The concept of Intercultural communication envelopes from the words communication and culture and it’s not a new phenomenon, but a concept that has been developed as an academic discipline and has been part of human interaction.

We understand that communication is what we do in our daily lives and what we enjoy doing as this makes our daily lives meaningful. We listen to music, watch television, listen to lecturers in class, read newspapers, also through social media, etc., all these are means of communication. It was said that the motive of communication is either to persuade, inform, or entertain, and for effective communication, there are eight structural component which are the sender who is the intended recipient of the message, the message that is been transmitted which can be verbal or non-verbal through a channel, the channel is the medium by which the message is been convey to the receiver. The receiver is the intended recipient of the message who processes, interprets and assigns a meaning to the message. The receiver may prepare a response which is any action taken as a result of the meaning the receiver assigns to the message which may be aggressive or benign. The feedback helps us to evaluate the effectiveness of the message, the environment is the physical location where communication takes place, for instance in the shop, market place, religious place, football field, etc.

The last structural component is noise, which causes distraction in every communicative event and can be categorized into four different forms. The physical noise that occurs from an external medium and not from the communicative participants, such as sound from a cinema. The second form of noise is the psychological noise which occurs from the mind and causes distraction that hinders effective communication, such as thinking of a burnfire program during a communication session. The physiological noise related to the physical well being of the communicative participant, and semantic noise is related to language barrier which leads to misunderstanding. It is expected to rely on one language for effective communication to take place. Semantic noise also encompasses jargon, slang, and professional terminologies. 

These eight structural components are very paramount for effective communication but our culture also influences our interactive communication. Culture is a way of life which includes beliefs, art, knowledge, law, customs, that binds men together in a certain setting.

If people come together with different cultures, backgrounds and experiences, it can cause conflicts and misunderstandings. This is because verbal communication and paralanguage, being big parts of culture, have been learned differently. Communication can therefore be very direct or indirect, with high or low context and is subject to different forms of manners (hierarchical or equally distributed power relations).

The most noticable difference in Intercultural Communication is that of high-context and low-context. A high-context culture would require a person to “read the air” and capture the underlying message, meanwhile a low context culture expects a person to be straightforward and very literal while communicating. The highest chance for misunderstanding arises between different high-context cultural groups, so the optimal choice for these groups is to keep things low-context.

To overcome these cultural differences and reduce conflicts, there are different methods such as implementing rules for communication before working together, same for the decision making process and individuals can practise active listening. The last one can also be helpful when a conflict has already occurred. In order to solve conflicts, depending on the circumstances I-messages might be a good tool to communicate issues in a more sensible way.

Exposing yourself to different types of cultures with an open mind is also a good approach, as it makes you appreciate differences and switches you to “think out of the box” more often. It becomes imperative if you are going to compete in a global working market.

Understanding others comes with a surprising side effect which is understanding yourself and vice versa. Your ego states are something to be aware of in Intercultural Communication. In order to have an open mind for example like we mentioned above, avoiding the Parent or Child state and maintaining an Adult state would be the best choice.

In worst case scenarios where conflict arises, stopping things early on and not escalating is the solution. Escalation could quickly go to a point of no return and mediation is not possible anymore. Two conflicting parties could solve things by submission, compromise, transfer of authority, etc. Compromise is the most beneficial and to achieve it, both parties must be: flexible, use active listening, debate constructively by identifying the problems effectively and be able to “talk about the elephant in the room”, and also give feedback.

Communication might not be able to stop 100% of the problems and conflicts between people, but it can help in prevention and mitigation. It is a powerful and elastic tool to use, as there is no formula to achieve success in every given situation.

Apart from this knowledge, we learned a lot more during the last two weeks which partly still has to be processed and sorted in our minds.

From Celine, Deart, and Femi.