Intercultural communication

Abstract

Several of the studies in the first part of this book (those by Philipsen, Daniel and Smitherman-Donaldson, and Wieder and Pratt) describe situations of intercultural contact. Introduced in these studies were some occassions in which one culture contacted another, such as in Teamsterville when upon disciplining children, one community’s norms for “being a male�? confronted another’s; or with regard to initial interactions, when contrastive codes of silence were used by Osage and Whites; or with regard to ritual celebrations especially in secular scenes, when a highly energized form of call/response confronted another less animated and more restrained. Each of these studies thus demonstrates how communication is performed in particular times and places, by those who share-and choose to use-a common pattern of communication, and each demonstrates at least one situation in which the culture pattern is not shared with some interactional partner(s), leading to problems such as asynchrony, misinterpretations, misunderstanding, and discrimination.