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Chapter 2 Culture and Communication

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Chapter 2— Culture and Communication

At a Glance

Understanding Cultures and Co-Cultures

Components of Cultures and Co-Cultures

How Culture Affects Communication

Communicating with Cultural Awareness

Learning Objectives

After studying this chapter you should be able to:

2. Differentiate in-groups and out-groups.

4. Differentiate the components of culture and co-culture: symbols, language, values, and

norms.

6. Distinguish between low- and high-context cultures.

8. Summarize how cultures vary in views about masculinity and femininity, and about men

and women’s roles.

10. Describe strategies for communicating with cultural awareness.

11. List and summarize communication codes that vary across cultures.

Chapter 2 Culture and Communication

Lecture Outline

I. Understanding Cultures and Co-Cultures

A. What is culture?

1. Even if we don’t realize it, our cultural traditions and beliefs influence how

3. Culture is not necessarily tied to countries or ethnicities or economic classes.

5. Each of us identifies with one or more societies, and we are usually keenly

1. In-groups are groups with whom we identify.

3. A person’s Facebook friends list and groups on messaging apps are that

person’s in-groups.

5. For some people, being perceived as different can be an exciting or intriguing

experience.

6. For others, their differences can be stressful.

a. The feeling of being different, of being in an out-group, can make it

uncomfortable for an individual to live or work where he or she is a

minority.

C. Acquiring a culture

2. Culture is not necessarily related to nationality, which is a person’s status as a

citizen of a particular country.

3. Culture is learned. Enculturation is the process of acquiring a culture.

a. We learn some cultural messages through direct instruction.

b. We learn some cultural lessons through imitation.

D. What is a co-culture?

1. Co-cultures are groups of people who share values, customs, and norms

related to mutual interests or characteristics other than their national

2. The Internet offers multiple opportunities for people to develop and

participate in co-cultures that are specific to the online world.

II. Components of Cultures and Co-Cultures

A. Cultures and societies vary enormously.

2. No matter what their differences, cultures have some common components:

1. A symbol is something that represents an idea.

1. Researchers believe there are approximately 7,100 languages used in the

world today.

3. Language ensures that cultures and cultural ideas are passed from one

generation to the next.

4. Many languages are in danger of extinction. Researchers believe that at least

2. Values are cultural ideas about what ought to be.

3. Whereas values can vary considerably across cultures, 10 values are widely

shared and similarly interpreted.

a. Power: having prestige, social status, and control over resources

b. Achievement: acquiring personal success through your own competence

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4. Although these 10 values exist across cultures, not every culture emphasizes

them to the same degree.

E. Cultures vary in their norms.

2. Cultures vary in their norms for greetings and politeness.

4. Netiquette, or network etiquette, consists of the expectations that guide

1. Like cultures, co-cultures often adopt distinctive symbols, language, values,

and norms that distinguish their members from outsiders.

3. Co-cultural groups often arise precisely because their members share specific

values.

4. Co-cultures adopt their own norms, such as silent worship among Quakers and

dressing alike among the community of twins.

III. How Culture Affects Communication

A. Individualistic versus collectivistic cultures

1. Cultures differ in how much they emphasize individuals rather than groups.

2. In an individualistic culture, people believe their primary responsibility is to

themselves.

3. In a collectivistic culture, people are taught that their primary responsibility

is to their families, their communities, and their employers.

a. These cultures focus on the importance of taking care of the needs of the

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4. How individualistic or collectivistic a culture is can affect communication

behavior in several ways.

1. In a low-context culture, people are expected to be direct and to say what

they mean.

2. In a high-context culture, people are taught to speak in a less direct way.

a. Maintaining harmony and avoiding offense are more important than

3. The difference between low-context and high-context cultures is evident in

how people handle criticism and disagreements.

C. Low-power-distance versus high-power-distance cultures

2. A low-power-distance culture believes that all people are equal and that no

one person or group should have excessive power.

3. In a high-power-distance culture, power is distributed less evenly; certain

4. Power distance affects views on friendships and romantic relationships, the

1. A masculine culture is composed of people who tend to cherish

stereotypically masculine values, such as ambition, achievement, and the

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acquisition of material goods. They also value sex-specific roles for women

and men.

2. A feminine culture is composed of people who tend to value stereotypically

E. Monochronic versus polychronic cultures

2. A monochronic culture views time as a valuable commodity that can be

saved, spent, filled, invested, and wasted.

3. A polychronic culture conceives time as holistic, fluid, less structured, and

infinite.

a. In polychronic societies, schedules are more fluid and flexible than in

monochronic societies.

F. Uncertainty avoidance

1. Humans have a natural tendency to avoid unfamiliar and uncomfortable

situations.

3. Uncertainty avoidance is the extent to which people try to avoid situations

that are unstructured, unclear, or unpredictable.

4. Individuals from highly uncertainty-avoidant cultures are drawn to people and

5. People in uncertainty-accepting cultures are more open to new situations and

more accepting of people and ideas that are different from their own.

IV. Communicating with Cultural Awareness

A. Be open-minded about cultural differences.

1. Be mindful.

a. People from different cultures are often unaware of how they differ.

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b. Communicating effectively with people from other cultures requires

mindfulness, which is awareness of how their behaviors and ways of

thinking are likely to differ from our own.

c. Many of us operate on what researchers call a similarity assumption—that

is, we presume that most people think the same way we do without asking

ourselves whether that is true.

d. Mindfulness of different assumptions is often important when

communicating across religious cultures as well.

e. Questioning our cultural assumptions can be a real challenge because

we’re often unaware that we hold them in the first place.

2. Avoid ethnocentrism.

a. It’s one thing to be aware of how patterns of thought and behavior differ

among cultures. It’s another thing to avoid judging all other cultural

practices as inferior to our own.

1. Communication codes are verbal and nonverbal behaviors whose meanings

are often understood only by people from the same culture.

1. Cultures use different idioms.

a. An idiom is a phrase whose meaning is purely figurative. It cannot be

2. Cultures use different jargon.

a. Jargon is language whose technical meaning is understood by people

within a given co-culture but not necessarily by those outside it.

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3. Cultures use different gestures.

a. Gestures are movements, usually of the hand or the arm, that express

1. Expect ambiguity.

a. Social situations in which we are unsure of what to do or how to act

present us with ambiguity, or uncertainty.

2. Appreciate differences in access to communication technology.

a. Access varies greatly between countries that are economically developed

3. Adapt to others.

a. As you interact with people of other cultures and learn about their

customs, it is advantageous to adapt to those customs, or change your

behavior to accommodate what others are doing.

b. Good intercultural communicators adapt to the communicative behaviors

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culture

societies

in-groups

out-groups

ethnicity

low-power-distance culture

high-power-distance culture

masculine culture

feminine culture

monochronic culture

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Additional Lecture Ideas

1. If your college hosts a “Global Awareness Day” or “International Fair,” seize the

2. Invite a professional to class who has made a career in the international marketplace. Ask

students to prepare questions concerning cross-cultural challenges. Here are a few to get

you started:

• Have you ever had a language barrier that seemed insurmountable? Have your words ever been “lost in

translation?”

• How have you adapted to a culture’s customs to be more effective in your career?

3. Invite a representative from your college’s Study Abroad program to come to class and

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1. Spend a day having your own in-class cultural fair. Have students prepare a short 1–2

minute speech of introduction on their cultural background and specific symbols,

2. If the Olympics are taking place during the year, have the students research an Olympian

of their choice from outside the United States. Ask students to identify unique

characteristics about the chosen Olympian’s culture. Students’ research could be

presented either in an essay format or given as a speech. For a speech assignment,

consider creating a grading rubric that includes the following considerations:

• Physical delivery style (Does the speaker make eye contact? Does the speaker smile at the audience? Does

the speaker incorporate appropriate gestures and limit unnecessary ones?)

• Vocal delivery style (Does the speaker project his or her voice loudly? Does the speaker present at an

appropriate pace? Does the speaker avoid using vocal fillers (“ums”) and pausing excessively?)

• Strength of content (Does the speaker spark audience interest in his or her chosen Olympian? Does the

speaker engage the audience with facts about the Olympian’s culture?)

3. In small groups, have students exchange answers to the “Sharpen Your Skills” question

presented in Chapter 2. Ask students to select the best story from the small group to share

with the larger class.

Role-play an interaction you have had with someone whose language, values, or

traditions differed markedly from your own. Consider what communication

challenges each of you faced. How did you manage those challenges? Ask your

4. Divide the class into six teams, and assign each team one of the six major cultural

differences that influence how people communicate with one other

(individualism/collectivism, communicative context, power distance, masculinity and

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5. Have students complete the ethnocentrism survey, and ask your class the follow-up

questions provided in the chapter:

• Were your surprised by your score? Why or why not? What factors do you think your score reflects?

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For Review

1. What is culture?

2. How does culture influence communication behavior?

3. In what ways can we improve our cultural communication skills?

Pop Quiz

Multiple Choice

1. Garrett’s culture has specific rules and expectations that guide people’s behavior. We would

call those rules and expectations his culture’s

a. symbols.

b. language.

c. values.

d. norms.

2. When Trudy communicates with others, she generally expects them to be direct and to say

what they mean. Trudy is probably from a culture that is

a. high-context.

b. low-context.

c. high-power-distance.

d. low-power-distance.

3. Pieta thinks of time as holistic, fluid, and loosely structured. She does not expect her classes to

start on time but to begin whenever the instructor is ready. She is likely from a culture that is

a. monochronic.

b. feminine.

c. masculine.

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d. polychronic.

4. The type of culture in which children are taught to put the needs of their families, villages, and

employers ahead of their personal desires or ambitions is called

a. individualistic.

b. uncertainty-avoidant.

c. collectivistic.

d. low-context.

5. The phrase “kick the bucket” is, for speakers of English, an example of a cultural

a. idiom.

b. custom.

c. symbol.

d. gesture.

Fill in the Blanks

6. Groups of people who share a common culture are called a(n) _____.

7. The process by which we acquire a culture is called _____.

8. A(n) _____ is a group of people who share values, customs, and norms related to mutual

interests or characteristics beside their national citizenship.

9. People who are _____ judge other cultural practices as inferior to their own.

10. Good intercultural communicators _____, meaning that they change their behavior to

accommodate what others are doing.

Additional Reading