Section 1. Guidelines for cross-cultural communication
A study of intercultural communication brings together two important kinds of insights: the cultural shaping of communication practices, and the interactional dynamics that occur among culturally shaped communication practices. Cultural analysis raises the general question: how is communication shaped as a cultural practice When people are engaged in communication, what significance and meaning does it have for them?
These general research questions, about the cultural nature and the meanings of communication, are based upon the view that communication both presumes and constitutes social realities; and further, that as people communicate, so they engage in a meta-cultural commentary, that is, they say things explicitly and implicitly about who they are, how they are related to each other, how they feel, what they are doing, and how they are situated in the nature of things. These concerns about identity, relationships, emotions, and actions are in an excerpt from the book by L. Samovar et al, given below.
Text 1-9. THE FRAMEWORK OF COMMUNICATION AND CULTURE
(Based on Intercultural Communication: A Reader by Larry A. Samovar, Richard E. Porter, Edwin R. McDaniel)