Jandt, An Introduction to Intercultural Communication 9e

SAGE Publications, 2018

Lecture Notes
Chapter 1: Defining Culture and Communication
Learning Objectives
After studying this chapter, you will be able to:
1-1: Explain the regulators of human behavior and identity.
1-2: Understand the meanings and connotations of the terms culture, subcultures, co-
cultures, subgroups, and microcultures.
1-3: Describe how communication is defined by different cultures, and understand how
people of diverse cultures communicate differently.
1-4: Describe the relationship between culture and media.

I. Sources of Identity
A. Evidence from genetic research and linguistic observation suggests that all humans
alive today share ancestry from one group in Africa, yet among the seven billion of
us there are a diversity of languages, of beliefs and of ways of understanding the
world and defining our identities.
How then did diverse cultures develop?
1. Climate changes or other pressures led to migrations out of Africa.
a. Centuries of geographical separation led to the development of diverse
social network regulators of human life.
b. These social network regulators of human life over the history of
humanity have been the basis for beliefs and identities.
B. Religion and Identity
1. One of the oldest religions is the oldest source of human identity and conflict.
Religion can be a regulator of how we live our lives and can provide a sense of
identity.
2. At times, religious groups co-existed without conflict.
3. However, religious wars (those clearly caused or justified by differences in
religious beliefs exclusive of other issues) have resulted in tens of millions of
deaths in the course of human history. To name only a few of the better known:
a. The Crusades of the 11th to 13th centuries of the Christians against the
Muslims
b. The 16th century Wars of Succession between Roman Catholics and
Protestants
c. The 1990s war in the former Yugoslavia, divided along Orthodox,
Catholic, and Muslim lines
d. The divide between Sunni and Shiite Muslims in Iraq
C. National Identity
 Jandt, An Introduction to Intercultural Communication 9e
SAGE Publications, 2018

[Link] nation-state may be the most significant political creation of modern times.
[Link] identity is not descriptive when arbitrarily drawn political boundaries
do not reflect peoples’ identities.
3. National identity has often been the source of conflict.
D. Class and Identity
1. Marx and Engels (1850) claimed that identities were not created by religions or
countries, but in the relationship to the means of production.
2. While classes may exist in any society, how clearly defined they are and how
much they are a source of identity varies.
3. A system of social classes that divides people, assigns values to differences,
and is a source of identity can lead to conflicts.
E. Gender and Identity
1. According to feminists, gender identity is more significant than religion,
nation, or class.
2. How a nation deals with gender reveals much about that nation’s values.
F. Race, Skin Color, and Identity
1. Race is defined from two perspectives: biological and sociohistorical.
a. From the biological perspective, race refers to a large body of people
characterized by similarity of descent. Race became seen as biologically
natural and based on visible physical characteristics such as skin color and
other facial and bodily features.
b. The sociohistorical concept explains how racial categories have varied
over time and between cultures.
2. The biologically based definition establishes race as something fixed; the
sociohistorically based definition sees race as unstable and social determined
through constant debate.
G. Civilization and Identity
1. In the 19th century, the term “culture” was commonly used as a synonym for
Western civilization.
2. Samuel P. Huntington (1996) posited that civilizations were the most important
form of human identity.
II. Culture
Neuroscientist Damasio Antonio (2010): Our world, our environment is so complex and
so varied on the planet that diverse social networks developed to regulate life so that we
could survive.
Sir David Cannadine (2013): There are six main forms of regulators of social
networks of human life: religion, nation, class, gender, race, and civilization.
A. Subculture
1. Ethnicity
2. The nation-state may be the most significant political creation of the modern
times. From the 18th century on, national identity has superseded religion as
the primary identity in many parts of the world.
 Jandt, An Introduction to Intercultural Communication 9e
SAGE Publications, 2018

3. Someone born and raised in Spain who works for the Swedish technology
company Ericsson at its service center in India most likely self-identifies as
Spanish.
4. However, nation-state identity is not descriptive when arbitrarily drawn
political boundaries do not reflect people’s identities.
5. In this textbook, the commonly accepted term culture has been used rather than
the term nation-state. Culture refers to the following:
a. a community or population large enough to be self-sustaining (to produce
new generations of members without relying on outside people);
b. the totality of that group’s thoughts, experiences, and patterns of behavior,
and the concepts, values, and assumptions about life that guide behavior as
well as the ways in which these evolve through contact with other
cultures. Hofstede (1994) classified these elements of culture into four
categories:
c. Symbols: verbal and nonverbal language
i. Rituals: socially essential collective activities
ii. Values: feelings not open for discussion within a culture about what is
good or bad, beautiful or ugly, normal or abnormal, which are present
in a majority of the members of a culture, or at least in those who
occupy pivotal positions
iii. Heroes: real or imaginary people who serve as behavior models
within a culture
 Expressed in myths which can be the subject of novels and other
forms of literature
 Enduring myth in U.S. culture: rugged individualist cowboy
[Link] process of social transmission of these thoughts and behaviors from
birth, in the family and schools, over the course of generations;
e. the identification with and perceived acceptance into a group that has a
shared system of symbols, meanings, and norms (cultural identity).
B. Co-Culture
1. Co-culture: suggests that no one culture is inherently superior to the other
coexisting culture; mutuality may not be easily established.
2. American Indians
a. Term derived from colonizer’s point of view.
b. Many labels derived from names created by groups’ neighbors or enemies.
c. “Indian” is considered offensive in Canada. “First Nations” is preferred
term.
d. 567 distinct nations exist by treaty within the territorial limits of the
United States.
e. Supreme Court decisions haven’t always protected American Indian land
rights.
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f. When a nation is surrounded by a more powerful culture or exists within

the culture of the other, the less powerful culture must accept the laws and
legal system of the other.
C. Subgroup
1. Just as cultures and subcultures are regulators of human life and identity, so are
subgroups. Subgroups are membership groups.
2. Subgroups exist within a dominant culture and are dependent on that culture.
3. Like cultures, subgroups provide members with relatively complete sets of
values and patterns of behavior and in many ways pose similar communication
problems to cultures.
4. Occupation is one important subgroup.
5. Membership in subgroups can be temporary.
6. The reference group is the group someone wants to belong to, creating
“wannabe” behavior.
D. Microculture
1. “Microculture” refers to any identifiable smaller group bound together by
shared symbol system, behaviors, and values.
2. Some scholars suggest using the term “culture” regardless of size or other
factors.
III. Communication
A. Cultural Definitions of Communication
1. Culture is a code we learn and share, and learning and sharing require
communication.
2. Definitions of communication from many Asian countries stress harmony. For
example, a Confucian perspective on communication would define it as an
infinite interpretive process where all parties are searching to develop and
maintain a social relationship.
3. In a Western perspective, communication is one-way, top-down, and suited for
the transmission media. For example, in Berlo’s model of communication the
source is viewed as more active and more important than the receiver and
encoding (speaking) is viewed as superior to decoding (listening).
4. Confucian Perspectives on Communication
a. Confucius set up an ethical–moral system intended ideally to govern all
relationships in the family, community, and state.
b. Confucianism emphasizes virtue, selflessness, duty, patriotism, hard work,
and respect for hierarchy, both familial and societal.
c. Confucianism guides social relationships.
i. Particularism
ii. Role of intermediaries
iii. Reciprocity
iv. In-group/out-group distinction
v. Overlap of personal and public relationships
 Jandt, An Introduction to Intercultural Communication 9e
SAGE Publications, 2018

[Link] have developed many verbal strategies such as compliments,

greeting rituals, and so on to maintain good interpersonal relations.
e. Korean has special vocabularies for each sex, for different degrees of
social status and degrees of intimacy, and for formal occasions.
f. Korean junior business associates may address seniors with familiar rather
than honorific language.
g. A Confucian perspective on communication would define it as an infinite
interpretive process in which all parties are searching to develop and
maintain a social relationship.
5. Western Perspectives on Communication
a. Components of Communication
 You are better able to understand communication when you
understand the components of the process.
b. Source
 The person with an idea he or she desires to communicate.
c. Encoding
 The process of putting an idea into a symbol
d. Message
 The message identifies the encoded thought.
e. Channel
 The means by which the encoded message is transmitted.
f. Noise
 Refers to anything that distorts the message the source encodes
g. Receiver
 The person who attends the message.
 Receivers may be intentional or unintentional.
h. Decoding
 The opposite of encoding. The receiver assigns meaning to the
symbols received.
i. Receiver Response
 Anything the receiver does after having attended to and decoded the
message.
j. Feedback
 The portion of the receiver response of which the source has
knowledge and to which the source attends and assigns meaning.
k. Context
 The environment in which the communication takes place and helps
define the communication.
B. The Media of Intercultural Communication
1. Human Couriers and Intermediaries
 early form of intercultural communication
2. Telephone
 Jandt, An Introduction to Intercultural Communication 9e
SAGE Publications, 2018

 in 2011, there were 1.2 billion landlines in use; differences in

conversational patterns
3. Internet
 over 2.5 billion users in every part of the world; issues as computers are
English-oriented
4. Language Use
a. The Internet originated in the English-speaking world. Computers are
English-oriented.
b. With the development of Unicode, most of the world’s writing systems
can be displayed reliably.
c. English may continue to be the dominant language on the Internet, but at
the same time technology is supporting the use of local languages
worldwide.
5. Design Elements
a. Communication symbols can be verbal and nonverbal.
b. Culture is reflected in the nonverbal aspects of the Internet, such as web
designs.
c. Design elements include different icons, colors, and site structures.
6. Social Media
 nearly 1 billion users; international and nation-specific platforms