Alfred G. Smith (1966) says that “the way people communicate is the way they
live. It is their culture.Who talks with whom? How? And about what? These are
questions of communication and culture” (p. 1). Clearly, culture and communication
are inseparable.
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INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION AND RELATED TERMS
Given the interface between culture and communication, we are ready to
present a working definition of intercultural communication. Intercultural
communication is a symbolic, interpretive, transactional, contextual process
whereby people from different cultures negotiate, at varying levels of awareness,
shared meanings.What distinguishes intercultural communication from
other types of communication is that we are interacting with people from different
cultures—people perceived as “different from us” (Gudykunst & Nishida,
1989). This perceived cultural variability and diversity might include differences
in communication and social style, worldview, customs, traditions,
norms, rules, roles, and expectations. It is this medley of people from diverse
cultures that prompts our study and requires international business to adjust,
accommodate, and appeal to commonality—to exercise cultural sensitivity
and employ intercultural coping skills.
Several related terms commonly applied to the intercultural communication
arena also require definition.
• Intracultural communication refers to communication between and
among members of the same culture—people who share the same beliefs,
values, and constructs.
• Interethnic communication is communication between people from
different ethnic groups.
• Interracial communication is communication between people from
different races.
• Cross-cultural communication technically implies a comparison of specific
interpersonal variables such as conversational distance or conflict
management styles across two or more different cultures, but it is often
used as a synonym for intercultural communication.
SITUATING INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION
W. Barnett Pearce (1989), in his book Communication and the Human Condition,
develops a communication perspective that can help us situate intercultural
communication and understand the role of the cosmopolitan communicator.
His notion of how communication works focuses on three terms: coordination,
coherence, and mystery.
• Coordination involves meshing one’s messages and actions with those
of another and exists when the parties feel that the sequence of messages
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and actions seem logical or appropriate. Because people enter conversations
with a variety of abilities and competencies, achieving coordination
can be difficult at times (Pearce, 1989).
• Coherence refers to the process by which we attempt to interpret the world
around us and our place in it. It is the effort by which “persons invent, test,
and tell themselves and others stories that make intelligible the world around
them, tame the terrors of history,make familiar the unknowns that go thump
in the night, and give acceptable accounts for their success and failures in
coordinating with other persons” (Pearce, 1989, p. 67).
• Mystery “is a reminder of what is beyond the immediate, present
moment” (Pearce, 1989, p. 23). It is the sense of wonder and recognition
that there could be a range of stories or interpretations.
An examination of coordinated management of meaning (CMM) theory
can illustrate the challenges confronting a cosmopolitan communicator and
help explain the difficulties of coordination between people from different
cultures (Cronen, Chen, & Pearce, 1988).