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Jandt, An Introduction to Intercultural Communication 9e
SAGE Publications, 2018
1-1: Explain the regulators of human behavior and identity.
1-3: Describe how communication is defined by different cultures, and understand how
people of diverse cultures communicate differently.
1-4: Describe the relationship between culture and media.
I. Sources of Identity
A. Evidence from genetic research and linguistic observation suggests that all humans
alive today share ancestry from one group in Africa, yet among the seven billion of
us there are a diversity of languages, of beliefs and of ways of understanding the
world and defining our identities.
How then did diverse cultures develop?
1. Climate changes or other pressures led to migrations out of Africa.
a. Centuries of geographical separation led to the development of diverse
1. One of the oldest religions is the oldest source of human identity and conflict.
3. However, religious wars (those clearly caused or justified by differences in
religious beliefs exclusive of other issues) have resulted in tens of millions of
deaths in the course of human history. To name only a few of the better known:
a. The Crusades of the 11th to 13th centuries of the Christians against the
1. The nation-state may be the most significant political creation of modern times.
3. National identity has often been the source of conflict.
D. Class and Identity
2. While classes may exist in any society, how clearly defined they are and how
much they are a source of identity varies.
3. A system of social classes that divides people, assigns values to differences,
2. How a nation deals with gender reveals much about that nation’s values.
F. Race, Skin Color, and Identity
1. Race is defined from two perspectives: biological and sociohistorical.
a. From the biological perspective, race refers to a large body of people
2. The biologically based definition establishes race as something fixed; the
2. Samuel P. Huntington (1996) posited that civilizations were the most important
form of human identity.
II. Culture
1. Ethnicity
2. The nation-state may be the most significant political creation of the modern
times. From the 18th century on, national identity has superseded religion as
3. Someone born and raised in Spain who works for the Swedish technology
5. In this textbook, the commonly accepted term culture has been used rather than
the term nation-state. Culture refers to the following:
a. a community or population large enough to be self-sustaining (to produce
new generations of members without relying on outside people);
b. the totality of that group’s thoughts, experiences, and patterns of behavior,
1. Co-culture: suggests that no one culture is inherently superior to the other
coexisting culture; mutuality may not be easily established.
2. American Indians
a. Term derived from colonizer’s point of view.
b. Many labels derived from names created by groups’ neighbors or enemies.
c. “Indian” is considered offensive in Canada. “First Nations” is preferred
2. Subgroups exist within a dominant culture and are dependent on that culture.
3. Like cultures, subgroups provide members with relatively complete sets of
5. Membership in subgroups can be temporary.
6. The reference group is the group someone wants to belong to, creating
2. Some scholars suggest using the term “culture” regardless of size or other
1. Culture is a code we learn and share, and learning and sharing require
communication.
2. Definitions of communication from many Asian countries stress harmony. For
3. In a Western perspective, communication is one-way, top-down, and suited for
4. Confucian Perspectives on Communication
a. Confucius set up an ethical–moral system intended ideally to govern all
relationships in the family, community, and state.
b. Confucianism emphasizes virtue, selflessness, duty, patriotism, hard work,
and respect for hierarchy, both familial and societal.
5. Western Perspectives on Communication
a. Components of Communication
• You are better able to understand communication when you
understand the components of the process.
b. Source
• The person who attends the message.
• Receivers may be intentional or unintentional.
h. Decoding
• The opposite of encoding. The receiver assigns meaning to the
symbols received.
2. Telephone
Jandt, An Introduction to Intercultural Communication 9e
3. Internet
4. Language Use
a. The Internet originated in the English-speaking world. Computers are
5. Design Elements
a. Communication symbols can be verbal and nonverbal.
6. Social Media
• nearly 1 billion users; international and nation-specific platforms
