Understanding Understanding Intercultural Intercultural Communication Communication Second Second EditionEdition

Chapter 2

What is Intercultural Communication Flexibility?

Stella Ting-Toomey & Leeva C. Chung

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

PowerPoint Slides Designed by Alex Flecky and Noorie Baig

MENUMENU

I. Defining Intercultural Communication:

A Process Model

II. Practicing Intercultural Communication Flexibility

III. Developing Intercultural Communication

Flexibility

IV. Deepening Intercultural Process Thinking

Intercultural communication:

• symbolic exchange (digital, analogic)• process (transactional, irreversible)• cultural community• negotiate shared meanings (content,

relational, identity meaning)

• interactive situation (relational, psychological, physical)

• embedded societal system (multilayered context)

I. Defining ICC: A Process I. Defining ICC: A Process ModelModel

I. Defining ICC: A Process I. Defining ICC: A Process ModelModel

II. Practicing Intercultural II. Practicing Intercultural Communication FlexibilityCommunication Flexibility

Introduction Section:

1. Flexible and inflexible intercultural communication

2. Ethnocentric and ethnorelative mindset

II. Practicing ICC FlexibilityII. Practicing ICC Flexibility

Ethnocentric mindset…

- Stuck in own cultural worldviews, using our own cultural values as standards to evaluate others’ behaviors.

- Viewing our cultural way of living as “natural” and what’s going on in other cultures as “unnatural.”

- Evaluating the communication norms of our own cultural group as more “proper.”

- Acting in a conscious or unconscious manner in favor of the ingroup standard to

the exclusion of outgroup standard.

II. Practicing ICC FlexibilityII. Practicing ICC Flexibility

Ethnorelative mindset…

- Understanding behavior from the other person’s cultural frame of reference.

- Suspending ethnocentric, reactive judgments and engaging in a systematic cross-cultural comparative analysis.

- Promoting a respectful, inclusive climate via competent communication skills practice.

II. Practicing ICC FlexibilityII. Practicing ICC Flexibility

A. Three Content Components: Knowledge, Attitude, and

Skills

B. Three Criteria: Appropriateness, Effectiveness, and

Adaptability

III. Developing Intercultural III. Developing Intercultural Communication Communication FlexibilityFlexibility

A. Staircase Model: Four Stages of Flexible Intercultural Communication

1. Unconscious incompetence: blissful ignorance

2. Conscious incompetence: semi-awareness

3. Conscious competence: “full mindfulness”

4. Unconscious competence: “mindlessly mindful”

III. Developing ICC FlexibilityIII. Developing ICC Flexibility

III. Developing ICC FlexibilityIII. Developing ICC Flexibility

B. A Mindful Perspective: Flexible Communicators:

• Attune to their own internal assumptions, values, and expectations.

• Attend to alternative assumptions, values, and expectations of the cultural strangers.

• Learn to understand unfamiliar behaviors from multiple cultural angles.

• Are committed to shift communication styles when appropriate to the persons, goals, and cultural context = ICC Flexibility.

IV. Deepening Intercultural Process IV. Deepening Intercultural Process ThinkingThinking

Realize that ICC often involves these principles:

• Mismatched expectations stem from group differences.

• Involves degrees of biased intergroup perceptions, overgeneralizations, stereotypes.

• Simultaneous decoding and encoding of verbal/nonverbal messages.

• Multiple goal transactions: content, relational, identity.

• Calls for understanding of diverse communication approaches and styles.

• Often involves well-meaning culture bumps or clashes.

• Always takes place in context and in embedded systems.

IV. Deepening Intercultural Process IV. Deepening Intercultural Process ThinkingThinking

Mindfulness

Flexibility

Parting Thoughts…Parting Thoughts…

A traveler without observation is like a bird without wings…

~ Author unknown