C. Cognitive Patterns Of Culture

Another important consideration in intercultural communication is the influence of culture on cognitive thinking patterns, which include reasoning and approaches to problem solving. In some cultures male friends may engage in a bear hug and kiss each other on both cheeks. People from Japan and India traditionally bow to greet each other. Japanese men will place their hands at the side of the body and bow from the waist, with the lower-ranking person bowing first and dipping lower than the other person.

Indians will perform the namaste, which entails holding the hands together in a prayer-like fashion at mid-chest while slightly bowing the head and shoulders.

Eye contact is another important culturally influenced nonverbal communication behavior. For U.S. Americans, direct eye contact is an important part of making a good impression during an interview. However, in some cultures, direct eye contact is considered rude or threatening. Among some Native Americans, children are taught to show adults respect by avoiding eye contact. When giving a presentation in Japan, it is common to see people in the audience with their eyes shut, because this is thought to facilitate listening. (Try it – you may be surprised) How a person dresses also sends a strong nonverbal message. What are your thoughts when you see an elderly woman wearing a hijab, a Jewish boy with a yarmulke, or a young black man in a colorful dashiki? Nonverbal facial and body expressions, like language, form a coding system for constructing and expressing meaning, and these expressions are culture bound. Through culture, we learn which nonverbal behavior is proper for different social interactions.

But what is appropriate and polite in one culture may be disrespectful or even insulting in another culture. People engaging in intercultural communication, therefore, should try to maintain a continual awareness of how body behaviors may influence an interaction.

D. Contextual Influences Or Rules In Culture

We have defined culture as a set of rules established and used by a group of people to conduct social interaction. These rules determine what is considered correct communicative behavior, including both verbal and nonverbal elements, for both physical and social (situational) contexts. For example, you would not normally attend a funeral wearing shorts and tennis shoes or talk on your cell phone during the service. Your culture has taught you that these behaviors are contextually inappropriate (i.e., disrespectful).

Context is also an important consideration in intercultural communication interactions, where the rules for specific situations usually vary. What is appropriate in one culture is not necessarily correct in another. As an example, among most White U.S. Americans, church services are relatively serious occasions, but among African American congregations, services are traditionally more demonstrative, energetic gatherings.

In a restaurant in Germany, the atmosphere is usually somewhat subdued, with customers engaging in quiet conversation. In Spain, however, the conversation is much louder and more animated. In U.S. universities, students are expected to interactively engage the instructor, but in Japan the expectation is that the instructor will simply lecture, with very little or no interaction.

In these examples, we see the importance of having an awareness of the cultural rules governing the context of an intercultural communication exchange. Unless all parties in the exchange are sensitive to how culture affects the contextual aspects of communication, difficulties will most certainly arise and could negate effective interaction.

UNDERSTANDING THE TEXT ORGANIZATION: LOGISTICS, SUBHEADINGS, CONTEXT, KEY WORDS, SPECIFIC WORDS

Instruction: Discovering text organization through its logistics. The detailed organization and implementation of text essentials is discovered by using the techniques of surveying, scanning and skim reading which help you find information about the topic of the whole text and its parts. These techniques will also tell you something about how the text is organized. While you are reading, you will probably find some ambiguous words or word combinations. However, this does not have to be a problem. Firstly, you should decide whether the word is important for you. Understanding the word may not be necessary to understand the text. If you think a word is important, there are some strategies given below you can use to help guess the meaning of the word.

Guessing the Meaning of Words

Look at the context

Often you can guess the meaning of a word from the other words around it. E.g.: ... many people believe that there is only one god but others pay homage to multiple deities. It is obvious that deities is equivalent to gods.