Intercultural Communication Chapter 1: What Is Meant by Intercultural Communication? Intercultural Communication What do you think of when you think of culture? Language? Ethnicity? Food? Values? Nationality? The arts?

Culture = A historically shared system of symbolic resources through which we make the world meaningful. We often think of it as just “common sense”.

Historically Shared Connects us with people across time and space, even if we never meet them directly.

System A group of elements that are organized in such a way that the elements enable things to be accomplished that would not happen individually. What are some examples of systems?

Symbolic Resources conventional (encouraging consistency) Symbols represent many things and are both conventional (encouraging consistency) and arbitrary (encouraging creativity). Resources allow us to do things. What can we do with symbols?

We make The “we” implies that it is part of our social identity. We identify with many groups. The “make” implies that it is in process or always changing, even if those changes appear small.

The World Meaningful Meaning is influenced by what things we Select to notice, how we Organize those things, and how we Evaluate those things.

Communication = The generation of meaning. We may not agree on the meaning generated, but every time we or others perceive something as meaningful, we have communicated, whether we wanted to or not.

Communication is Interdependent Our actions and thoughts are influenced, but not determined by others. We simultaneously shape and are shaped by our interactions.

Communication is Situational The meaning we are generating in our communication is always impacted to some degree by our perception of the situation.

Hazards of Studying Intercultural Communication Oversimplification Overgeneralization Exaggeration

Benefits of studying intercultural communication Personal empowerment Freedom from ignorance Productive relationships