Reading Material 1　Intercultural Communication

Intercultural communication (also frequently referred to as cross-cultural communication，which is also used in a different sense，though)is a field of study that looks at how people from differing cultural backgrounds communicate，in similar and different ways among themselves，and how they endeavour to communicate across cultures.

In years during and preceding the Cold War，the United States economy was largely self-contained because the world was polarized into two separate and competing powers:the east and west.However，changes and advancements in economic relationships，political systems，and technological options began to break down old cultural barriers.Business transformed from individual-country capitalism to global capitalism.Thus，the study of cross-cultural communication was originally found within businesses and the government both seeking to expand globally.Businesses began to offer language training to their employees.Businesses found that their employees were ill-equipped for overseas work in the globalizing market.Programs were developed to train employees to understand how to act when abroad.With this also came the development of the Foreign Service Institute(or FSI)，through the Foreign Service Act of 1946，where government employees received trainings and prepared for overseas posts.There began also implementation of a “world view”perspective in the curriculum of higher education.In 1974，the International Progress Organization，with the support of UNESCO and under the auspices of Senegalese President Léopold Sédar Senghor，held an international conference on “The Cultural Self-Comprehension of Nations ”(Innsbruck，Austria，27-29 July 1974)which called upon United Nations member states“to organize systematic and global comparative research on the different cultures of the world”and “to make all possible efforts for a more intensive training of diplomats in the field of international cultural co-operation…and to develop the cultural aspects of their foreign policy.”

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 crosscultural 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 and permeable borders.Students must possess a certain level of global competence to understand the world they live in and how they fit into this world.This level of global competence starts at ground level—the university and its faculty—with how they generate and transmit cross-cultural knowledge and information to students.

Intercultural communication tries to bring together such relatively unrelated areas as cultural anthropology and established areas of communication.Its core is to establish and understand how people from different cultures communicate with each other.Its charge is to also produce some guidelines with which people from different cultures can better communicate with each other.

Intercultural communication，as in many scholarly fields，is a combination of many other fields.These fields include anthropology，cultural studies，psychology and communication.The field has also moved both toward the treatment of interethnic relations，and toward the study of communication strategies used by cocultural populations，i.e.，communication strategies used to deal with majority or mainstream populations.

The study of languages other than one's own 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 the 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.Another primary concern with documenting alternative cultural norms revolves around the fact that no social actor uses language in ways that perfectly match normative characterizations.A methodology for investigating how an individual uses language and other semiotic activity to create and use new models of conduct and how this varies from the cultural norm should be incorporated into the study of language socialization.