LESSON 3

• Communication - can be a challenging activity because of the highly pluralistic nature of the people participating in the communication process.
• Each participant may differ in cultural, social and biological backgrounds, which are all critical factors to effective and successful intercultural communication
• Living in a globalized world, you encounter people with diverse cultural backgrounds. Such interactions occur in a social, educational, political and commercial settings
• Intercultural competence is essential for us to live harmoniously despite our differences in culture.
• Scollon state:

  when we are communication with people who are very different from us, it is very difficult to know how to draw inferences about what they mean, and so it is impossible to depend on shared knowledge and background for confidence in our interpretation (p.22).:
• Indeed, the lack of shared knowledge and beliefs and cultural diversity make it more complicated to arrive at the correct inference or interpretation of meanings. But it can also be argued that English is now a global lingua franca.
• In fact, with the ASEAN integration, English has been declared the official or working language of ASEAN. So with just one language to be spoken or used by many countries including the 10 member countries of the ASEAN.
• ELF means - English as Lingua Franca
• English as a lingua franca (ELF) is “a form of intercultural communication in English as characterized by cooperation rather than misunderstanding”
• Communication is like a kaleidoscope. Many units of different sizes, shapes, and color make up the whole picture. Any action, shift, or change adjusts the pattern and the relationship of all of the units to each other, thereby altering the picture.
• Interracial communication  – communicating with people from different races
• Interethnic communication – interacting with people of different ethnic origin
• International communication  – communicating between representatives from different nations
• International communication – communicating between representatives from different nations
• High-context communication - is a tradition-linked communication system which adheres strongly to being indirect.
• Low-context communication - is a system that works on straightforward communication.
• High-context cultures - (Meditteranean, Slav, Central European, Latin American, African, Arab, Asian, American-Indian) leave much of the message unspecified, to be understood through context, nonverbal cues, and between the lines interpretation of what is actually said.
• low context cultures - (most Germanic and English- speaking countries) expect messages to be explicit and specific.
• Intracultural communication - interacting with members of the same racial or ethnic group or co-culture