Cross-cultural communication

Cross-cultural communication (also frequently referred to as intercultural communication) is a field of study that looks at how people from different cultural backgrounds communicate in similar and different ways among themselves.

In the past decade, there has become an increasing pressure for universities across the world to incorporate intercultural and international understanding and knowledge into the education of their students. International literacy and cross-cultural understanding have become critical to a country’s cultural, technological, economic, and political health. It has become essential for universities to educate, or more importantly, “transform”, to function effectively and comfortably in a world characterized by close; multi-faceted relationships. Students must possess a certain level of global competence to understand the world they live in and how they fit into this world.

Cross-cultural communication, as many scholarly fields, is a combination of many other fields. These fields include anthropology, cultural studies, psychology and communication.

The study of languages can not only serve to help us understand what we as human beings have in common, but also assist us in understanding the diversity which underlies not only our languages, but also our ways of constructing and organizing knowledge, and many different realities in which we all live and interact. Such understanding has profound implications with respect to developing a critical awareness of social relationships. Understanding social relationships and the way other cultures work is the groundwork of successful globalization business efforts.

Language socialization can be broadly defined as “an investigation of how language both presupposes and creates anew social relations in cultural context”. It is imperative that the speaker understands the grammar of a language, as well as how elements of language are socially situated in order to reach communicative competence. Human experience is culturally relevant, so elements of language are also culturally relevant. One must carefully consider semiotics and the evaluation of sign systems to compare cross-cultural norms of communication. There are several potential problems that come with language socialization, however. Sometimes people can over-generalize or label cultures with stereotypical and subjective characterizations.