Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface to the Second Edition
- 1 Approaching Intercultural Communication
- 2 The Genealogy of Intercultural Communication
- 3 Language and Culture
- 4 Nation and Culture
- 5 Intercultural Communication in a Multilingual World
- 6 Intercultural Communication in a Transnational World
- 7 Intercultural Communication at Work
- 8 Intercultural Communication for Sale
- 9 Intercultural Romance
- 10 Intercultural Communication in Education
- 11 Becoming an Intercultural Mediator
- References
- Index
1 - Approaching Intercultural Communication
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 December 2017
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface to the Second Edition
- 1 Approaching Intercultural Communication
- 2 The Genealogy of Intercultural Communication
- 3 Language and Culture
- 4 Nation and Culture
- 5 Intercultural Communication in a Multilingual World
- 6 Intercultural Communication in a Transnational World
- 7 Intercultural Communication at Work
- 8 Intercultural Communication for Sale
- 9 Intercultural Romance
- 10 Intercultural Communication in Education
- 11 Becoming an Intercultural Mediator
- References
- Index
Summary
CHAPTER OBJECTIVES
This chapter will enable you to:
• Start thinking about intercultural communication in terms of one central research question: Who makes culture relevant to whom in which context for which purposes?
• Familiarise yourself with the terms cross-cultural communication, intercultural communication and inter-discourse communication, and identify how the terms are used with different, similar or overlapping meanings in different studies.
• Analyse culture-related texts for the uses, content, scope and status of culture.
INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION: WHAT IS IT?
‘Intercultural communication’ is one of those terms that everybody uses, and in many different and not necessarily compatible ways. Instead of starting with a definition, I will start with a description of three studies that come under the heading ‘intercultural communication’, and I will ask you to work out for yourself how the researchers who conducted and wrote these studies understand ‘intercultural communication’.
Study 1 is an investigation of the ways in which British and Italian service staff of an airline respond to service failure (Lorenzoni and Lewis 2004). Service failure is another term for ‘when something goes wrong’ such as baggage being lost or a customer not being able to get on their flight due to overbooking. The researchers administered a questionnaire to thirty-seven British and thirty-nine Italian ground, telephone and cabin staff who worked for the same airline. Both British and Italian staff were very similar in their ‘behavioural responses’, that is, they reported that they would respond similarly to service failure. For instance, most participants claimed that they would try to change an arrangement if doing so was within company regulations. If it was impossible to change an arrangement, they indicated on the questionnaire that they would explain to the customer why this was so.
While British and Italian employees said they would behave in similar ways in response to a service failure, the two groups reported different attitudes towards customers affected by service failure. For example, Italian service staff reported that they sometimes bent the rules a bit for ‘ compassionate cases’ but British workers did not.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Intercultural CommunicationA Critical Introduction, pp. 1 - 12Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2017