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Chapter 3: Culture, Communication, Context, and Power
Chapter 3
Culture, Communication, Context, and Power
Learning Objectives
After studying the material in this chapter, students should be able to accomplish the following
objectives:
1. Identify three approaches to culture.
2. Define communication.
3. Identify and describe nine cultural value orientations.
4. Describe how cultural values influence communication.
5. Understand how cultural values influence conflict behavior.
6. Describe how communication can reinforce cultural beliefs and behavior.
7. Explain how culture can function as resistance to dominant value systems.
8. Explain the relationship between communication and context.
9. Describe the characteristics of power.
10. Describe the relationship between communication and power.
Key Terms
• Autoethnography
• Communication
• Communication rules
• Cultural values
• Culture
• Embodied ethnocentrism
• Ethnography of communication
• Indulgent versus restraint orientation
• Long-term versus short-term orientation
• Masculinity–femininity value
• Performative
• Power distance
• Symbolic significance
• Uncertainty avoidance
Detailed Chapter Outline
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Chapter 3: Culture, Communication, Context, and Power
I. What is Culture?
• Culture is often considered the core concept in intercultural communication.
o Intercultural communication studies often focus on how cultural groups differ from
one another: Muslims differ from Christians; Japanese differ from U.S. Americans;
be respected and loved by those who are important to them.
• Culture has been defined in many ways—from a pattern of perceptions that influence
communication to a site of contestation and conflict.
• Because there are many acceptable definitions of culture, and because it is a complex
concept, it is important for people to reflect on the centrality of culture in their own
interactions.
A. Social Science Definitions: Culture as Learned, Group-Related Perceptions
• Communication scholars from the social science paradigm, influenced by research in
psychology, view culture as a set of learned, group-related perceptions (Hall, 1992).
• Culture becomes a collective experience because it is shared with people who live in
to understand how these differences impact communication between individuals with
varying backgrounds.
B. Interpretive Definitions: Culture as Contextual Symbolic Patterns of Meaning,
Involving Emotions
• Interpretive scholars, influenced by anthropological studies, also view culture as shared
and learned; however, they tend to focus on contextual patterns of communication
behavior, rather than on group-related perceptions.
• According to communication scholar Philipsen’s (1992) definition, culture refers to “a
socially constructed and historically transmitted pattern of symbols, meaning, premises,
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Chapter 3: Culture, Communication, Context, and Power
• Philipsen’s approach is through ethnography of communication—a common
interpretive approach. These scholars look for symbolic meaning of verbal and
nonverbal activities in an attempt to understand patterns and rules of communication.
o This area of study defines cultural groups rather broadly.
o Gathering around the coffee machine at work every morning, for example, could
be a cultural pattern, but only if the activity holds symbolic significance or
evokes feelings that extend beyond itself. Then the activity more completely
exemplifies a cultural pattern.
• Culture is not only experienced as perceptions and values, and contextual, but the
normal (Bennett & Castiglioni, 2004).
o This aspect of culture has implications for understanding adaptation to other
cultural norms and spaces.
▪ That is, the stronger one’s identification with a particular space/cultural
situation, the more difficult it might be to change spaces without
experiencing a lot of discomfort—actual psychological and physiological
changes.
C. Critical Definitions: Culture as Heterogeneous, Dynamic, and a Contested Zone
• A more recent approach to culture, influenced by cultural studies scholarship,
emphasizes the heterogeneity of cultural groups and the often conflictual nature of
cultural boundaries.
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Chapter 3: Culture, Communication, Context, and Power
people. This desire to make academic work relevant to everyday life resonated in other
fields.
• Viewing culture as a contested site or zone helps people understand the struggles of
various groups—Native Americans, Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders, African
suggests that any culture is replete with cultural struggles.
• Also, by viewing any culture as a contested zone or site of struggle, one can understand
the complexities of that culture; one can become more sensitive to how people in that
culture live.
II. What is Communication?
• Communication is as complex as culture and can be defined in many different ways.
• The defining characteristic of communication is meaning, and one could say that
communication occurs whenever someone attributes meaning to another person’s words or
meaning is dynamic.
o Communication is not a singular event but is ongoing. It relies on other
communication events to make sense.
• The critical perspective emphasizes the importance of societal forces in the communication
process. That is, that all voices and symbols are not equal, but are arranged in a social
hierarchy in which some individual characteristics are more highly valued than others.
III. The Relationship between Culture and Communication
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Chapter 3: Culture, Communication, Context, and Power
influences communication, and vice versa.
A. How Culture Influences Communication
• Intercultural communication scholars use broad frameworks from anthropology and
psychology to identify and study cultural differences in communication.
o Values are the most deeply felt beliefs shared by a cultural group; they reflect a
shared perception of what ought to be, and not what is.
• Intercultural conflicts are often caused by differences in value orientations.
• Values often conflict among participants in international assistance projects in which
future-oriented individuals show a lack of respect for traditional ways of doing things.
• Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck suggested that members of all cultural groups must answer
the following important questions:
o What is human nature?
o What is the relationship between humans and nature?
o What is the relationship between humans?
basic questions about human nature.
▪ One solution is a belief in the fundamental goodness of human nature.
▪ A second solution reflects a perception of a combination of goodness and
evil in human nature.
▪ According to the third orientation, human nature is essentially evil.
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Chapter 3: Culture, Communication, Context, and Power
power.
▪ Certainly, not everyone in the United States agrees that humans should
always dominate nature.
States is the “doing” orientation, which emphasizes productivity.
▪ The highest status is conferred on those who “do” (sports figures,
physicians, lawyers), rather than on those who “think” (philosophers,
professors, priests).
1960s (Stewart & Bennett, 1991).
▪ Some societies, as in Japan, combine both “doing” and “growing”
orientations, emphasizing action and spiritual growth.
▪ The third solution is to emphasize “being,” a kind of self-actualization in
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Chapter 3: Culture, Communication, Context, and Power
• Power distance refers to the extent to which less powerful members of institutions and
organizations within a country expect and accept the unequal distribution of power.
o Denmark, Israel, and New Zealand, for example, value small power distance.
o Most people there believe that less hierarchy is better and that power should be
• The masculinity–femininity value is two-dimensional.
• It refers to (1) the degree to which gender-specific roles are valued and (2) the degree to
which cultural groups value so-called masculine values (achievement, ambition,
acquisition of material goods) or so-called feminine values (quality of life, service to
others, nurturance, support for the unfortunate).
Netherlands) tended to rank higher in feminine values orientation, reflecting more
gender equality and a stronger belief in the importance of quality of life for all.
• Uncertainty avoidance concerns the degree to which people who feel threatened by
ambiguous situations respond by avoiding them or trying to establish more structure to
compensate for the uncertainty.
settings and seek consensus about goals.
• Long-term versus short-term orientation, reflects a society’s search for virtue or
truth.
o Those with a short-term orientation are concerned with possessing the truth
(reflected in the Western religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), focusing
• Recent studies suggest that there is now an additional value dimension, indulgence
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Chapter 3: Culture, Communication, Context, and Power
versus restraint.
o This dimension is related to the subjective feelings of happiness. That is, people
may not actually be happy or healthy but they report that they feel happier and
healthier.
strict social norms.
• Identifying cultural values helps people understand broad cultural differences, but it is
important to remember that not everyone in a given society holds the dominant value
(Kirkman, Lone, & Gibson, 2006).
• Another limitation of value frameworks is that they tend to “essentialize” people. In
B. How Communication Reinforces Culture
• Culture not only influences communication but also is enacted through, and so is
influenced by, communication.
• Scholars of cultural communication describe how various aspects of culture are enacted
in speech communities in situ, that is, in contexts.
• He concluded that in order to be seen as a competent communicator in this speech
community, male students had to portray drinking as a normal behavior and follow
several communication rules:
o Rule 1: Refer to alcoholic consumption in non-numeric and abstract way, never
say exactly how much was drunk and one should not ask specifically how much
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Chapter 3: Culture, Communication, Context, and Power
o Rule 3: Refer to alcohol consumption as normal.
• A related approach from cultural communication studies sees culture as performative.
o Several Latino/a communication scholars have described, in autoethnographies
(writing about their own experiences), how they each perform their ethnic identity
C. Communication as Resistance to the Dominant Cultural System
• Resistance is the metaphor used in cultural studies to conceptualize the relationship
between culture and communication.
• Working-class clients involved in social services organizations resist the dominant
authority structure and try to make relationships and contexts more equitable by
momentum, which led hundreds of protesters from around the country to converge
on Ferguson, Missouri (home of Michael Brown) in 2014.
IV. The Relationship Between Communication and Context
• Context typically is created by the physical/virtual or social aspects of the situation in
which communication occurs.
relationships.
o People also need to examine the historical context of communication.
V. The Relationship between Communication and Power
• Power is pervasive in communication interactions, although it is not always evident or
obvious how power influences communication or what kinds of meaning are constructed.
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Chapter 3: Culture, Communication, Context, and Power
• Communication scholar Mark Orbe describes how people in power, consciously or
unconsciously, create and maintain communication systems that reflect, reinforce, and
promote their own ways of thinking and communicating.
o There are two levels of group-related power: (1) the primary dimensions—age,
do not share the systems.
• Power also comes from social institutions and the roles individuals occupy in those
institutions.
• Power is dynamic. It is not a simple one-way proposition.
• Dominant cultural groups attempt to perpetuate their positions of privilege in many ways.
• Power is complex, especially in relation to institutions or the social structure. Some
inequities, such as in gender, class, or race, are more rigid than those created by temporary
roles such as student or teacher.
mind, a different view of this intercultural interaction emerges.
Discussion Questions
1. In your opinion, which of the building blocks of intercultural communication is/are most
important? Why?
2. Why is power considered one of the four building blocks to communication? What is the
effect of power in intercultural communication?
3. What are some barriers to positive intercultural communication?
4. Can you think of similar communication rituals you and members of other cultures might
participate in?
5. Why do we hold stereotypes? Are they inherently bad?
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Chapter 3: Culture, Communication, Context, and Power
6. What social function(s) does prejudice against Muslims fulfill for those who hold that
attitude?
7. What is the role of values in intercultural communication? Is it possible to reach agreement
even when core values differ?
8. Describe what is meant by the following statement: “Trying to understand one’s own
culture is like trying to explain to a fish that it lives in water.”
9. How is culture learned?
10. What cultural patterns do you share with members of your cultural group?
11. Find four examples (past or present) of how culture is dynamic (changing).
12. How can value frameworks “essentialize” people? What is the problem with doing so?
13. What is the difference between stereotypes and generalizations?
14. How do we learn stereotypes about different groups?
15. Identify and explain interpersonal, collective, and/or institutional discrimination.
Classroom Exercises and Chapter Activities
1. Defining Communication Exercise: Divide students into groups of four to six members,
and ask them to come up with the best definition they can for “communication.” Suggest
that, as part of this discussion, they create a list of the different characteristics of
2. Building Communication Models Exercise: At the beginning of this exercise, explain to the
students that we occasionally use models to illustrate the process when we talk about
processes. Show students a communication model. Basic communication, public speaking,
and interpersonal communication textbooks are all good sources for such models. Discuss
