Intercultural communication: interaction in a changing world

Résumé du document

When euripides wrote, all is change ; all yields its place and then goes in 422 B.C., he probably did not realize that he would be helping to introduce a book on intercultural communication. Yet, that study of intercultural communication is about change. It is about changes in the world and how the people in that world must adapt to them. More specifically, this book deals with that world changes that have brought us intro direct and indirect contact whit people who, because of their culture, often behave in ways that we do not understand. Whit or without our consent, the last three decades have thrust upon us groups of people who often appear alien. These people, who appear different, may live thousands of miles away or right next door. What is special about them is that in many ways they are not like us. This book is about those people and how to understand them and communicate whit them. Intercultural communication, as we might suspect, is not new. Wandering nomads, religious missionaries, and conquering soldiers have been encountering people different from themselves since the beginning of time. These early meetings, like those of today, were often confusing and hostile. In fact, over two thousand years ago the playwright Aeschylus wrote, -Everyone's quick to blame the alien.- In the 1990s intercultural contacts are more common and the in many ways more significant than those earlier meetings.

Extraits

[...] It should be clear from this that the population of the Unites States is changing and shifting, and that these transformations will continue. For example, in 1990 whites will account for approximately 78 percent of the total population of the Unitez States. That figure is expected to drop to 54 percent by 2080. Clearly, ethnic minorities are increasing at a much faster rate than the dominant culture. American business was quick to adapt to the cultural diversity of their new customers. [...]

[...] By all indications the trend will continue. In fact, many people believe that there will not only be a continuation of what we have been experiencing, but an increase in the number of people coming to America. They argue that the rest of the world is not welcoming foreigners, From Hong Kong to western Europe, foreigners are finding the doors closes. As a recent Time magazine article noted, “with millions of people in search of asylum, compassion is drying up.'' But entry doesn't in America. [...]

[...] If humanitarian desires failed to rally us, there was always the concern that a hungry world was an unstable worls. As the gap between the poor and the rich grew, many feared that if we failed to share our bread we would soon be sharing violence. The World Watch Institute offred a grim prediction : - The overall model suggests that we may be moving into a very difficult situation with food, one where food security may replace military security as the principal preoccupation of many governements of the world. [...]

[...] For example, two arab nations threatened to go to war against Turkey as that country's Ataturk Dam diverted 75 percent of the downstream water that had once flowed to Syria and Iraq. Perhaps yhe most graphic example of a limited resource was food. Before World War II most countries could produce enough food to feed their own people. But the 1970s and 1980s brought us pictures and stories of how hugry the world was in this new era. The U.N. [...]

[...] The study of culture is as elusive as the study of human communication. Although there are as many problems as there are people, we would nevertheless suggest that most of the obstacles fall into three general categories. Let us briefly look at each of these so that you might be aware of the difficulties and challenges facing anyone who takes on the suspect of intercultural communication. First, because culture lacks a distinct crystalline structure, it is often riddled with contradictions and extremis. [...]