Ethnocentrism
A tendency to think that our own culture is superior to other cultures.
Demographics
The characteristics of a population, especially as classified by race, ethnicity, age, sex, and income.
Anglocentrism
Using Anglo or white cultural standards as the criteria for interpretations and judgments of behaviors and attitudes.
Melting Pot
A metaphor that assumes that immigrants and cultural minorities will be assimilated in the U.S. majority culture, losing their original cultures.
Nativistic
Extremely patriotic to the point of being anti-immigrant.
Multinational Corporations
Companies that have operations in two or more nations.
Maquiladoras
Assembly plants or factories (mainly of U.S. companies) established on the U.S.-Mexican border and using mainly Mexican labor.
Global Village
A term coined by Marshall McLuhan in the 1960s that refers to a world in which communication technology unites people in remote parts of the world.
Diasporic Groups
Ethnic and/or national groups that are geographically dispersed throughout the world.
Identity Management
The way individuals make sense of their multiple images concerning the sense of self in different social contexts.
Identity Tourism
A concept that refers to people taking on the identities of other races, genders, classes, or sexual orientations for recreational purposes.
Colonialism
1. The system by which groups with diverse languages, cultures, religions, and identities were united to form on state, usually by a European power; 2. The system by which a country maintains power over other countries or groups of people to exploit them
Ethics
Principles of conduct that help govern behaviours of individuals and groups.
Dialogical Approach
Focuses on the importance of dialogue in developing and maintaining relationships between individuals and communities.
Self-reflexivity
A process of learning to understand oneself and one's position in society.
Worldview
Underlying assumptions about the nature of reality and human behaviour.
Proxemics
The study of how people use personal space.
Distance Zones
The area, defined by physical space, within which people interact, according to Edward Hall's theory of proxemics. The four distance zones for individuals are intimate, personal, social, and public.
Cross-cultural Training
Training people to become familiar with other cultural norms and to improve their interactions with people of different domestic and international cultures.
Diversity Training
The training meant to facilitate intercultural communication among various gender, ethnic, and racial groups in the United States.
Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
The assumption that language shapes our ideas and guides our view of social reality. This hypothesis was proposed by Edward Sapir, a linguist, and his student, Benjamin Whorf, and represents the relativist view of language and perception.
Intercultural Competence
The ability to behave effectively and appropriately in interacting across cultures.
Interdisciplinary
Integrating knowledge from different disciplines in conducting research and constructing theory.
Paradigm
A framework that serves as the worldview of researchers. Different paradigms assume different interpretations of reality, human behaviour, culture, and communication.
Perception
The process by which individuals select, organize, and interpret external and internal stimuli to create their view of the world.
Paradigm: Social Scientific
This research style emphasizes statistical measures. Understanding quantitative approaches is critical to analyzing data and statistics. These are skills important in any walk of life.
Paradigm: Interpretive
Interpretive approaches emphasize using language to describe human behaviour. Understanding interpretive approaches is important to understanding how news is reported, how information is transferred, and how most people make decisions.
Paradigm: Critical
Critical methodologies analyze the large power structures that guide everyday life. Understanding this approach helps students to grasp the invisible forces that alter our lives.
Functionalist Approach
A study of intercultural communication, all call the social science approach, based on the assumptions that
1. there is a describable, external reality, 2. human behaviours are predictable, and 3. culture is a variable that can be measured. This approach
Quantitative Methods
Research methods that use numerical indicators to capture and ascertain the relationships among variables. These methods use survey and observation.
Variable
A concept that varies by existing in different types or different amounts and that can be operationalized and measured.
Individualistic
The tendency to emphasize individual identities, beliefs, needs, goals, and views rather than those of the group.
Collectivistic
The tendency to focus on the goals, needs, and views of in the ingroup rather than individuals' own goals, needs, and views.
Anxiety Uncertainty Management Theory
The view that the reduction of anxiety and uncertainty plays an important role in successful intercultural communications, particularly when experiencing new cultures.
Face Negotiation Theory
Th view that cultural groups vary in preferences for conflict styles and face-saving strategies.
Conversational Constraints Theory
The view that cultural groups vary in their fundamental concerns regarding how conversational messages should be constructed.
Communication Accommodation Theory
The view that individuals adjust their verbal communication to facilitate understanding.
Diffusion of Innovations Theory
The view that communication and relationships play important roles in how new ideas are adopted (or not) by individuals and groups.
Translation Equivalence
The linguistic sameness that is gained after translating and back-translating research materials several times using different translators.
Conceptual Equivalence
The similarity of linguistic terms and meanings across cultures.
Interpretive Approach
An approach to intercultural communication that aims to understand and describe human behaviour within specific cultural groups based on the assumptions that 1. human experience is subjective, 2. human behaviour is creative rather than determined or easil
Ethnography
A discipline that examines the patterned interactions and significant symbols of specific cultural groups to identify the cultural norms that guide their behaviours, usually based on field studies.
Qualitative Methods
Research methods that attempt to capture people's own meanings for their everyday behaviour in specific contexts. These methods use participant observation and field studies.
Participant Observation
A research method where investigators interact extensively with the cultural group being studied.
Rhetorical Approach
A research method, dating back to ancient Greece, in which scholars try to interpret the meanings or persuasion used in texts or oral discourses in the contexts in which they occur.
Minority Identity: Stage 1: Unexamined Identity
Lack of exploration of identity. Individuals at this stage may simply lack interest in the identity issue. Or minority group members may initially accept values and attitudes of the majority culture, expressing positive attitudes toward the dominant group
Emic
A term stemming from phonemic. The emic way of inquiry focuses on understanding communication patterns from inside a particular cultural community or context.
Identity
The concept of who we are. Characteristics of identity may be understood differently depending on the perspectives that people take - for example, social science, interpretive, or critical perspectives.
Impression Management Theory
The ways by which individuals attempt to control the impressions others have of them.
Individualized Identity
The sense of self as independent and self-reliant.
Familial Identity
The sense of self as always connected to family and others.
Spiritual Identity
Identification with feelings of connectedness to others and higher meanings in life.
Identity Negotiation Theory
A theory that emphasizes the process of communicating one's own desired identities while reinforcing or resisting others' identities as the core of intercultural communication.
Avowal
The process by which an individual portrays himself or herself.
Ascription
The process by which others attribute identities to an individual.
Core Symbols
The fundamental beliefs that are shared by the members of a cultural group. Labels, a category of core symbols, are names or markers used to classify individual, social, or cultural groups.
Interpellation
The communication process by which one is pulled into the social forces that place people into a specific identity.
Minority Identity
A sense of belonging to a nondominant group.
Majority Identity
A sense of belonging to a dominant group.
Gender Identity
The identification with the cultural notions of masculinity and femininity and what it means to be a man or a woman.
Sexual Identity
One's identification with various categories of sexuality.
Transgender
Identification with a gender that does not match one's biological gender.
Age Identity
The identification with the cultural conventions of how we should act, look, and behave according to our age.
Racial Identity
Identifying with a particular racial group. Although in the past racial groups were classified on the basis of biological characteristics, most scientists now recognize that race is constructed in fluid social and historical contexts.
Ethnic Identity
1. A set of ideas about one's own ethnic group membership, 2. a sense of belonging to a particular group and knowing something about the shared experience of the group.
Religious Identity
A sense of belonging to a religious group.
Class Identity
A sense of belonging to a group that shares similar economic, occupational, or social status.
National Identity
National citizenship.
Regional Identity
Identification with a specific geographic region of a nation.
Personal Identity
Who we think we are and who others think we are.
Global Nomads (third-culture kids)
People who grow up in many different cultural contexts because their parents relocated.
Culture Brokers
Individuals who act as bridges between cultures, facilitating cross-cultural interaction and conflict.
Stereotypes
Widely held beliefs about a group of people.
Model Minority
A stereotype that characterizes all Asians and Asian Americans as hardworking and serious and so a "good" minority.
Prejudice
An attitude (usually negative) toward a cultural group based on little or no evidence.
Minority Identity: Stage 1: Unexamined Identity
Lack of exploration of identity. Individuals may lack interest in the identity issue. Or minority group members may initially accept values and attitudes of the majority culture, expressing positive attitudes toward the dominant group and negative views o
Minority Identity: Stage 2: Conformity
The internalization of the values and norms of the dominant group and a strong desire to assimilate into the dominant culture. Individuals in this phase may have negative, self-deprecating attitudes towards both themselves and their group. Individuals who
Minority Identity: Stage 3: Resistance and Separatism
Many kinds of events can trigger the move to the third stage, including negative ones such as encountering discrimination or name-calling. A period of dissonance, or a growing awareness that not all dominant group values are beneficial to minorities, may
Minority Identity: Stage 4: Integration
The ideal outcome of the identity development process is the final stage - an achieved identity. Individuals who have reached this stage have a strong sense of their own group identity and an appreciation of other cultural groups. They come to realize tha
Nominalist Position
The view that perception is not shaped bu the particular language one speaks.
Relativist Position
The view that the particular language individuals speak, especially the structure of the language, shapes their perception of reality and cultural patterns.
Qualified Relativist Position
The view that the particular language we speak influences our perception but does not completely determine our perception.
Language Acquisition
The process of learning language.
Communication Style
The meta-message that contextualizes how listeners are expected to accept and interpret verbal messages.
Meta-message
The meaning of a message that tells others how they should respond to the content of our communication based on our relationship to them.
High-context Communication
A style of communication in which much of the information is contained in the contexts and nonverbal cues rather than expressed explicitly in words.
Low-context Communication
A style of communication in which much of the information is conveyed in words rather than in nonverbal cues and contexts.
Co-cultural Groups
Nondominant cultural groups that exist in a national culture, such as African American, or Chinese American.
Etic
A term stemming from phonemic. The emic way of inquiry focuses on understanding communication patterns from inside a particular cultural community or context.
Afrocentricity
An orientation toward African or African American cultural standards, including beliefs and values, as the criteria for interpreting behaviours and attitudes.
Critical Approach
A metatheoretical approach that includes many assumptions of the interpretive approach but focuses more on macrocontexts, such as the political and social structures that influence communication.
Macrocontexts
The political, social, and historical situations, backgrounds, and environments that influence communication.
Textual Analysis
Examination of cultural texts such as media - television, movies, journalistic essays, and so on.
Postcolonialism
An intellectual, political, and cultural movement that calls for the independence of colonialized states and also liberation from colonialist ways of thinking.
Hybrid Identity
An identity that is consciously a mixture of different cultural identities and cultural traditions.
Social Reproduction
The process of perpetuating cultural patterns.
Dialectical Approach
An approach to intercultural communication that integrates three approaches - functionalist (or social science), interpretive, and critical - in understanding culture and communication. It recognizes and accepts that the three approaches are interconnecte
Processual
Refers to how interaction happens rather than to the outcome.
Dialectic
1. A method of logic based on the principle that an idea generates its opposite, leading to a reconciliation of the opposites; 2. the complex and paradoxical relationship between two opposite qualities or entities, each of which may also be referred to as
Culture
Learned pattern of behaviour and attitudes shared by a group of people.
Ethnography of Communication
A specialized area of study within communication. Taking an interpretive perspective, scholars analyze verbal and non-verbal activities that have symbolic significance for the members of cultural groups to understand the rules and patterns followed by the
Symbolic Significance
The importance or meaning that most members of a cultural group attach to a communication activity.
Embodied Ethnocentrism
Feeling comfortable and familiar in the spaces, behaviours, and actions of others in our own cultural surroundings.
Communication
A symbolic process whereby reality is produced, maintained, repaired, and transformed.
Cultural Values
The worldview of a cultural group and its set of deeply held beliefs.
Power Distance
A cultural variability dimension that concerns the extent to which people accept an unequal distribution of power.
Masculinity-femininity Value
A cultural variability dimension that concerns the degree of being feminine - valuing fluid gender roles, quality of life, service, relationships, and interdependence - and the degree of being masculine - emphasizing distinctive gender roles, ambition, ma
Uncertainty Avoidance
A cultural variability dimension that concerns the extent to which uncertainty, ambiguity, and deviant ideas and behaviours are avoided.
Long-Term versus Short-Term Orientation
A cultural variability dimension that reflects a cultural-group orientation towards virtue or truth. The long-term orientation emphasizes virtue, whereas the short-term orientation emphasizes truth.
Cultural Space
The particular configuration of the communication that constructs meanings of various places.
Relational Messages
Messages (verbal and nonverbal) that communicate how we feel about others.
Status
The relative position an individual holds in social or organizational settings.
Deception
The act of making someone believe what is not true.
Expectancy Violations Theory
The view that when someone's nonverbal behaviour violates our expectations, these violations will be perceived positively or negatively depending on the specific context and behaviour.
Facial Expressions
Facial gestures that convey emotions and attitudes.
Contact Cultures
Cultural groups in which people tend to stand close together and touch frequently when they interact - for example, cultural groups in South America, the Middle East, and Southern Europe.
Noncontact Cultures
Cultural groups in which people tend to maintain more space and touch less often than people do in contact cultures. For instance, Great Britain and Japan tend to have noncontact cultures.
Eye Contact
A nonverbal code, eye gaze, that communicates meanings about respect and status and often regulates turn taking during interactions.
Paralinguistics
The study of vocal behaviours include voice qualities and vocalization.
Voice Qualities
The "music" of the human voice, including speed, pitch, rhythm, vocal range, and articulation.
Vocalizations
The sounds that we utter that do not have the structure of language.
Chronemics
The concept of time and the rules that govern its use.
Monochronic
An orientation to time that assumes it is linear and is a commodity that can be lost or gained.
Popular Culture
A new name for "low" culture, referring to those cultural products that most people share and know about, including television, music, videos and popular magazines.
Folk Culture
Traditional and non-mainstream cultural activities that are not financially driven.