Instructor Resource
Duck/McMahan, Communication in Everyday Life, 3e
SAGE, 2018
Lecture Notes
Chapter 6: Culture and Communication
Outline and Key Terms
I. People Perform Culture Without Even Realizing It
A. Believing that your culture is the benchmark for all others is called ethnocentric bias:
Your 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.
B. You do not just have or belong to a culture; you transact and perform culture.
C. Culture does not necessarily refer to national culture—different cultures can happen
within the same nation because it is communication that creates communities and
cultures.
D. Relationships are fundamental to the actual creation and maintenance of cultures.
1. Exposure to culture is not an abstraction
2. You meet culture when you meet people from a culture doing that culture.
3. You do your own culture when you speak to other people.
II. How Can Culture Be Identified and Studied?
A. Culture as Structure
1. Viewing culture from a structural standpoint has a long history in the
communication discipline.
2. This way of seeing culture focuses on large-scale differences in values, beliefs,
goals, and preferred ways of acting among nations, regions, ethnicities, and
religions.
3. Cross-Cultural Communication and Intercultural Communication
a. Cross-cultural communication compares the communication styles
and patterns of people from very different cultural/social structures, such
as nation-states.
b. Intercultural communication refers to how people from cultural/social
structures speak to one another and what difficulties or differences
they encounter, over and above the different languages they speak.
4. Limitations and Benefits
a. One limitation is that multiple “cultures” exist in one national or
regional group.
b. Another limitation is that multiple social communities coexist in a
single culture and talk among themselves as part of their conduct of
membership.
Instructor Resource
Duck/McMahan, Communication in Everyday Life, 3e
SAGE, 2018
c. This perspective is beneficial because it allows use to study how all
members of a nation partake of the customs or beliefs of the nation and its
communication patterns and styles.
1) Distinctions seep into the individual way of thinking and are
built into meaning systems used in everyday communication.
2) Even though a smaller social community within the larger
culture may communicate in unique ways, members’ styles of
communication are still affected by the larger social structure in
which they are embedded.
B. Culture as Transacted
1. Culture is transacted through communication like other parts of life.
2. People share meanings and styles of speaking, systems of beliefs,
and customs.
3. Cultural beliefs and values are established and reinforced through
everyday communication.
4. Conformity to culture is constantly and invisibly reinforced in the daily
talk.
5. Cultural groups are recognized as such when some consistency and
distinctiveness are observed in their behavior or communication.
C. Coded Systems of Meaning
a. Culture is seen as a coded system of meaning, or a set of beliefs, heritage, and
way of being that is transacted in communication
b. This makes the transacted approach different from the structural approach to
studying culture.
c. Culture is a system of meaning, from this perspective, and any group with a
system of shared meaning is a culture.
d. Conventional “structural” views of culture provide a great deal of
valuable information, but they tend to overlook numerous, distinct meaning
systems within larger structure-based labels such as a nation- state.
e. By examining how culture is symbolically transacted, we can explore how
styles of communication include or exclude people.
f. Membership in a particular culture is done through communication.
III. Structure-Based Cultural Characteristics
A. Since you are all members of a nation, you are affected by its customs, beliefs, and
communication styles.
B. During your socialization, you learned how to behave, interact, and live with people
as you learned to communicate.
C. Different nations, societies, and cultures take different views of
1. Context
2. Individualism/collectivism
3. Time
4. Conflict
D. Context
1. Context involves the emphasis placed on the environment, the situation, or
relationships when people communicate.
Instructor Resource
Duck/McMahan, Communication in Everyday Life, 3e
SAGE, 2018
2. High-Context Cultures
a. Place a great deal of emphasis on the total environment or context
where speech and interaction take place
b. Spoken words are much less important than other contextual factors
such as relationships between speakers, status, influence, and personal
knowledge.
c. Everything is connected to background context of relationships and
other personal contexts of status, influence, and personal knowledge.
3. Low-Context Cultures
a. The message is paramount; it is important to have a well-structured
argument or a well-delivered presentation.
b. People try to separate their relationships from messages and to focus on
the details and the logic.
c. Detailed information must be given to provide the relevant context, and
only information presented that way counts toward the message.
E. Collectivism/Individualism
1. Collectivistic Cultures
a. Collectivists stress group benefit, value of working harmoniously, the
common good, and place in the system
b. Often associated with Eastern countries
2. Individualist Cultures
a. Individualist cultures stress the individual person and his or her
personal dreams, goals and achievements, and right to make choices.
b. This idea is often associated with Western countries.
F. Time
1. Monochronic Culture
a. Time is viewed as linear and people do one thing at a time or multitask
only because it helps them work toward particular goals with tasks in
sequence and communications fitting into a particular order.
b. Time is a valuable commodity and punctuality is important.
d. The United States, United Kingdom, and Germany have this general
orientation to time.
2. Polychronic Culture
a. Time is thought of as an ever-rolling cycle of the seasons or something
more open-ended.
b. Independent and unconnected tasks are done simultaneously.
c. People carry multiple conversations with different people at the same
time.
d. Promptness is not important because attitude toward time is relaxed.
e. Time is used to build relationships.
f. Mediterranean and Arab cultures
3. Future and Past Orientations
a. Cultures have different orientations to the past, present, and short- and
long-term future.
Instructor Resource
Duck/McMahan, Communication in Everyday Life, 3e
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b. Different cultures tend to assume that the present is influenced either by
one’s goals and the future or by past events.
G. Conflict
1. There are two cultural approaches to conflict: conflict as opportunity and
conflict as destructive.
2. Conflict-as-Opportunity Cultures
a. These cultures tend to be individualist and their approach to conflict is
based on the following four assumptions:
1) Conflict is a normal, useful process.
2) All issues are subjective to change through negotiation.
3) Direct confrontation and conciliation are valued.
4) Conflict is a necessary renegotiation of an implied contract—a
redistribution of opportunity, release of tensions, and renewal of
relationships.
b. From this view, conflict is a normal and useful process, an inherent part
of everyday life.
c. If handled constructively, conflict will lead to the enhancement of
personal and relational life.
d. People are expected to fully express and work with others to achieve
changes they desire in their relationships or personal life.
e. Conflict is seen as a necessary requirement for renewing relationships
and for achieving overall well-being.
3. Conflict-as-Destructive Cultures
a. These cultures tend to be collectivist and value group and relational
harmony above individual needs and desires.
b. Four assumptions guide this approach to conflict:
1) Conflict is a destructive disturbance of the peace
2) The social system should not be adjusted to meet the needs of
members; rather, members should adapt to established values
3) Confrontations are destructive and ineffective
4) Disruptants should be disciplined
b. Views conflict a unnecessary, detrimental, and to be avoided
c. Do not view individual desires as more important than group needs and
established norms
d. Conflict is viewed as futile and harmful to relationships
4. Managing Conflict
a. Dominating styles involve forcing one’s will on another to satisfy
individual desires regardless of negative relational consequences.
b. Integrating styles necessitate a great deal of open discussion about the
conflict at hand to reach a solution that completely satisfies everyone
involved.
c. Compromising styles are often confused with integrating styles
because a solution is reached following discussion of the conflict, but
compromising requires that everyone give up something to reach the
solution, so people never feel fully satisfied.
Instructor Resource
Duck/McMahan, Communication in Everyday Life, 3e
SAGE, 2018
d. Obliging styles of conflict management involve giving up one’s
position to satisfy another’s.
e. Avoiding styles of conflict are those in which people avoid the conflict
entirely either by failing to acknowledge its existence or by withdrawing
from a situation when it arises.
IV. Transacting Culture
A. A lot of who you are depends on where you are, or at least on where you come
from, as well as on the groups you belong to and how they expect people to
behave.
B. Culture is embedded within your communication.
1. Every time a person communicates, other people know something about
his or her culture.
2. When someone is seen wearing “cultural clothes,” difference is
assumed, but that person actually wears his or her culture in talk and
behavior, too.
C. Culture goes beyond physical location.
1. Sometimes, one culture may be more pronounced than others
2. At times, it may be more important to enact membership in one
culture than in another.
3. People belong to multiple cultures, and that cultural membership is
enacted through communication.
D. Cultural groups are created through communication.
1. Co-cultures are smaller groups of culture within a larger cultural mass.
2. Speech communities are cultures defining membership in terms of
speaking patterns and styles that reinforce beliefs and values of the group.
a. Speech (communication) codes are a culture’s verbalizations of
meaning and symbols.
b. Built into speech codes are certain ways of understanding the world that
guide the particular talk patterns people use in conversation.
c. A characteristic of any culture is what it takes for granted.
d. Taken-for-granted assumptions are cultural persuadables.
E. Teamsterville and Nacirema
1. Teamsterville is a pseudonym for a working-class community in
Chicago showing a “man’s communication style.”
a. The style of speech occasionally prefers action to words and is
based on talking only when power is equal or symmetrical.
b. In this community, a man demonstrates power by punching
someone rather than by arguing about a problem.
c. Speech is regarded as an inappropriate and ineffective way of
communicating in situations when demonstrating power.
2. “Nacirema” (American spelled backward)
a. This communication code emphasizes relationships, work,
communication, and individual/self.
Instructor Resource
Duck/McMahan, Communication in Everyday Life, 3e
SAGE, 2018
b. This code is quite easily discovered on TV talk shows and in the
broader context of speech in large parts of America.
F. Cultural membership is enacted through communication.
1. Enacting membership in a cultural group means communicating and
assigning meaning in ways similar to other members of that group.
2. A cultural understanding is required.
3. Membership in a culture can be represented in and restricted by one’s
knowledge of speech (communication) codes.
4. Unique ways of communication and the underlying meaning of that
communication create a sense of otherness or separateness.
5. Cultural speech (communication) codes must be learned and understood
before a person can fully enact membership into a group.