Instructor Resource
Neuliep, Intercultural Communication, 8e
SAGE Publishing, 2021
Lecture Notes
Chapter 6: The Sociorelational Context
Learning Objectives
6.1. Compare and contrast the nature of group membership and group behavior across
cultures
6.2. Define and discuss the concept of role relationships across cultures
Chapter Outline
I. Introduction
A. Sociorelational context: Group membership and the roles one assumes within a
culture; the role relationship between interactants (e.g., brother/sister), defined by
verbal and nonverbal messages.
i. Nature of group membership, group behavior, and group communication
differ across cultures.
II. Dimensions of Group Variability
A. Membership and Nonmembership Groups
i. Membership groups: Groups to which people belong and in which there is
regular interaction among members who perceive themselves as members.
ii. Two classes of membership groups.
iii. Nonmembership groups: Groups to which people do not belong.
Instructor Resource
Neuliep, Intercultural Communication, 8e
SAGE Publishing, 2021
a. Some people may want to belong to a group but are ineligible to
join because they do not possess the needed qualifications.
b. In other cases, people might be eligible for membership in a group
but choose not to join.
c. May also differ regarding their ability and motivation to become
members.
iv. Two classes on nonmembership groups:
B. In–Groups and Out-Groups
i. In-group: A special class of membership group characterized by a potent
internal cohesiveness among its members and a sometimes-intense hostility
toward out-groups.
a. A membership group whose norms, goals, and values shape the
behavior of the members. Extreme in-groups see the actions of an
out-group as threatening.
iii. Persons can be perceived as in-group members in one context and as out-
group members in another.
iv. Definitions of in-groups and out-groups differ widely across cultures.
v. Attributions about in-group and out-group members: Biased in favor of the
in-group at the expense of the out-group.
C. Reference Groups
i. Reference group: A group to which a person may or may not belong but
with which the person identifies in some way in terms of values and goals.
ii. Possesses some quality to which we aspire and, hence, serves as a
“reference” for our decisions or behavior.
Instructor Resource
Neuliep, Intercultural Communication, 8e
SAGE Publishing, 2021
a. In some situations, where we do not know anything or very little, we
often look to others whose opinions we value and trust to help us
make our decision.
iii. Can be membership or nonmembership and positive or negative.
a. Usually, though not necessarily, voluntary membership in-groups
serve as positive reference groups, whereas voluntary
nonmembership out-groups are seen as negative reference groups.
iv. Serve two functions: A comparative function and a normative function.
v. Influence our self-concept, our self-esteem, communication and our
relationships with others.
III. Role Relationships
A. Role: One’s relative hierarchical position or rank in a group. A role is a prescribed
set of behaviors that is expected to fulfill the role. Roles prescribe with whom,
about what, and how to interact.
B. Two types of roles in most cultures:
i. Formal: Well-defined, and often contractual, behavioral expectations
associated with them.
C. Roles and communication are integrally linked: Roles prescribe with whom, about
what, and how to communicate.
i. In the role of student, most of the people with whom you communicate
include teachers, students, resident hall assistants, librarians, and so on.
D. Social identity: The total combination of one’s group roles; a part of the
individual’s self-concept that is derived from the person’s membership in groups.
Instructor Resource
Neuliep, Intercultural Communication, 8e
SAGE Publishing, 2021
E. Roles and communication should be considered cross-cultural.
F. Four dimensions on which roles vary across cultures:
i. The degree of personalness: Roles can vary from personal to impersonal.
Some role relationships are quite close and perhaps intimate, whereas
others are distant.
ii. Formality: In some cases, our role relationships are prim and proper,
whereas others are casual and relaxed.
G. Role Differentiation and Stratification
i. Social stratification: A culture’s organization of roles into a hierarchical
vertical status structure. Social stratification varies across cultures, and not
all roles are valued the same.
iv. Social stratification among individualistic and collectivist cultures.
a. Individualistic: Believe that people are created equal and have
inalienable rights.
b. Collectivistic: See people not as individuals but as members of
groups. In these cultures, one’s level in the role stratification
hierarchy often is based on one’s membership in sex, age, family,
and occupation groups. In such cultures, one person is almost
always more powerful than another.
v. Rigid system of social stratification: Caste system in India.
Instructor Resource
Neuliep, Intercultural Communication, 8e
SAGE Publishing, 2021
vii. Minimized social stratification: The United States.
viii. Special vocabularies exist for different roles.
ix. Communication problems: When persons from different cultures do not
understand or recognize the role differences between cultures.
H. Family Groups
i. Patriarchy: A social system in which the father, or eldest male, is head of
the clan or family unit and descent is traced through the male line.
ii. Matriarchy: Are not the opposite of patriarchies, with women ruling over
men, but rather are characterized by being equality based and need
oriented.
iii. Nuclear Family: Father, mother, and children.
iv. Extended family: Nuclear family plus other relatives, such as
grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, and in-laws.
v. Familial roles in collectivist and individualistic cultures.
vi. Hmong
a. Most important sociocultural groups are the family and the clan,
both of which are headed by men i.e., patriarchal.
vii. Korea
a. Two important variables in understanding Korean family structure:
Family surname and Confucianism.
Instructor Resource
Neuliep, Intercultural Communication, 8e
SAGE Publishing, 2021
b. There are only about 250 family names in South Korea and North
Korea.
c. Confucianism: Historically and in traditional Korean society, family
roles and social interaction were governed by patriarchal
Confucianism.
d. Family life in Korea is changing.
viii. Israel
a. Israel is relatively young, having been established as a state in 1948.
b. Israel is considered a family-centered society.
e. Throughout much of Israel’s turbulent history, a central goal of the
Israeli government has been to increase the Jewish population via
family. For example, the Israeli income tax system includes tax
benefits for families, at least two state programs provide housing
assistance for families with children, and various child support and
child health programs have been established for families.
f. There are about 1.73 million families in Israel, with an average size
of 3.7 people per family.
alone.
ix. Mosuo
a. The Mosuo are one of China’s microcultural nationalities.
Instructor Resource
Neuliep, Intercultural Communication, 8e
SAGE Publishing, 2021
b. Population of about 400,000 and live between the Yongning basin
of Ninglang County in Yunnan Province and in the west Yanyuan
County in Sichuan Province.
e. Family structure: Mosuo society is matrilineal, in that many
household heads are women, nearly one third of households are
headed by men.
f. The “walking” or “visiting” marriage: Both the man and the woman
continue to live with their native biological families, rather than
with each other, while raising their offspring.
g. Mother is the foundation of the family lineage.
• Biological father plays no part in rearing the children.
common.
• If/when paternity is recognized, either the terms of address
for the father and other paternal relatives are borrowed
from other Chinese dialects or the terms used for the
mother’s relatives are applied to them.
• Power to women is restricted to domestic contexts. Within
the public/political context of Mosuo culture, power is
unequally distributed to men.
x. Kenya
a. Kenya is a land of contrasts given its diverse ethnic population.
Instructor Resource
Neuliep, Intercultural Communication, 8e
e. Hypergamy: When a woman marries a man of higher status than
her, although this is certainly not unique to Kenya.
• High-status urban women may find it difficult to marry
because they may desire to be free of the patriarchal
control, they may fear losing face by marrying a man of
lower status, or they may be too old to compete with
younger women who have yet to establish their high-status
credibility.
f. Violence and abuse within married and cohabiting couples remains a
problem in Kenya.
I. Sex and Gender Groups
i. Sex Role: A prescribed set of behaviors assigned to different sexes.
a. People are born into a sex group but learn to become masculine or
feminine.
b. The meaning of gender stems from the particular culture’s value
system.
iv. High correlation between biological sex and sex role orientation.
a. Most people assume the gender roles is what their culture
prescribes.
Instructor Resource
Neuliep, Intercultural Communication, 8e
v. Value associated with masculinity and femininity seems to vary across
cultures.
a. In masculine cultures, men are conditioned to be assertive, tough,
and focused on material success.
b. In these same cultures, women are conditioned to be modest, tender,
and concerned with the quality of life.
vi. Deviation from their cultural sex role expectations: Negatively
sanctioned.
a. Collectivistic cultures are more traditional and are more likely to
punish persons who violate cultural sex role expectations.
IV. Sex and Gender Roles Across Cultures
A. Japan
i. Sumiko Iwao’s book portraying the role of women in contemporary Japan.
a. Many Japanese women acknowledge their fate as a subordinate
group.
ii. In the 1990s, Japan’s economy slowed and married couples had to adjust
to new economic pressures.
a. Male wages declined considerably and by 1997 the number of
households in which both the husband and wife worked was
Instructor Resource
Neuliep, Intercultural Communication, 8e
SAGE Publishing, 2021
greater than the number of households in which the wife stayed at
home.
iii. Fewer couples are choosing to share their home with their parents or in-
laws: There is no longer someone there who can help look after the
children or do housework.
B. India
i. India was the fourth-most dangerous country on the planet for women, as
showed by a Reuters poll conducted that asked more than 200 women’s
rights experts from five continents to rank the world’s countries according
to six key risks to women: sexual violence, nonsexual violence, cultural or
religious factors, discrimination, lack of access to resources, and
trafficking.
ii. Socialization processes for boys and girls in India differ significantly.
a. Boys are privileged so much so that in impoverished homes, of
which there are many, a larger share of food is given to the male
children, and they are also fed first by family members.
b. Birth of a male child is considered a blessing because it ensures the
continuation of the family name.
c. Male children are an economic asset and, when married, bring to
their family a nice dowry.
Instructor Resource
Neuliep, Intercultural Communication, 8e
SAGE Publishing, 2021
iii. Legal equality remains elusive for most Indian women: Despite the
Preamble of the Indian Constitution guarantees all citizens “equality of
status.”
a. The subordination of women in India is primarily economically
based.
b. Although laws favoring women’s rights have been passed, they
have not had much impact. For example, there are no uniform
statutes governing marriage and inheritance laws.
iv. A dowry is a financial arrangement a woman brings to the marriage via
her family.
a. Dowry represents a kind of coercive social power placed on the
family of the bride that focuses particularly on the social standing
and reputation of the bride’s father.
b. There is intense pressure on the bride’s family, from the groom’s
family and Indian society in general, to provide an ample dowry to
the groom’s family.
v. Women also have less access to education than do men, and the women’s
literacy rate (25%) is less than half that among men.
a. Only 13% of women enroll in high school because of the large
dowries required at marriage, daughters receive poor nutrition and
health care and less love and nurturance than their brothers.
vi. Female feticide: Act of aborting a fetus because it is female, is widely
practiced.
C. China
i. In a survey of 10,000 Chinese urban men and women, 92% of the men
indicated that they wanted a wife who would be aggressive in her career,
Instructor Resource
Neuliep, Intercultural Communication, 8e
SAGE Publishing, 2021
yet 96% of men desired a virtuous wife who would do most of the
household chores.
a. Nearly half the Chinese women surveyed, however, wanted men to
share chores more and considered an equal division of labor as
important for the development of equality between men and
women.
ii. The husbands’ sentiments are typical of China’s long history of women
having little freedom and few rights.
iii. Chinese women’s liberation movement has made significant advances
toward women’s rights.
a. For example, that the 1954 Constitution stipulated the freedom of
marriage and stated that every individual has the right to decide his
or her own marriage.
iv. Chinese are generally expected to live with their family circle unless there
is reason to do otherwise and that such expectations are greater for women
than for men.
a. Chinese women, especially single women, are considered more
vulnerable and less capable of dealing with the outside world than
are men.
b. Women are seen as needing the protection and supervision of their
families to preserve their virginity and marriageability.
v. Division of household chores has changed in contemporary Chinese
culture.
Instructor Resource
Neuliep, Intercultural Communication, 8e
SAGE Publishing, 2021
communication between Chinese men and women within their
homes is extremely important.
D. Mexico
i. Mexico has about 110 million people, of which women hold a slight
majority.
ii. The marital status of Mexican people represents the rights and
responsibilities of men and women because it reflects the population’s
social levels.
iv. Males and females used to have specific and separate roles.
a. Traditionally, men were the providers, and women did the domestic
work.
b. During past few years, the roles of men and women have changed.
v. Women also contribute at home within the family.
a. Nearly 93% of women age 12 years and older do domestic work.
b. Men and women often work together to maintain the family.
E. Israel
i. Since Israel’s establishment as a state in 1948, women in Israel have been
guaranteed equal rights.
a. Israel is the only country in the world with a compulsory military
service requirement for women and where women constitute a
third of all soldiers and just over half of military officers.
Instructor Resource
Neuliep, Intercultural Communication, 8e
iii. Hadarat nashim: Is a new term meaning exclusion of women as certain
fundamental religious groups reject equal rights.
a. It has become common in Israeli sociopolitical dialogue.
iv. Haredi: An ultra-Orthodox Jewish microcultural group of about 1 million
Israeli citizens.
a. This group is one of many factions of Orthodox Judaism that reject
contemporary, secular Israeli culture.
b. Most male members are physically distinguished by their long black
coats, wide-brimmed hats, beards, and side locks.