on large-scale differences in
values, beliefs, goals, and preferred ways of acting among nations, regions, ethnicities,
and religions.
11. By viewing culture from a structural standpoint, the focus is on belonging to sets of
people who share meanings and styles of speaking, systems of beliefs, and customs.
12. Cross-cultural communication compares the communication styles and patterns of
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people from very different cultural/social structures, such as nation-states.
13. Intercultural communication deals with how people from different cultural/social
structures speak to one another and what difficulties or differences they encounter, over
and above the different languages they speak.
14. Features of topography may be reflected in attitudes to neighbors, like isolationism,
neutrality and independence.
15. Burleson, Roberts, Coon, & Solo (2019) indicate that acceptance of affectionate
touch was much higher in Mexican American as compared with European Americans.
16. In such countries as China and Iraq, a person’s status in society is extremely
important, and people tend to rely on shared history and their relationship to the
speaker/audience to contextualize their talk.
17. In a low-context society, spoken words are much less important than the rest of the
context
18. In a high-context society, then, people try to separate their relationships from the
messages and to focus on the details and the logic.
19. Nepotism, or favoritism shown to a family member or friend, is evaluated negatively
in low-context cultures.
20. Collectivist cultures place importance on the whole group, stressing common
concerns and the value of acting not merely for oneself but for the common good.
21. Western societies, such as the United States or UK, are generally characterized as
collectivistic.
22. Putting too much emphasis on time so that people’s relationships are ignored is
regarded as rude and pushy in monochronic cultures.
23. Polychronic cultures view time as a valuable commodity and punctuality as very
important.
24. Some Asian societies pay more attention to the distant future and, like South
American and Mediterranean cultures, tend to assume a greater influence of the past on
the present.
25. Co-cultures are smaller groups of culture within a larger cultural mass.
Short Answer
1. Cultural groups are set apart based on their communication styles. Sets of
communication patterns that are the norm for a culture—and only that culture—are
known by what description?
2. Give an example of how some cultural groups may rejoice in their exclusivity.
3. What must be learned and understood before a person can fully enact membership
into a group?
4. If cultural understanding is fundamental to enacting cultural membership, then how is
that understanding learned?
5. The most common approach to studying culture has been to view it as what kind of
structure?
6. On one hand, the authors say culture is not equivalent to nation or geography, yet
they focus on many of those features in this chapter. Why?
7. Your culture is ______ in your communication not only in the language you speak but
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also in the thoughts you express and the assumptions you make.
8. What is a term that describes how people can know something about a person’s
culture when that person speaks?
9. The view that one’s own cultural styles of communication are the normal ways of
communicating and that other ways of communicating are variations of normal
communication is known as what type of bias?
10. Explain a coded system of meaning.
11. In terms of context, Iraq is generally classified as what type of culture?
12. What is a co-culture?
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Essay
1. Explain what is meant by the term ethnocentric bias.
2. Identify what is studied in the field of cross-cultural communication as compared with
intercultural communication.
3. Define what a speech community is and where speech communities are found.
4. Distinguish between low-context and high-context societies.
5. Identify the differences between individualist and collectivist cultures.
6. Describe how studying culture as a transaction is different from studying culture in
structural or geographic terms.
7. Describe how enacting membership into a cultural group is more complicated and
restrictive than it may initially appear?
8. Explain how the view of culture as transacted proposes that communication can lead
to membership in a particular culture.
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9. Explain the influence of social networks on romantic relationships in American culture
versus Korean culture.
10. Why is important to understand how culture is symbolically transacted?
11. Describe the difference between monochronic cultures and polychronic cultures.
12. What is a speech community? Provide two examples of a speech community.
Instructor Resource
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13. Explain the process (and difficulty) of enacting membership into a cultural group
through communication.
14. How are outsiders viewed by insiders when attempting to enact membership into a
cultural group?
15. Before a person can fully enact membership into a group, what must happen?
16. Explain what it means to view culture as “structured.”
17. Explain what it means to view culture as “transacted.”
18. Explain what it means to say culture is coded into communication.