What is Cross-Cultural Communications?

I LOVE cultures. I'm a sucker for their food, clothing, jewelry, music. The list is endless. I love how people relate to one another in different cultures. I can't keep this love secret.

During our first year in Austria, we attended a party with one of my fellow students. We were both enrolled in the same translation class, which I was flunking for the second time. However, my German language ability was improving rapidly because my friend always introduced me as an American who didn’t want to speak English so I could learn German more quickly. This introduction resulted in more friends more quickly. These friends, however, made the assumption that my ability to understand their body language was increasing as rapidly as my understanding of their words.

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Which compass should we follow?

At the party, a newly introduced friend offered me a cigarette, which I turned down, lit up one for himself and began to engage me in conversation. However, we were standing face to face, and he was standing just inches away from me. I could have bitten off the end of his cigarette every time he raised it take a draw.

I wondered if he was going to share something extremely personal and secretive. He didn’t. He simply asked how I was getting along in my classes. He would glad to get together for coffee to help me to learn German. He would ask questions about America. I would reply in German He would correct my mistakes.

His invitation thrilled me, I smiled, nodded, and took a slight step backwards that I hoped was invisible to him. It wasn't. He took a slight step toward me and continued the conversation with long, slow inhales and perfectly steady exhales.

On the way home, Christine, my wife, laughing, said that my new friend had backed me across the entire living room before she intervened to save me from asphyxiation by asking me a question.

From that point on, I would always take a couple of miniscule steps forward until the other person stepped back to allow my ingrained sense of space felt comfortable.

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Miscommunication? Conflict!

Our own cultural upbringing can deceive us. We tend to think that people from other cultures should be just like us, and we are shocked when they act in ways we don't understand. These experiences lead to major misunderstandings and distrust. We can avoid the damage caused by these outcomes, but it’s an uphill battle. We need outside help. We can’t trust our own upbringing. If someone tells you that it’s easy, get your advice from another source. We need to become familiar with at least six major subjects before we can even begin to assume that we know what we are doing in a cross-cultural situation.

We have to learn how other cultures THINK differently in order to understand why they ACT differently. Understanding why they ACT differently allows us to RESPOND in a way that they can understand. Not an easy task.

Built-in Drawbacks

We enter this arena with some built-in drawbacks. Our parents raise us to be like them. Every culture does this. This process of “enculturation” embeds the values and behaviors of our parent society into our souls. And every culture believes that its own view of the world is the common sense view or natural view. This “ethnocentric” thinking can be “neutral” or “negative.

A “neutral” belief, that my culture is the most sensible one, will accept a different culture without any major condemnation or conflict. It might not like the other cultures, but it will view other cultures as simply different. A “negative” belief will hold that its culture is superior to all others, and this reject may or may not result in conflict between the two cultures.

Even within each culture, what a person is allowed to believe is limited by the culture. In most cultures each person within that culture is entitled to their own viewpoints, as long as those viewpoints agree with the main lines of the culture. If a person holds viewpoints that contradict the basic tenets of that culture, the person is not allowed to express them without experiencing some form of rejection by the people in that culture.

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Which is more "advanced"? Which is more dangerous?

The negative perspective of ethnocentricity rises from a variety of experiences. This long word is defined as "the belief that one's ethnic group is superior to another." If we have been raised in a more “advanced” culture, we come to believe that we are more civilized and others are more primitive.

We usually base this belief on the advanced state of human development, arts and sciences, technology, government, social institutions, even religion. We look down at the more “primitive” cultures in their simplistic ignorance, lack of formal education, unsophisticated lifestyle, and superstitious religions. We adhere to the belief that these primitive cultures are just a step away from their primordial ancestors coming out of the forest to look for food and shelter.

Cross-cultural communication is complicated by the complexity of each culture. Defining “culture” is simple. Describing a culture takes a lifetime. With the given variations within a culture, every culture within itself requires the same set of values and beliefs that result in the same expected behaviors. We don’t see the values and beliefs. We only see the behavior. And we evaluate and judge that behavior according to our own expected behaviors. We seldom get around to studying the values and beliefs of other cultures that lead to different behaviors.

Culture's Hidden Tentacles

Our culture permeates far more than we realize. It directs our total way of life. If we change any part of our culture, that will affect every other part. Have you ever experienced "group pressure" in your own culture? What happened when you tried to do something different?

Most people seldom study their own culture. When someone from another culture asks them why they did something, they can only reply, “because we just do.” Studying the complex, interrelated and interwoven aspect of another culture requires more than reading a guidebook.

Without knowing those values and beliefs, we can seldom understand people from other cultures. We can only hope that we won’t damage each other.

Our first year in Austria taught us that what people say and do is seldom arbitrary. What they say and do makes sense to them. It might not make sense to us, because we have a different invisible dimension of culture, a different set of values and beliefs. When we witnessed something that didn’t make sense to us, we switched from saying to ourselves, “That’s stupid,” to “That’s different.” It saved us from condemning our new acquaintances based on our own biases.

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That's stupid.
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That's different.

Where I first noticed an Austrian man opening a door and entering a building, while his female companion entered after him, I thought that he was selfish and thoughtless. Later an Austrian explained to me that European men do that to protect the female from any potential dangers in the building.

Austrians like looking you directly in the eye. A Chinese friend informed me that the Chinese consider that intentionally intimidating until they have been properly introduced and conversed a bit. Since a person can’t do both at the same time, it helps to know which culture one is dealing with before introducing oneself to a new acquaintance.

In Russia, the color of yellow relates to funerals. Imagine a non-Russian young gentleman pursuing a Russian young lady by sending her yellow flowers, and then wondering why she never returned his phone call.

The KEY to Cross-Cultural Communication

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Navigating the landmines requires that we unlock the invisible dimension of values and beliefs before we can understand why the foreigners say and do what they say and do.

Every culture has to meet its own basic needs to survive. Based on a myriad of factors, each culture does that differently, with variations even within each culture. As a general rule, a human can survive three minutes without air, three hours without shelter from extreme exposure, three days without water and three weeks without food. Obviously, every cultures meets these basic needs differently, which directly influences their values, beliefs and behaviors. I will cover these primary basic needs later.

The non-survival needs consist of everything else that comprises a culture. A person can have all of the four basic needs and still not survive in a culture for lack of “fitting in” and experiencing rejection by the people in that culture.

Success in cross-cultural communications is simply this:

Discover the logic within each system that motivates them to meet their different needs according to their own values and beliefs. Then you can properly interpret and respond to their behaviors.

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I did it!

Since their actions/behaviors are based on their values and beliefs, a culture’s definition of right and wrong actions are founded on those values and beliefs. “Relative truth” reigns in every society. If a society “advocates”(values and beliefs) stealing as a good thing, then thieves will be praised, not condemned as wrong.

No human culture is based on “Absolute Truth,” since all cultures are founded on human values and beliefs. For example, the kind of deodorant allowed in each culture varies. Why? Because the definition of “cleanliness” varies. Do you use your bath water to wash you clothes in? Is it a dirty practice to use utensils to eat with? Is your toilet in the same room as your bathtub? These differences have destroyed relationships.

So, What is Cross-Cultural Communication?

Figuring out how another culture views reality, which produce their values and beliefs, which dictate their behaviors. Then attempting to communicate with people in that culture in ways that they will understand.

What next?

Why is Cross-Cultural Communications so important?

This blog was created in collaboration between the author and TAI from Solo Build It!. It was edited by a human to that human’s complete satisfaction.

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