Cross-cultural communication. Межкультурная коммуникация

CROSS-CULTURAL COMMUNICATION

МЕЖКУЛЬТУРНАЯ 
КОММУНИКАЦИЯ 

Методическое пособие 
для студентов-магистров ОФО, ОЗФО, ЗФО 
направления «Педагогическое образование» 

Москва
Издательство «ФЛИНТА»
2021

УДК 811.111:316.77
ББК  60.524.224.022
         М43

Рецензент 
 кандидат филологических наук, доцент 
Л.Г. Березовская 

Составитель 
 кандидат филологических наук, доцент 
З.З. Бзегежева 

Cross-cultural 
communication. 
Межкультурная 
коммуникация: 
методическое пособие / сост. З.З. Бзегежева. – Москва : ФЛИНТА, 2021. – 79 с. 
– ISBN 978-5-9765-4706-3. – Текст : электронный.

Пособие должно обеспечить высокий уровень знаний по межкультурной 
коммуникации. 
Предназначается для студентов-магистрантов ОФО, ОЗФО, ЗФО 
направления 44.04.01 «Педагогическое образование» профиля «Теория и 
практика преподавания иностранных языков в высшей школе» и «Теория и 
технологии подготовки переводчиков».  

УДК 811.111:316.77
ББК  60.524.224.022

© ФГБОУ ВО «СГУ», 2020 
© Бзегежева З.З., составление, 2020

ISBN 978-5-9765-4706-3

М43

СОДЕРЖАНИЕ

1. Cultural anthropology basic notions of cross-cultural communication ….....
4

2. Cultural norms and values in forming skills of ethic. Cultural interaction. ……..
10

3. The problem of the “Alienity” of culture and ethnosentrism. ………….......
17

4. Communication. ……………………………………………………….........
25

5. Intercultural communication. The concept and structure. ……………….....
33

6. Verbal Communication. ……………………………………………….........
39

7. Nonverbal Communication……………………………………………….....
46

8. Stereotyping. ………………………………………………………………..
51

9. Acculturation as assimilation of foreign culture. …………………………...
56

10. Culture shock in the process of mastering a foreign culture. ……………...
63

11. Model of the development of  foreign culture. …………………………....
70

Библиографический список ………………………………………….……...
78

1. Cultural anthropology basic notions of cross-cultural

communication

Cross-cultural communication refers to interpersonal communication and 

interaction across different cultures. This has become an important issue in our 
age 
of 
globalization and 
internationalization. 
Effective 
cross-cultural 

communication is concerned with overcoming cultural differences across 
nationality, religion, borders, culture and behavior. The term cross-cultural 
generally used to describe comparative studies of cultures. 

Culture is the basic concept of cross-cultural communication. Merriam
Webster's Collegiate Dictionary defines culture as 'the integrated pattern of 
human knowledge, belief and behavior that depends upon man's capacity for 
learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations'. Another usage 
in the same dictionary stresses the social aspect of culture and defines it as 'the 
customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious or social 
group'. The OED, in a similar vein, states that culture is ' a particular form, 
stage, or type of intellectual development or civilization in a society; a society or 
group characterized by its distinctive customs, achievements, products, outlook, 
etc.' It almost goes without saying that there can hardly be any learning or 
transmitting knowledge or intellectual development without language. Nor can a 
society or a group function without language.

Culture not only dictates who talks what, to whom, how, and why, but also 

helps to determine how communication proceeds, and how messages transmit 
the intended meanings. Cross-cultural communication is a combination of many 
scholarly fields. As a science, cross-cultural communication tries to bring 
together such seemingly unrelated disciplines as communication, psychology,
cultural linguistics, learning theories and cultural anthropology.

Cultural anthropology is a branch of anthropology focused on the study of 

cultural variation among humans, collecting data about the impact of global 
economic and political processes on local cultural realities. As a rule, cultural 
anthropologists focus on norms and values. Anthropologists have argued that 
culture is "human nature", and that all people have a capacity to classify 
experiences, encode classifications symbolically (i.e. in language), and teach 
such abstractions to others. Since humans acquire culture through the learning 
processes of enculturation and socialization, people living in different places or 
circumstances develop different cultures.

Anthropologists have also pointed out that through culture people adapt to 

their environment in non-genetic ways, so people living
in different 

environments will often have different cultures. Much of anthropological theory 
has originated in an appreciation of and interest in the tension between the local 
(particular cultures) and the global (a universal human nature, or the web of 
connections between people in distinct places/circumstances). Anthropologists 
have found that learning about how people categorize things in their 

environment provides important insights into the interests, concerns, and values 
of their culture. Cultural anthropological research projects are usually designed 
to learn about the culture of another society through fieldwork and first hand 
observation in that society. This is ethnography, the study and systematic 
recording of human cultures. The work of many ethnographers, who wrote about 
similar cultures compared to discover what these peoples have in common, 
known as ethnology.

Through a variety of theoretical approaches and research methods, 

anthropologists today study the cultures of people in any part of the world 
including those of industrial and "post-industrial" societies. Cross-cultural 
communication — the comparison of communication across cultures. Although 
cross-cultural communication needs:

Listening Skills
Their emphasis usually lies on being a competent speaker, listening is a key 

skill that many business personnel do not exercise enough. For cross-cultural 
communication, attentive listening is critical to be able to understand meanings, 
read between the lines and enable to empathize with the speaker.

Speaking Skills
Listening and speaking must work in tandem for effective cross-cultural 

communication. Speaking well is not about accent, use of grammar and 
vocabulary or having the gift of the gab. Rather, cross-cultural communication is 
enhanced through positive speech such as encouragement, affirmation, 
recognition and phrasing requests clearly or expressing opinions sensitively.

Observation
Large amounts of cross-cultural information can be read in people's dress,

body language, interaction and behavior. Be aware of differences with your own
culture and try to understand the roots of behaviors. Asking questions expands 
your cross-cultural knowledge.

Patience
People need to recognize and understand that sometimes cross-cultural 

differences are annoying and frustrating. In these situations, patience is 
definitely a virtue. Through patience, respect is won, and cross-cultural 
understanding is enhanced.

Flexibility
Flexibility, adaptability and open-mindedness are the route to successful 

cross-cultural communication. Understanding, embracing and addressing crosscultural differences leads to the breaking of cultural barriers, which results in 
better lines of communication, mutual trust and creative thinking. Following 
these five cross-cultural communication needs will allow us to improve lines of 
communication and better cross-cultural awareness and successful cross-cultural 
relationships.

Tasks:
1. Find additional information about basic notions of cultural anthropology.
2. Prepare a slide report using the following slides.

2. Cultural norms and values in forming skills of ethic. 

Cultural interaction

This term deals with the role of norms and values in forming culture of 

ethnic communication. For interpretation of these concepts are acceptable 
anthropological and ethnological approaches. The assimilation of norms and 
values of the national culture starts at an early age. Values are a core of the 
national culture, which is surrounded by principles, implemented in standards 
and regulations. In conditions of intercultural communication there is awareness 
of specificity of their own securities units. Often the interaction of 
representatives of two different cultural groups is at the level of the hidden part 
of every culture, where you may encounter specific to people’s norms, values, 
worldview. Conflicts are realized in “strange” incomprehensible behavior of 
interacting partners. Understanding the differences of cultures is reflected in the 
ability of conflict-free intercultural interaction.

The real existence of culture is manifested only in interaction, information 

exchange between people. Despite the fact that in modern literature there are 
many definitions of the concept of “culture”, anthropological and ethnological 
approaches are most acceptable for interpretation and operationalization in the 
study of the problems of the formation of a culture of interethnic 
communication. In modern cultural anthropology and ethnology, culture is seen 
as an information process; as a world of artifacts (products and results of human 
activity, including thoughts born by him); a world of innovation and new 
meanings; a set of norms, values, beliefs shared by members of relevant cultural 
groups and communities. Culture in the anthropological sense "includes 
everything that is created by people and characterizes their daily lives in certain 
historical conditions."

A broad understanding of culture is necessary for understanding inter- ethnic 

communication, primarily because it covers not only the externally perceived, 
visible (objective) lifestyle of a person, but also the hidden, inner (subjective) 
world of each individual culture, determined by values, value orientations, 
specific ways perception and thinking, norms of behavior and morality.

In this regard, a natural appeal to the concepts of cultural value and cultural 

norm. In everyday everyday understanding, these two categories are often used 
synonymously. In culturological theory, values are considered as “fixed in the 
human mind characteristics of the relationship of an object to a person and, 
accordingly, a person to an object”, in the socio-anthropological context – as 
“universalization of meaning”, in German ethnology as “implicit theories”. 
Values are social, socio-psychological ideas and views shared by the people and 
inherited by each new generation. Values - this is what is a priori evaluated by 
the ethnic team as something that is "good" and "right." "Values evoke certain 
emotions, they are colored by feelings and encourage people to certain actions." 
In the structure of national culture, values are the core, surrounded, in turn, by 
the principles that are implemented in norms and rules.

The principles are called "specific stereotypes of thinking and behavior," 

common opinions ", ideas, beliefs, stable habits in activities, mechanisms of 
casual attribution." The principles determine the understanding of reality in a 
certain way - they encourage people belonging to a given ethnic group to 
perceive the world in this way and not otherwise. Principles guide thinking and 
behavior along some stereotyped, stereotyped paths. They are often reflected in 
proverbs and sayings, jokes.

The norms of culture are certain patterns, rules of behavior or action, ideas 

about what is good or bad in each particular culture. Cultural norms are a kind of 
filter between us and the world around us. As a rule, we perceive only those 
phenomena and things that correspond to our standards, and often do not notice 
that which does not fit into our own regulatory system.

R. Benedict in his work “Anthropology and Anomalous”, which was 

published in 1934, suggests that “everything that is in accordance with the rules 
of this society and is justified in it” is considered normal. Cultural norms are 
extremely diverse, they to a greater or lesser extent regulate everything that
human life is connected with - food and clothing, relations between children and 
adults, men and women, leisure and work. L.V. Kulikova notes in this 
connection: “In a developed culture, there are a lot of norm-rules. They cover all 
spheres of life: labor processes, family relationships, leisure, child rearing, 
courtship, childbirth, funerals - everything is brought into the system, correlated 
with each other, ... represents a real cultural space.”

Cultural norms are formed, affirmed already at the level of everyday 

consciousness of society. Norms of morality arise in the practice of mass mutual 
communication of people. Moral standards are brought up daily by the power of 
habit, public opinion, and ratings of loved ones. Mutual approval and 
condemnation expressed by others, the strength of personal and collective 
examples, and visual patterns of behavior (described both in verbal form and in 
the form of behaviors) play a large role in the formation of cultural norms 
characteristic of a particular society.

The assimilation of the norms and values of the maternal national or 

confessional (own) culture begins in early childhood, as a rule, unconsciously, 
as a matter of course. The child is introduced to the values of culture, ideas 
about the norms of behavior and relationships, and develops with the 
accumulation and enrichment of life experience. This process of the child 
entering the culture of his people, faith is defined as the process of inculturation. 
The main content of inculturation is the assimilation of culturally determined 
characteristics of thinking, actions, behavior patterns, as a result of which a 
linguistic, cognitive, emotional and behavioral identity of a person with 
members of a given linguistic culture is formed and difference from members of 
other linguocultures.

Getting into an unfamiliar culture, a person finds himself in a situation 

where the usual methods and norms of behavior, learned as a result of 
inculturation, may be unacceptable or, at least, ineffective. It is in the conditions