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Lecture Notes
Chapter 4: The Environmental Context
Learning Objectives
4.1. Compare and contrast high- and low-load environments
4.2. Discuss the relationship between culture and the natural environment
4.3. Discuss the relationship between culture and the built environment
4.4. Compare and contrast the housing patterns of different cultures
Chapter Outline
I. Introduction
A. The purpose of this chapter is to explore the environmental context of intercultural
communication.
B. Natural/physical environment: The actual geographical space or territory in which
the communication takes place.
C. In this chapter, several aspects of the natural, built, and perceptual environment
will be discussed.
II. Environments and Information Load
A. Information rate: The amount of information contained or perceived in the
physical environment per some unit of time.
B. More information available to process, the greater the information rate.
C. High load: A situation with a high information rate.
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F. Ways in which information load affects people’s feelings:
i. Arousal-non-arousal: The arousal dimension refers to your level of
stimulation and excitability.
III. Culture and the Natural Environment
A. Terrestrial environment: The physical geography of the Earth.
B. Nature is culture bound: Environmental psychologist Richard Knopf maintains that
the natural environment is valued differently by different people.
i. A culture’s relationship with nature is culture bound.
C. Progress in science and technology: Because of scientific and technological
progress, we now see the environment as something we can control and dominate.
D. Culture and terrestrial contexts: Although all cultures exist within specific
terrestrial contexts, unique features of the terrestrial environment exist in every
culture.
i. For example, in some areas of south Yemen, which lies in the southwest
corner of the Arabian Peninsula, only 4 inches of rain fall in a given year.
Some northern and eastern sections of the country can go without rain for
years.
E. Physical environment and vocabulary: As the physical environment of a culture
varies, so will the vocabulary of the culture.
i. Cultures with different environments create verbal and nonverbal symbols
that enable them to adapt to and communicate about their environment.
G. Worldviews of the Natural Environment
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i. Florence Kluckhohn says that cultures can be described as having one of
ii. A culture’s orientation toward nature affects how people within that
culture communicate about nature and organize their daily activities.
iii. Natural environment: Orderly and cyclical: Kluckhohn claims that many
cultures attempt a balancing act with nature and try to live in harmony with
it.
iv. Indeed, Altman and Chemers argue, in these types of cultures, the natural
environment is seen as orderly and cyclical.
v. Buddhist and Japanese view of nature: nature is perceived as an ally that
people draw on for spiritual support.
c. The Japanese are well known for their attempts to harmonize with
nature, which can be seen in Japanese art forms such as gardening
and flower arrangements and Haiku poetry.
vi. Western societies: Third generation: Kluckhohn’s third orientation is seen
in many Western societies, where people believe that nature is something
to be controlled, domesticated, and subjugated.
vii. Scientific revolution: Nature as mechanistic: When the scientific
revolution developed, nature was seen as mechanistic, further separating
people from nature.
a. For example, other countries where European settlement has
occurred, the environment is seen as an entity to be conquered.
H. Natural Disasters as Cultural and Social Events
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i. How people manage disasters?: It is shaped by the culture and its view of
nature.
ii. Effects of disasters vary: Although natural disasters are triggered by
natural events, the effects of these disasters vary considerably across
cultures because they take place within particular social and cultural
systems of laws and values.
iii. Women affected by disaster: Sarah Fisher maintains that women are
disproportionately affected by disasters because of the unequal power
distance between men and women that is evident in many cultures.
a. Fisher notes that there is considerable evidence that domestic and
sexual violence against women increases in the wake of natural
disasters.
iv. Violence increasing factors:
a. Daily routines of family,
b. Economic hardships, and
c. Exploitation.
IV. The Built Environment
A. Built environment: Adaptations to the terrestrial environment, including
architecture, housing, lighting, and landscaping.
B. The built environment is not random: It is an intentionally designed pattern of
spatial relationships between objects and objects, objects and people, and people
and people.
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D. Interior directs activities: Interior of any given built environment influences and
directs the way activities are carried out, how the family is structured, how gender
roles are played, attitudes toward privacy, and the overall process of social
interaction.
E. Predictor of communication patterns: The degree of ease or difficulty afforded by
the built environment when moving from one place to another is a major predictor
of human communication patterns.
F. Edward Hall has identified three fundamental types of layout patterns in built
environments:
i. Fixed-feature space: It is defined by immoveable or permanent fixtures,
such as walls, floors, windows, and so on.
G. Adaptable or flexible environment: Some environments must be restructured for
certain kinds of activities, whereas others need not be adjusted at all. According to
Lang, these kinds of environments are called adaptable or flexible.
H. Physical environment guides behavior and the way people define the space
between themselves and others.
i. Spatial distance between people is a vehicle for communication, much like
sight, sound, smell, and touch.
ii. As distance decreases, people can see, hear, touch, and smell others
differently than when distance increases.
iii. As distance increases, the privacy of the individual increases, but the
privacy of the interaction decreases.
I. Four-level classification of social distances:
i. Intimate distance is reserved for close intimate contact, including touching.
ii. Personal distance is 1.5 to 4 feet.
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a. This is sometimes called “arm’s– length” distance because a
comfortable distance between interactants is literally about the
length of one human arm.
iii. Social–consultative distance is the spacing people practice at casual
gatherings and in working situations.
iv. Public distance is used for talking across a room and for public speaking
situations.
a. In the United States, this distance extends from 12 feet and beyond.
b. There is little olfactic sensation at this distance.
J. Built environment role in space usage: The built environment plays a key role in
how space is used.
V. Cross-Cultural Comparisons of Housing
A. Home: Symbolic communication dimension: Heathcote maintains that a home
expresses a symbolic social communication dimension that defines one’s creative
expression and style, as well as represents the social network and social class of
its owner.
B. Three structures of home:
C. Home presents a particularly rich source of information about a culture’s
perception and use of space.
D. Japanese Housing
i. Limited geographical space: Given Japan’s high population density and
limited geographical space, housing becomes a central issue for Japanese
families.
ii. Kyosho jutaku: Also called microhomes or ultrasmall homes.
iii. Lucy Craft’s observation:
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a. Japanese microhomes conserve space by eliminating many features
of conventional homes, such as hallways, entranceways, and
closets.
iv. Capsule hotel: A capsule hotel is a type of hotel developed in Japan that
features a large number of extremely small rooms intended to provide
inexpensive and basic overnight accommodation for guests not requiring
the services offered by more conventional hotels.
a. A typical room size is roughly 6 ft 7 in by 3 ft 3 in by 4 ft 1 in.
v. Contemporary Japanese house: It is caught between tradition and
modernism.
a. The traditional Japanese home is a detached house with a garden.
vi. Shoji or fusuma: They are opaque sliding screens.
a. A shoji panel is usually made of cedar lattice, with translucent paper
stretched over it.
b. Shoji panels are lightweight and easy to slide open or closed with
one finger.
vii. Yuka: The yuka is actually a raised floor and was developed out of a need
to maintain sanitary conditions.
viii. Tatami mat: The tatami mat is a modular floor mat made from straw that
is used to cover the floor and on which one sits or sleeps.
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a. The principal room in a traditional Japanese home is the reception
room, also called the sitting room. An average-sized room uses
eight to 10 mats.
ix. Tokonoma: The tokonoma is a recess arranged with staggered shelves,
artistic ornaments, hanging scrolls, and perhaps a flower arrangement. It is
the most sacred place in the home, holding a sort of spiritual or moral
significance.
x. Kitchen: The kitchen, even in modern Japanese homes, is the wife’s
domain.
a. The kitchen is a private place.
xi. Bathroom: It is thought of as a place of recuperation and solitude.
E. American Navajo Housing
i. Use of space across three co-cultural groups: Native American/American
Indian Navajos, Hispanic Americans, and Euro-Americans.
a. Navajos live in remote parts of reservations and have limited contact
with White Americans.
ii. Hogans: Hogans typically consist of three large converging support posts
that interlock at the top with smaller support posts.
iii. Hogan space is sex-defined: Kent discovered that the space inside the
hogan was used differently by the occupants according to their sex.
a. The men stayed almost exclusively in one half of the hogan, while
the women and children used the other half.
b. Food preparation always took place in the half occupied by the
women and children, but the food was consumed in the half
occupied by the men.
iv. Individual’s mood: An individual’s mood and the season seemed to be the
only factors affecting the activity areas of the Navajo camp.
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F. Muslim Homes
i. Principles central to Muslim homes: Specifically, the principles of privacy,
modesty, and hospitality are central to the design of Muslim homes.
a. Privacy is the leading factor taken into consideration when
designing a Muslim home.
ii. Four layers of privacy:
iii. These four layers of privacy are achieved by designing homes that ensure
visual privacy, acoustic (noise) privacy, and olfactic (smell) privacy.
a. Visual privacy is central concern: Visual privacy is a central
concern to ensure the privacy of female members of the family.
b. This is accomplished by the strategic placement of entrance doors,
above eye-level windows, and the like.
iv. Modesty and hospitality in Muslim homes:
a. Modesty in Muslim homes is divided into:
i. Physical modesty: Physical modesty is achieved by designing
a home that does not make a deliberate or pretentious
display of one’s wealth.
ii. Inner modesty: Inner modesty is achieved by designing a
home with private spaces for religious activities and
education.
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iii. Semipublic space is reserved for female family members
entertaining and meeting with their female friends and
relatives.
iv. Private hospitality space is reserved for family members and
immediate family relatives.
VI. Privacy
A. Privacy is culture bound: It is considered a learned response to particular social
situations.
D. Westin: Types of privacy:
i. Solitude, or the state of being free from observation of others;
ii. Intimacy, or the state of being with another person but free from the
outside world;
iii. Anonymity, or the state of being unknown even in a crowd; and
iv. Reserve, or the state in which a person employs psychological barriers to
control unwanted intrusion.
E. These different forms of privacy serve different purposes, including personal
autonomy, release of emotions, self-evaluation, and communication.
F. The type and degree of privacy desired depends on the type of behavior in which
one engages, the culture, and the individual’s personality traits.
G. Pedersen types of privacy:
i. Reserve: Reserve indicates an unwillingness to be with others, especially
strangers.
H. Perceptions of Privacy in the United States
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i. Perceptions differ in the U.S: Although the United States literally legislates
privacy, perceptions of privacy differ throughout the country and among
microcultural groups.
iii. Voyeurism has become a central theme of U.S. entertainment and culture.
iv. Mediated voyeurism: Calvert argues that the U.S. public has access to
information not originally intended for public consumption, made available
via television and the Internet in what he calls “mediated voyeurism”.
v. Four types of mediated voyeurism:
a. Video vérité voyeurism: Unrehearsed and unscripted moments of
actual events filmed by a video camera or smartphone.
I. Cross-Cultural Variations on Privacy
i. Men and women’s score: Men tend to score higher on isolation, while
women score higher on intimacy with family and friends.
ii. Three consistent trends in privacy choices:
a. People from the mountain states tend to score higher than do those
on the West Coast in their preferences for isolation, anonymity,
and solitude.
iii. Law of Protection of Minors: In 1992 China enacted the Law of
Protection of Minors, which, among other things, legislated a child’s right
to privacy.
iv. Urban Chinese houses now provide children with private spaces.
v. Privacy examined in three areas:
a. Spatial: Spatial privacy issues would include children being allowed
to close the door when in a room with a group of friends.
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vi. Privacy in Turkish family: In the typical Turkish family, the children
develop an intimate and dependent, but restricted, relationship with their
parents.
J. Online Privacy Across Cultures
i. Privacy calculus: The term “privacy calculus” refers to the idea that people
will self‐disclose personal information online when the perceived benefits,
such as social gratification, social support, and social capital, exceed the
perceived negative consequences.
v. Eva-Maria Schomakers’s research: Compared information sensitivity
ratings across Germany, Brazil, and the USA
vi. The German sample perceived passwords as the most sensitive type with
a very high perceived sensitivity ranking followed closely by financial
account data and credit card number.
a. Least sensitive were height, hair color and name of pet.
vii. For the US sample social security number was perceived as the most
sensitive type of information followed by financial account numbers and
credit card numbers.
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b. Older and better educated persons are also more concerned about
privacy, presumably because they are more aware of privacy
problems.
x. Power distance affects privacy: Cho and his colleagues selected five cities
for their study, including Seoul, Singapore, and Bangalore (India), which
were chosen because the authors assumed that these are collectivistic and
large power distance cultures.
xi. Amnesty International 2015-2016 report: Authorities continued to impose
harsh restrictions on freedom of expression, especially involving mobile
phones.
a. According to the report, North Koreans who made international
calls using smuggled mobile phones experienced frequent jamming
of lines and the wiretapping of their conversations.
b. Moreover, those North Koreans whose conversations were
overheard could be arrested if they were calling someone in South
Korea.
xii. Ur and Wang considered three central issues regarding online privacy
and culture.
VII. Monochronic Versus Polychronic Time Orientation
A. Built environment contains perceptual–temporal feature.
B. Time: Psychological or perceptual component.
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D. Monochronic time orientation: Cultural temporal orientation that stresses the
compartmentalization and segmentation of measurable units of time.
F. Difference between M-time and P-time:
i. In M-time cultures, such as the United States, time is thought of as almost
physical, like something you can touch and hold in your hand.
ii. Time is treated like money.
iii. Time is linear and compartmentalized into discrete, quantifiable, and
measurable units.
iv. Hall points out that perhaps the most important consequence of M-time is
that it denies the natural context and progression of human communication.
G. Consequences of Monochronic and Polychronic Orientations
i. Space is organized like time: M-time and P-time cultures organize their
space in much the same way as their time.
ii. P-time: Centralization of bureaucratic control: P-time cultures feature a
defined centralization of bureaucratic control.
a. This is because the leaders interact with many people, and the
people are informed because they interact with one another.
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a. Emphasis on time: Brigitte Steger, an expert on Japanese culture,
notes that Japan is well known for its legendary emphasis on time,
its punctuality and rigor with schedules.
b. Treat time flexibly: Tsuji points out that when maintaining their
personal and professional relationships, Japanese treat time very
flexibly.