THERE ARE 10 QUESTIONS
OF MULTIPLE CHOICE IN
YOUR TEST. EACH QUESTION HAS 4
ALTERNATIVES (A, B, C, AND D) FROM WHICH
ONLY ONE IS CORRECT. CHECK THE
CORRECT
ONE.
A Framework
for Understanding Cross-Cultural
Misunderstandings
Successful communication between human
beings, either within a culture or between
cultures,
requires that the message and meaning
intended by the speaker is correctly
received and interpreted by
the listener. Sustainable error free
communication is rare, and in most human
interactions there is some
degree of miscommunication.
The message
sent from speaker to listener
contains a wide array of features, such as
words,
grammar, syntax, idioms, tone of voice,
emphasis, speed, emotion, and body language,
and the
interpretation requires the listener to
attend to all of these features, while at
the same time constructing
an understanding of the speaker's
intentions, emotions, politeness,
seriousness, character, beliefs,
priorities, motivations, and style of
communicating. In addition, the listener
must also evaluate whether
the utterance is a question or a statement
and how and to what extent a statement
matters to the
speaker (Maltz and Borker, 1982).
Each
of the components of the communication
provides one or more kind of information.
Words
convey abstract logic, tone of voice conveys
attitudes, emotions and emphases, and body
language
communicates "requests versus commands, the
stages of greeting, and turn-taking"
(Schneller 1988, p.
154).
Even assuming that words and body
language
were perfectly understood, there is more
information necessary to successfully
communicate across cultures. For example, in
some countries it is
polite to refuse the first few offers of
refreshment: "Many foreign guests have gone
hungry because their
U.S. host or hostess never presented a third
offer" (Samovar and Porter 1988, p. 326). In
understanding
communication, a listener must pay attention
not just to what is said and when, but also
to how many
times something is said, under what
circumstances, and by whom.
Given all this
complexity, the reason human
communication can often succeed is because
people
learn how to communicate and understand
through interacting with one another
throughout their lives.
Therefore, it is no surprise that culture
and socialization are critical determinants
of communication and
interpretation. "The entire inference
process, from observation through
categorization is a function of
one's socialization" Detweiler (1975).
Socialization influences how input will be
received, and how
perceptions will be organized conceptually
and associated with memories.
The importance of
culture to communication
Some theorists have gone so far
as to claim
that culture not only influences
interpretation, but
constitutes interpretation. The
interpretation of communicative intent is
not predictable on the basis of
referential meaning alone. Matters of
context, social presuppositions, knowledge
of the world, and
individual background all play an important
role in interpretation (Gumperz,
1978b).
Even knowledgeable translators can
have
difficulty with cross-cultural translations.
There may not
be corresponding words or equivalent
concepts in both cultures, jokes and
implications may be
overlooked, and literal translations can
present a host of difficulties. Some
language pairs are very
difficult to translate, while others,
usually in more similar languages, are much
easier (Sechrest, Fay and
Zaidi 1988).
While some of the incremental
difficulties
can be traced to the underlying linguistic
commonalities
between the languages, there may be a more
elusive cultural and ecological basis for
difficulty in
translation. It would be interesting to test
how much of the variance in communication
could be
accounted for by the ease with which the
languages in question could be translated
into one another.
Although it may
facilitate cross-cultural
translations, similarity of languages and
cultures also
increases the likelihood that communicators
will erroneously assume similarity of
meanings. This may
make them more likely to misunderstand
speech and behavior without being aware that
they may have
misinterpreted the speaker's message.
In general,
cross-cultural miscommunication
can be thought to derive from the mistaken
belief
that emics are etics, that words and deeds
mean the same thing across cultures, and
this miscalculation
is perhaps more likely when cultures are
similar in surface attributes but different
in important underlying
ways. In this case miscommunication may
occur instead of non-communication.
(http://www.dattnerconsulting.com/cross.html
)
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