Communication Between Cultures

CHAPTER 2 Communication and Culture: The Voice and the Echo

Precision of communication is important, more important than ever, in our era of

hair-trigger balances, when a false or misunderstood word may create as much

disaster as a sudden thoughtless act.

JAMES THURBER

Culture is roughly anything we do and the monkeys don’t.

LORD RAGLAN

How shall I talk of the sea to the frog, if he has never left the pond? How shall I talk

of the frost to the bird of the summer land if he has never left the land of his birth?

And how shall I talk of life with the sage if he is a prisoner of his doctrine?

CHUNG TZU

Human Communication

If this book were only about culture we would not be compelled to begin our analysis

by turning first to the subject of human communication. However, because the

study of intercultural communication is the study of cultureandcommunication,

we begin by examining communication and then move to the area of culture.

Although considering communication first and culture second might seem arbi-

trary, it is not. Our rationale for the order is straightforward:To understand intercul-

tural interaction, you must first recognize the role of communication in that process.

Communication—our ability to share our ideas and feelings—is the basis of all

human contact. As we noted in Chapter 1, today that contact may take a variety

of forms. You can interact with another person by meeting in a face-to-face situa-

tion, or by employing new media devices you can exchange messages via blogs or

social networking sites such as Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, WhatsApp, and

MySpace. You can also “talk” to other people via email, videoconferencing,

Skype, and a host of other media methods. What is important is not the tools

25

Copyright 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s).