1. Chapter 10 Intercultural Competence in Interpersonal Relationships
Intercultural Competence: Interpersonal Communication Across Cultures Myron W. Lustig & Jolene Koester
Chapter 10
Intercultural Competence in Interpersonal Relationships
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2. Cultural Variations in Interpersonal Relationships
Types of interpersonal relationships
A stranger is someone whom you do not know and who is therefore unfamiliar to you.
People from cultures that are highly individualistic may be more willing to communicate with strangers.
In some collectivistic cultures, strangers are “nonpersons” to whom the rules of politeness and social etiquette don’t apply.
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3. Cultural Variations in Interpersonal Relationships
Types of interpersonal relationships
An acquaintance is someone you know, but only casually.
Interactions between acquaintances tend to be on a superficial level.
Acquaintances will typically engage in social politeness rituals and discuss more impersonal topics such as the weather, hobbies, fashions, and sports.
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4. Cultural Variations in Interpersonal Relationships
Types of interpersonal relationships
A friend is someone you know well, someone you like, and someone with whom you feel a close personal bond.
A friendship usually includes higher levels of intimacy, self-disclosure, involvement, and intensity than does acquaintanceship.
Unlike kinships, friendships are voluntary, and they usually occur between people who see themselves as similar in some important way and belong to the same social class.
The language people use to describe their interpersonal relationships often reflects the underlying cultural values about relationships’ meaning and importance.
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5. Cultural Variations in Interpersonal Relationships
Intercultural friendships can vary in a variety of ways:
Whom a person selects as a friend?
How long a friendship lasts?
The prerogatives and responsibilities of being a friend.
The number of friends that a person prefers to have.
How long a relationship must develop before it becomes a friendship?
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6. Cultural Variations in Interpersonal Relationships
Relationships between romantic partners involve cultural beliefs, values, and norms, and social practices about love, romance, dating, and marriage.
Family or kinship relationships are also characterized by large cultural variations and are influenced by the following factors.
How is the family defined or who is considered to be a member of the family?
What is the formality of roles and behavioral expectations for particular family members?
What is the importance of the family in social relationships and personal decisions?
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7. Dimensions of interpersonal communication messages
Control involves status or social dominance.
Affiliation is used by members of a culture to interpret the degree of friendliness, liking, social warmth, or immediacy that is being communicated.
Activation refers to the ways people react to the world around them.
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8. Relational Dialectics
Dialectics, or the inherent contradictions in relationships, affect the way people connect to one another.
The autonomy-connection dialectic refers to the extent to which individuals in an interpersonal relationship vary from a desire for separation to a feeling of attachment.
The novelty-predictability dialectic refers to people’s desire for change and stability in their interpersonal relationships.
The openness-closedness dialectic refers to people’s desire to share or withhold personal information.
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9. The Maintenance of Face in Interpersonal Relationships
Face is the public expression of one’s inner self.
Face is the favorable social impression that a person wants others to have of him or her.
Face involves a claim for respect and dignity from others.
3 important characteristics of face
Face is social; it refers to the public or social image of an individual that is held by others therefore it is only meaningful when considered in relation to others in the social network.
Face is an impression, which may or may not be shared by all, that may differ from a person’s self-image.
Face refers only to the favorable social attributes that people want others to acknowledge.
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10. The Maintenance of Face in Interpersonal Relationships
Every person has face and a desire to maintain face, and face-maintenance is possible through various politeness rituals.
There are 3 different types of face-needs.
The face-need for control is concerned with people’s need for others to acknowledge their individual autonomy, freedom of action, and self-sufficiency.
The face-need for approval is concerned with people’s need for others to acknowledge their friendliness and honesty.
The face-need for admiration involves people’s need for others to acknowledge their capabilities, success, reputation, and accomplishments.
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11. The Maintenance of Face in Interpersonal Relationships
Facework can be defined as the actions taken to deal with the face-needs of oneself and others.
3 characteristics of relationship and its affect on action.
The control dimension (status difference), has great potential for people’s actions to be interpreted as face- threatening especially when large power or status differences exist.
The affiliation dimension (social distance), threatens face when there is large social distance and little social familiarity between communicators.
Culture-specific evaluations, occur when a set of behaviors is considered acceptable by one communicator’s culture and not the other’s.
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12. The Maintenance of Face in Interpersonal Relationships
Preferred facework strategies help define successful communication experiences and are molded by one’s culture.
These behaviors may include apologies, excessive politeness, the narration of justifications or excuses, displays of deference and submission, the use of intermediaries or other avoidance strategies, claims of common ground or the intention to act cooperatively, or the use of implication or indirect speech.
Facework is a central and enduring feature of all interpersonal relationships.
Facework is concerned with the communication activities that help create, maintain, and sustain the connections between people.
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13. Improving Intercultural Relationships
Reducing feelings of anxiety and uncertainty about intercultural encounters involves making sense of others’ actions and understanding their beliefs, values, and behaviors.
Two broad components involved in the management of uncertainty behaviors – uncertainty and anxiety.
Uncertainty refers to the extent to which a person lacks the knowledge, information, and ability to understand and predict the intentions and behaviors of another.
Anxiety refers to an individual’s degree of emotional tension and her or his inability to cope with change, to live with stress, and to contend with vague and imprecise information.
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14. Improving Intercultural Relationships
3 general types of strategies for reducing uncertainty and anxiety.
Passive strategies involve quiet and surreptitious observation of another person to learn how he or she behaves.
Active strategies include efforts to obtain information about another person by asking others or structuring the environment to place the person in a situation that provides the needed information.
Interactive strategies involve actually conversing with the other person in an attempt to gather the needed information.
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15. Improving Intercultural Relationships
Self-disclosure is the process of revealing personal information about oneself and explaining one’s inner experiences and private thoughts.
Self-disclosure occurs among people of all cultures, but there are tremendous cultural differences in the breadth, depth, valence, timing, and targets of self-disclosing events.
Breadth of self-disclosure refers to the range of topics that revealed.
Depth of self-disclosure refers to the degree of “personalness” about oneself that is revealed.
Valence of self-disclosure refers to whether the self- disclosure is positive or negative, and thus favorable or unfavorable.
Timing of self-disclosure refers to when the self-disclosure occurs in the course of the relationship.
Target of self-disclosure refers to the person to whom self- disclosing information is given.
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16. Handling differences in intercultural relationships
People in collectivistic and individualistic cultures typically define and respond to conflict differently.
People from collectivistic cultures respond to conflict in some of the following ways.
They tend to merge task and instrumental concerns, and conflict is therefore likely to be seen as personal.
People from collectivistic cultures tend to use indirect and avoidance strategies to handle conflict.
They seek mutual face-saving strategies by smoothing over their disagreements and allowing all people involved in a conflict to save face.
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17. Handling differences in intercultural relationships
People from individualistic cultures respond to conflict in some of the following ways.
They tend to keep task and instrumental concerns separate and thus are able to express their agitation and anger about an issue and then joke and socialize with the other person once the disagreement is over.
They tend to use direct and explicit strategies to handle conflict.
They are most concerned with self-face maintenance; it is important to their sense of self to maintain their own face, to take charge, to direct the course of action, and in so doing to protect their own dignity and self-respect even at the expense of others.
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18. Interpersonal Relationships and Intercultural Competence
Intercultural competence in interpersonal relationships requires knowledge, motivation, and skill in using verbal and nonverbal codes.
Intercultural competence also requires behaviors that are appropriate and effective for the different types and dimensions of interpersonal relationships.
Competence in intercultural relationships requires that you understand the meanings attributed to particular types of interpersonal relationships.
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19. Interpersonal Relationships and Intercultural Competence
Your willingness to understand the face needs of people from other cultures and to behave appropriately in order to preserve and enhance their sense of face is critical to your intercultural competence.
Competence in developing and maintaining intercultural relationships requires knowledge of differences, a willingness to consider and try alternatives, and the skill to enact alternative relational dynamics.
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20. Discussion Questions
How can one determine, in general, the degree to which a given set of actions is potentially face-threatening?
Do differences in what we categorize as “public” and “private” information hold any consequences for the development of a relationship?
How do you think and other methods of Internet communication will affect the development of intercultural relationships?
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