Communication Apprehension Across Cultures

This assignment explores the concept of communication apprehension in different cultural contexts. It examines how factors like individualism vs collectivism, high-context vs low-context cultures, and nonverbal communication styles can influence individuals' levels of anxiety and willingness to communicate. Students are encouraged to compare and contrast communication apprehension experiences in various cultures, drawing on scholarly research and personal insights.

10/7/2017
Reflective Essay | (Student Details: )
Effective business communication

ESSAY
The purpose of a reflective essay is to throw light on the qualities and flaws of a person,
so that a person can use these qualities for their best and also can work on the flaws. This is
particularly true for the communication skills which a person has, with regards to the
professional or business life of such person. This reflective essay is aimed to identifying,
evaluating and working upon my flaws in the matter of communication skills, in order for me to
help me in my future life. For identifying my flaws, I would be using the five diagnostic tools
which have been taught to us through different modules of this coursework. After I have
identifying my flaws using these tools, I would then be evaluating these flaws with respect to
the different literature present in regard to identified two flaws. Upon successfully doing so, I
would take the literature as a guide to create an action plan so that I can work on improving
these flaws. This action plan, in order to depict proper timeline, would be drawn in a Gantt
chart. Apart from simply creating a timeline for actions, I would also identify certain parameters
which would prove if I have been successful in improving my flaws or not.
To begin with this identification process, I would start by using the Willingness to Listen
Diagnostic tool, which is a tool used for analysing the listening capabilities of an individual. This
tool shows if a person can actually listen to others, or is a closed receiver (Richmond & Hickson,
2001). The second tool which I would be using is the Talkaholic Scale which would help in
analysing if the person talks a lot, particularly so much, that awkward situations are created due
to the person being a compulsive talker. This also shows if the person is ready to give others the
chance to talk, or whether the person dominates the entire talk (McCroskey & Richmond,
1995). The third tool which I used was the Nonverbal Immediacy Scale-Self Report, which in
short is often referred to as NIS-S. This tool shows the non verbal behaviour of an individual, in
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terms of the hands gestures and the body language of a person when they communicate with
others. It can depict a person being close to communication or being very animated when have
to put across their views (Richmond, McCroskey & Johnson, 2003).
After these three tools, I moved on to the communication apprehension tools. In this
regard, I used the Self-Perceived Communication Competence Scale, which in short is often
referred to as SPCC is a tool which shows the communication apprehensions of a person when
they have to speak in public, or before strangers, particularly with a high number of receivers.
This tool is particularly important as it helps in showing if a person can comfortably address the
crowds or not (Neuliep & McCroskey, 1997). The last tool used for the purpose of identification
of my flaws was the Personal Report of Intercultural Communication Apprehension, which in
short is often referred to as PRICA. This tool helps in showing the feelings of a person in such
cases when they have to communicate with the people belonging to a cultural background as is
different from their own (McCroskey & McCroskey, 1998).
Once I finished filling the ratings on these five diagnostic tools, I calculated my scores
and analysed these on the basis of guide to these tools. In the first tool, i.e., in Willingness to
Listen, I got a score of 87, which puts me in the moderate range of listening skills. This shows a
quality instead of a flaw as I can listen to others and retain that knowledge. The second tool
used for this purpose was Talkaholic Scale where I got a score of 26 which is again an average
score, which depicts that I m not a talkaholic and that I am able to control my talking at
majority of times, which is again a quality as per this tool. The third tool deployed for this
purpose was NIS-S, in which I got a score of 113, which shows that I use a lot of nonverbal
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immediacy when communicating with other people. This has been identified as a flaw for me,
because of an incident, which I will highlight in a while. The next tool I used was SPCC in which I
got a score of 72 which again puts me in a medium range of communication, which means that I
face moderate apprehensions when I have to address the public. The last tool used by me was
PRICA, which again highlighted a key flaw which I have, as I got a score of 23, which shows that I
have a low intercultural communication apprehension. In other words, I face a problem when it
comes to communicating with people of other cultural backgrounds. This is one of the reasons
for my moderate scoring on SPCC.
Once I identified my two flaws, i.e., intercultural communication apprehension and
overuse of nonverbal immediacy, I looked back on two incidents to show the presence of these
two flaws in real life. I always had an interest in law so in order to gain some experience in this
regard, I was interning at my Aunt’s firm, who is a lawyer and has a number of intercultural
clients. One of her clients was from an American and I got very apprehensive in my
communication as I thought I could not communicate with him properly.
The other incident which shows my overuse of nonverbal immediacy was my aunt, at
the firm only. I was sitting at in her office and taking notes while she was dealing with a client.
In the end, she asked me to repeat what I had written so even the client could be clear on the
matter. However, after the client left, I was told by my aunt to control my hand movements and
also that I should not touching the client as they can get apprehensive about such touches. This
also led me to give up on my “lawyer” dream.
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ESSAY
Communication apprehension is one of the most common flaws in people, whether it
comes to the intercultural communication or that of public speaking. James C. McCroskey is
deemed as the father of communication apprehension drew up the model for both public
speaking apprehensions and intercultural communication apprehensions. In his intercultural
communication apprehensions, as per Neuliep (2014), the emotions and the thoughts when
communicating with a person from different culture, were highlighted, particular the barriers
related to the culture or the linguistic barrier of a person. The basics of these apprehensions are
stemmed from the trait, the context, the situation and most importantly, the audience of a
person. It has been pointed out by Gumus, Hamart and Dursun (2008) that when an individual
has to face such a situation, where the feeling of anxiety is present only when they have to
speak to a particular culturally different person, or when have to face an audience of such
culturally different person, the apprehension is a form of intercultural communication
apprehension. Mak, Brown and Wadey (2013) are of the view that intercultural communication
apprehension is based on the negated thoughts and perceptions which are related to such two
individuals, who belong to different cultural backgrounds. They stated that this negativity is
depicted through their uncomfortable behaviours when they are faced with each other due to
the difference in their cultures. They also stated that the imminent cross cultural interactions
could be negated due to preconceived notions about a culture, for instance, a culture being
more fluent in a particular language, in comparison to the other culture.
Rahmani (2017) has also written about intergroup communication anxiety, which in his
view also, is a negative feeling which leads to the other person feeling restlessness in such a
situation when he/she is required to establish a communications channel with another, having
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a different cultural identity. He went on to state that this particular negativity arising from the
intergroup interactions had a huge impact over the apprehensive person’s cognitive
performance, apart from a negated impact over their social interactions. So apart from the non
cultural elements, the cultural elements also have a huge impact and results in the contextual
incompatibilities arising from intercultural communication apprehensions. The intercultural
communication apprehensions also are a result of a different in the culture of an individual, in
context of the region to which they belong. For instance, it has been highlighted that the
intercultural communication apprehensions are found between communications which take
place between individuals belonging to Australia, US, Arabic nations, Western Europe and the
East Asian nation, particularly between the English speaking and the non English speaking
cultures and these were the view of different scholars including Hackman and Barthel-Hackman
(1993), Hsu (2007), and that of Pederson, Tkachuk and Allen (2008).
It has also been stated that due to the belongingness towards these individualist
cultures, a focus is placed over the needs of the individual, their personal space and the
activities undertaken by them. As per Allen, O’Mara and Long (2014), the oral communications
shows the cultural context on the basis of the traits of communication of a person. Some
scholars have noticed these apprehensions on the basis of a different been high context
cultures and the low context cultures. The high context cultures include Arabic nations, Japan,
Korea and China and the low context cultures include US, as per Merkin (2009), Pederson et al.
(2008) and Pryor, Bulter and Boehringer 2005). Hall (1976) was of the view that most of the
information which is provided in the high context cultures is shared between the people, due to
the shared communication perceptions formed by them with regards to a particular
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communication. And in the case of low culture context, the information is not shared much and
remains very straight forward, in other words, “as it is”. Due to these reasons, the high context
cultures are deemed as very apprehensive (Pryor et al, 2005).
When it comes to the overuse of nonverbal immediacy, there has been a lot of literature
on this aspect of communications, also. It has been stated in a number of researches that a
verbal communication is used to convey the information, but when it comes to the
negotiations, there is a need to deploy body language (Pease & Pease, 2004). Body language is
deemed as a key player when it comes to business communications. And an overuse of body
language depicts that the person is anxious about something (Cohen, 2015). Hence, where a
person shift quite often in their chair, or uses a lot of hand movement, it shows that the person
is anxious and is not very confident. This is because these nonverbal communications
showcases the situation of a person’s mind. Some scholars have noticed that the body
language, in terms of the nonverbal communications, were such acts, often involuntary, which
is based on the sounds, time, smells, space, use of objects and appearances of a person and of
others, as are perceived by such person (Gamble & Gamble, 2013). These nonverbal cues can
be used to bring clarity to a point or to change the very meaning of it; for instance, by rolling
eyes and saying that a person agrees with another, the rolling eyes shows the person actually
does not agree with the other person. Thus the saying, actions speak louder than words
(Nelson, 2012).
Some scholars have also highlighted that the nonverbal communications are a complex
thing where different people can perceive different meaning (Butland, 2012). For instance, in
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ESSAY
the reflective essay, I cited a problem where I touched a client to comfort them, but it was
deemed as wrong by my aunt. Some have also stated that there are times that people do not
realize that they are using nonverbal communications, and they animate unconsciously
(Navarro & Kartins, 2009). It has also been presented that the body language is a strong
medium to show displeasure towards something. So, where a person clinches there first while
talking about something, it shows anger or unhappiness of the fist clinching person. Thus,
controlling the nonverbal communication becomes all the more important in business life, so
that the emotions of a person are not presented to other party (Gamble & Gamble, 2013).
The literature clearly highlights that I have to work upon controlling my nonverbal
communications and to open up when it comes to communicating with the persons of different
cultural backgrounds. In this regard, I have created an action plan, which would hopefully help
me in dealing with my flaws. The first step which I would be doing is taking the help of my tutor
and asking them to give me cues on how to remove my apprehension about being a less
efficient communicator in comparison to the ones from English backgrounds. I would then read
a lot of literature on it, including the ones suggested by my tutor, to find out the reasons for my
inhibitions and for identifying the manner in which I can remove them. I would also be keeping
a daily online journal, which could be accessed by anyone to track my progress. Keeping it
public would help me work on my goals as I would know that others are watching me. I would
also be communicating with the different students at our university, particularly the ones who
belong to US and UK, so as to try and establish between communication channels with them.
This would also help me improving upon my general public speaking skills, apart from removing
my intercultural communication apprehensions.
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ESSAY
As I tend to overuse my nonverbal communications, I would learn to control them by
opting for sign language. This would not only help me for the purpose of controlling my
communications but also would be an additional skill in my résumé. I would also be organizing
an activity within this class, where I would present my findings of the first three months. And I
would be regularly communicating with people of different ethnic backgrounds, apart from the
university students. I am my worse critic and after the completion of my six months action plan,
I would be self evaluating my progress on the basis of my online journal, where I would be
scoring each activity out of 10. And to be successful, I would require a pass percentage of 65.
The action plan, with reference to its timeline, has been presented below.
Gantt Chart depicting Action Plan
Nov-
17
Dec-
17
Jan-
18
Feb-
18
Mar-
18
Apr-
17
Online Journal
Tutor help
University Communication
Learning Sign Language
Scheduling activity
Reading Literature
English background communication
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ESSAY
To conclude this entire reflective essay, I went on an amazing self reflective journey
where I learned the different flaws which I have. And after analysing the literature, I drew up an
action plan, which would help me in improving upon my said flaws.
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ESSAY
References
Allen, M. & Bourhis, J. (1996). The relationship of communication apprehension to
communication behavior: A meta-analysis. Communication Quarterly, 44, 214-226.
Butland, M. (2012). Achieving Communication Competence: An Introduction to Human
Communication. Iowa: Kendall Hunt Publishing Company.
Cohen, D. (2015). Body Language: Overcome Common Problems. London: Sheldon Press.
Gamble, T.K., & Gamble, M.W. (2013). Interpersonal Communication: Building Connections
Together. London: Sage Publishing.
Gumus, M., Hamarat, B., & Dursun, M. (2005). Intercultural communication apprehension: An
empirical study on ANZAC people. Journal of Administrative Sciences, 3(1), 179-193.
Hackman, M. Z., & Barthel-Hackman, T. A. (1993). Communication apprehension, willingness to
communicate, and sense of humor: United States and New Zealand
perspectives. Communication Quarterly, 41, 282-291.
Hall, E. T. (1976). Beyond culture. New York, NY: Doubleday.
Hsu, C.-F (2007). A cross-cultural comparison of communication orientations between
Americans and Taiwanese. Communication Quarterly, 55, 359– 374.
Mak, A. S., Brown, P. M., & Wadey, D. (2013). Contact and attitude toward international
students in Australia: Intergroup anxiety and intercultural communication emotions as
mediators. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 45, 491.
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ESSAY
McCroskey, J. C., & McCroskey, L. L. (1988). Self-report as an approach to measuring
communication competence. Communication Research Reports, 5, 108-11.
McCroskey, J.C., & Richmond, V.P .(1995). Correlates of compulsive communication:
Quantitative and qualitative characteristics. Communication Quarterly, 43, 39-52.
Navarro, J., & Kartins, M. (2009). What Every BODY is Saying: An Ex-FBI Agent’s Guide to Speed-
Reading People. New York: Harper Collins.
Nelson, R. (2012). Body Language 101: The Ultimate Guide. North Carolina: Lulu Publishing
Services.
Neuliep, J. W. (2014). Intercultural communication: A Contextual Approach (6th ed.). Sage
Publications.
Neuliep, J. W., & McCroskey, J. C. (1997). The development of intercultural and interethnic
communication apprehension scales. Communication Research Reports, 14, 385-398.
Pease, B., & Pease, A. (2004). The Definitive Book of Body Language. New York: Bantam.
Pederson, J., Tkachuk, H., & Allen, M. (2008). How perceived situational frequency and
situational importance affect communication apprehension: A cross cultural
analysis. Journal of Intercultural Communication Research, 37, 189–198.
Pederson, J., Tkachuk, H., & Allen, M. (2008). How perceived situational frequency and
situational importance affect communication apprehension: A cross cultural
analysis. Journal of Intercultural Communication Research, 37, 189–198.
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