CULTURAL AND INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION

Running head: CULTURAL COMMUNICATION
CULTURAL COMMUNICATION
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CULTURAL COMMUNICATION1
1. Identify and briefly explain three of the imperatives for studying intercultural
communication. Then discuss how each of the imperatives you explained affects our
understanding of intercultural communication.
Three imperatives of intercultural communication include economic, technological and
ethical factors. Economic factors relate to the ability of the countries to reach the global
platform. The economically developed countries get exposed through business and people of
other cultures are willing to know their language or communication system. The technological
imperative leads to the challenge in communication as through TV, internet and other systems
may not be supported if the culture is not well accustomed in handling communication1. These
day everybody can communicate in different social media without any face to face contact.
Access to technological development therefore is needed.
Ethical judgement about the right and wrongness of communication can be an imperative
where cultural behaviour gets manipulated by already accepted norms. Ethics to consider the
diversity of culture may be supportive to develop intercultural communication but in many of the
cases, ethical understanding of the culture may be reflected in the communication system leading
to have biased decision or demotivating conversation.
2. Explain at least two ways in which ethnocentrism, stereotyping, prejudice, and
discrimination act as barriers to effective intercultural communication.
There are different barriers of intercultural communication among which ethnocentrisms,
stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination are important to be analysed. Ethnocentrisms is
1 Piller, Ingrid. Intercultural communication: A critical introduction. Edinburgh University Press, 2017.

CULTURAL COMMUNICATION2
related to the belief that the cultural belief and customs of the own culture is superior to the
others2. This belief of superiority tend to make derogatory comments about other culture.
Stereotyping is a process through which persons categories the other people based on some
common factors. This challenges communication by showing ever simplified belief about the
culture shared through communication. This can be hurtful as the concept of racism can be
found in such communication.
Prejudice opposes ethnocentrisms that is a positive feeling of the self. Prejudice deals with
the negative feeling about the others3. This mainly originates from the illogical looking down
of the other cultures. These explicitly get effected upon the communication process. It gives
birth to the racist conversation and people cannot explain their innocence in this process.
Discrimination is the direct proposition of difference of culture through both communication
as well as the actions of the persons. This can be targeting communities from other culture or
for that matter the gender of the employees in the workplace. Discrimination according to
acts and human rights of the country is highly illegal therefore this can lead the person
practising discrimination to face issues.
3. Today technology has had a profound impact on the communication style of those
that live within a particular culture. Define and explain the potential of a third
culture communication style.
2 Holliday, Adrian, John Kullman, and Martin Hyde. Intercultural communication: An advanced resource book for
students. Routledge, 2016.
3 Yoshida, Tomoko, et al. "Integrating intercultural communication into the language classroom." Speakeasy 30
(2018).