The Potential for Intercultural Competence

Outcomes of intercultural contact In general, intercultural communication creates stress for most individuals. Adaptation is the process by which people establish and maintain relatively stable, helpful, and mutually shared relationships with others upon relocating to an unfamiliar cultural setting. b. Adaptation includes physical (food, climate, housing), biological (viruses and bacteria), and social (ingroup-outgroup) changes.

Culture shock versus adaptation Sustained intercultural contact can lead to culture shock. Culture shock occurs when people must deal with a barrage of new perceptual stimuli that are difficult to interpret because the cultural context has changed. Things taken for granted at home require virtually constant monitoring in the new culture to assure some degree of understanding. The loss of predictability, coupled with fatigue from constantly focusing on what normally would be taken for granted, produces the negative responses associated with culture shock.

Culture shock versus adaptation New media such as Internet-based video, blogs, and the phone can help a person describe feelings of alienation and homesickness when adjusting to life abroad which, in turn, can reduce the stresses of adaptation.

The adaptation process Two important concerns shape responses of individuals and groups to intercultural contact. The concern whether it is considered important to maintain one’s cultural identity and to display its characteristics. The concern whether people believe it is important to maintain relationships with their outgroups.

The adaptation process Assimilation means taking on a new culture’s beliefs, values, norms, and social practices (unimportant to maintain original cultural identity- melting pot). Integration occurs when an individual or group retains its original cultural identity while seeking to maintain harmonious relationships with other cultures. (Tapestry; salad) Separation occurs if a culture does not want positive relationships with another culture and wants to retain its cultural characteristics. (Rainbow) Segregation occurs when the more politically and economically powerful culture does not want intercultural contact with a cultural group and a forced separation occurs. Marginalization occurs when individuals or groups neither retain their cultural heritage nor maintain positive contacts with other cultural groups (dysfunctional and ineffective).

The adaptation process Intercultural personhood is used to describe the progression by which individuals move beyond the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of their initial cultural framework to incorporate other cultural realities. Interculturally competent communicators integrate a wide array of culture-general knowledge into their behavioral repertoires. They are able to apply that knowledge to the specific cultures in which they interact. They respond emotionally and behaviorally with a wide range of behavioral choices in order to act appropriately and effectively within the constraints of each situation. They have typically had extensive intercultural communication experiences. They have learned to adjust to alternative patterns of thinking and behaving.

Tourism It is the most common way that face-to-face intercultural contacts occur. However, motives for visiting other places may vary. Three reasons why the tourist experience creates a special and unique form of intercultural contact. Tourists’ intercultural contacts are predominantly short-term and voluntary. The nature of the tourist-host relationship is distinctive and not necessarily perceived in the same way by the tourist and the host. Tourism also exists within a social and political context- At some popular tourist destinations, tourists outnumber native population (Angkor Wat)

Discussion Questions What experiences have you had with adaptation? Have you (or someone you know) experienced culture shock? What responsibility does a visitor from another culture have to the host culture’s ways of living, thinking, and communicating? For example, should ppl visiting from another culture accept or engage in behaviors they find ethically wrong but that the host culture sanctions as ethically correct? (Perhaps discuss a specific behavior you find unethical).