Intercultural communication

Abstract

The term ‘intercultural’ literally means ‘between cultures’, and so, at one level, ‘intercultural communication’ could refer to all communication between members of two (or more) different social/cultural groups. This, in fact, is how the term has traditionally been used. Difference in nationality or mother tongue has typically been taken as the criterion for membership of different social/cultural groups, and communication between people of different nationalities or different mother tongues has then automatically been classified as intercultural. However, there are several problems with this. If culture is associated with social groups, then nationality and mother tongue are not the only social groups we each belong to.We are all simultaneously members of numerous other groups, such as regional, professional and religious, and so, if communication between members of different social groups is classified as intercultural, virtually all communication would thereby be defined as intercultural. Such a broad definition is clearly unsatisfactory - not simply because it is too all-encompassing, but also because, as Hartog (2006: 185) points out, discourse is not necessarily intercultural just because people from two different cultures meet. In other words, cultural factors do not necessarily impact on the communication process at all times. Žegarac (2007: 41) distinguishes between intracultural and intercultural communication from a cognitive point of view, and identifies an intercultural situation as one in which ‘the cultural distance between the participants is significant enough to have an adverse effect on communicative success, unless it is appropriately accommodated by the participants’. In this chapter, we adopt Spencer-Oatey and Franklin’s (2009: 3) slightly revised version of Žegarac’s definition: An intercultural situation is one in which the cultural distance between the participants is significant enough to have an effect on interaction/communication that is noticeable to at least one of the parties.