INTRA-CULTURAL COMMUNICATION

The type of communication that takes place between members of the same dominant culture, but with slightly different values Communication within the boundaries of the same culture Sharing the same ground rules(Matsumoto & Juang, 2004)

EXAMPLE

An example of intra-cultural communication triggering a stereotype would be if a person in the dominant culture, for instance of the United States, spoke Ebonics. If a non-Ebonics speaking person hears Ebonics,(a nonstandard form of American English characteristically spoken by African Americans in the United), they may assume the person is of low intelligence, and is a criminal or violent in nature

 People

can focus on the content of the messages that are being exchanged Encode and decode messages using the same cultural codes People can make an implicit judgment that the other person is the member of their culture or is engaging in socially appropriate behavior However communicating with people whose behaviors do not match our expectations often leads to negative attributions(Matsumoto & Juang, 2004).

INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION
Refers to exchanging information between two cultures People do not necessarily share the same ground rules(Matsumoto & Juang, 2004).

 People

encode and decode messages using different cultural codes they tend to make implicit judgments that the other person does not know how to act appropriately or is not a god person The message that is being sent to the other person may be unclear, distorted or ambiguous (Matsumoto & Juang, 2004).

EXAMPLE

A Brazilian (female) student, who, while travelling on a French airline, tries to draw the attention of the (male) flight attendant by whistling, which is a common practice in Brazil. The flight attendant did not respond, but later came to explain to the student that whistling is used in France to call animals, not persons. The student apologized, explaining that in Brazil it is acceptable to whistle to call a person, while animals are called by their names

Intracultural communication

Intercultural communication

Focus is on the content of message between members of the same dominant culture Share the same ground values Encode and decode messages using the same cultural codes People can make an implicit judgment that the other person is the member of their culture or is engaging in socially appropriate behavior

Difficult to focus on content of message exchanging information between two cultures do not necessarily share the same ground rules Encode and decode messages using different cultural codes They tend to make implicit judgments that the other person does not know how to act appropriately or is not a god person

SOME PSYCHOLOGICAL ISSUES REGARDING

INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION Uncertainty and Ambiguity Conflict

1.

UNCERTAINTY AND AMBIGUITY

There is uncertainty in verbal and non-verbal behaviors in both coding and decoding modes There is inherent uncertainty in the meaning of words as people engage in with each other that is not a native language for at least one of them (Matsumoto & Juang, 2004).

HOW DO INTERACTANTS WORK TO REDUCE

UNCERTAINTY IN INTERCULTURAL INTERACTIONS?

GUDYKUNST AND NISHIDA (1984)

Tested 100 Americans and 100 Japanese participants and assigned them to one of four experimental conditions: 1) Cultural similarity and attitude similarity 2) Cultural dissimilarity and attitude similarity 3) Cultural similarity and attitude dissimilarity 4) Cultural dissimilarity and attitude dissimilarity (Matsumoto & Juang, 2004).

 Cultural

similarity or dissimilarity was manipulated by having participants interact with a stranger from either their own culture or the other culture Attitude similarity or dissimilarity was manipulated through a description of similar or dissimilar attitudes when introducing the stranger (Matsumoto & Juang, 2004).

FOR EACH PARTICIPANT THE RESEARCHER ASSESSED:

Intent to self-disclose Intent to interrogate Nonverbal affiliative expressions Attributional confidence Interpersonal attraction (Matsumoto & Juang, 2004).

Higher in Cultural dissimilarity

intent to selfdisclose nonverbal Intent to affiliative interrogate expressions

GUDYKUNST AND SHAPIRO (1996)

Asked the students in a large university to record their perceptions of communication episodes with other students (Matsumoto & Juang, 2004).

RESULTS:
INTRACULTURAL
Students

INTERCULTURAL

rated Rated intercultural intracutural episodes episodes higher in higher than intercultural anxiety, uncertainity episodes in quality of and social identity commuication and Interethnic positive expectations encounters as higher Students rated in anxiety and intraethnic encounters uncertainty as higher in quality and (Matsumoto & Juang, 2004). satisfaction

2. CONFLICT:
Peoples behaviors do not conform to our expectations We interpret these behaviors as transgressions against our value systems As a result they produce negative emotions which lead to conflicts and misunderstandings (Matsumoto & Juang, 2004).

 People

may become impatient with or intolerant of the ambiguity leading to anger, frustration, or resentment The result is often differences in the interpretation of underlying intent among interactants (Matsumoto & Juang, 2004).

REFERENCES Matsumoto, D., and Juang, L.(2004). Culture and Psychology. United States: Thomson Wadsworth