Communication: intercultural communicationA B C D E F G H IJKL M N O P R S T U VXYZWactive trio of forces: communication, mood and
personal narrative. (See eisenberg’s model of
communication and identity, 2001.)
A precept that few commentators would chal-
lenge is that it is impossible not to communicate.
By saying nothing, by remaining blank-faced,
by keeping our hands stiffl y to our sides, we are
still communicating, however negatively. We
are still part of an interaction, whether we like
it or not. For Jurgen Ruesch, communication is
‘all those processes by which people infl uence
one another’ (in ‘Values, communication and
culture’, J. Ruesch and G. Bateson, eds, Th e Social
Matrix of Psychiatry (W.W. Norton, 1951)). At
fi rst we may resist the claim that whatever we do,
we are exerting an infl uence. Yet by trying not
to infl uence, we are arguably still aff ecting the
patterns of communicative action, interaction
and transaction. In our absence from the scene –
from our family or work group, for example – as
well as in our presence, we may still exert infl u-
ence, however little, however unintended. See
communication: intercultural commu-
nication; communication, non-verbal
(nvc); semiology/semiotics.
Communication: intercultural communica-
tion Larry A. Samovar, Richard E. Porter and
Edwin R. McDaniel in Communication between
Cultures (Wadsworth, 2010) note that ‘... inter-
cultural communication involves interaction
between people whose cultural perceptions and
symbol systems are distinct enough to alter the
communication event’. Such distinct diff erences
do not only occur across societies but also
between the various co-cultures found within
one society, especially those with a wide mix of
people from diverse cultural backgrounds such
as the US or Britain. Intercultural communica-
tion, then, can take place both within and across
societies.
William B. Gudykunst and Young Yun Kim in
Communicating With Strangers: An Approach
to Intercultural Communication (McGraw-
Hill, 1997) note that ‘the underlying process of
communication between people from diff erent
cultures or sub-cultures is the same as the under-
lying process of communication between people
from the same culture or sub-cultures’. We
should not, therefore, overestimate the diff er-
ences and underestimate the similarities. To
explore the dynamics of intercultural communi-
cation they propose a model that focuses on the
potential infl uence of four types of perceptual
fi lter: cultural, sociocultural, psychocultural and
environmental. Each of these fi lters infl uences
the exchange of messages and meaning in thea common or mutual process’. Th is polarity of
meaning – of the one-way process as against
aspects of communion, of cultural exchange – is
fundamental to the analysis of communication,
hence the attempt to generalize the distinction
in such phrases as manipulative communication
and participative communication.
Frank Dance in ‘Toward a theory of human
communication’ in the book he edited, Human
Communication Th eory: Original Essays (Holt,
Rinehart & Winston, 1967), observes that
communication is something that changes
even while one is in the act of examining it; it
is therefore an interaction and a transaction.
Dance and C. Larson in Th e Functions of Human
Communication: A Th eoretical Approach (Holt,
Rinehart & Winston, 1976) detail their examina-
tion of 126 defi nitions of communication. Th ey
specify notable differences but also common
agreement that communication is a process.
Th e authors conclude with a defi nition of their
own: ‘the production of symbolic content by an
individual, according to a code, with anticipated
consumption by other(s) according to the same
code’. Or, as Colin Cherry succinctly puts it in
On Human Communication (MIT Press, 1957),
communication is ‘essentially a social aff air’.
As early as 1933, Edward Sapir diff erentiated
between explicit and implicit modes of commu-
nication, while T.R. Nilson in ‘On defining
communication’ in Speech Trainer (1957) – and
reprinted in K.K. Sereno and C.D. Mortensen,
eds, Foundations of Communication Theory
(Harper & Row, 1970) – distinguishes between
communication which is instrumental, that
is intended to stimulate a response, and situ-
ational, in which there need not be any intention
of evoking a response in the transmission of
stimuli.
Most recently, Eisenberg’s model (2001)
focuses on the role of communication in the
search for identity in an uncertain world.
Eisenberg argues that communication is the
means by which we search for, define and
establish personal identity. In late modernity
this quest takes place within a dynamic and
fl uid ‘surround’; thus in a changing world a key
challenge will be that of ‘developing a robust but
dynamic conception of identity that continually
adapts to a turbulent environment’. Th e forces
within the ‘surround’ infl uence both how we see
ourselves and how we activate ourselves towards
others, and thus how we communicate with
them. Th ese forces include spiritual, biological,
cultural, economic and interpersonal factors. At
the centre of the surround is a dynamically inter-