Lesikar's Business Communication: Connecting in a Digital World, 13/e
ISBN: 0073403210
Copyright year: 2014
Copyright year: 2014
Supplements
Chapter 2: Communicating Across Cultures
Teaching Suggestions
Slides 2-1, 2-2
The subject
matter of this chapter lends itself best to lecture and discussion. If your experience permits, you can enrich the
lecture with additional material. If you
have nonnative students in the class, they can be a wonderful resource. Encourage them to talk frankly about their
experiences in different countries, their language problems, and their views
about different cultures’ communication practices. Students who have traveled abroad can also add
to the discussion. If your area has a
company with an executive responsible for cultural diversity in the workplace,
inviting him or her to speak is another idea.
The questions at
the end of the chapter are designed to generate discussion and to stress the
text highlights. And the application
exercises help students practice communicating with nonnatives.
Text Summary, Lecture Outline
Importance of Cross-Cultural Communication
Slide 2-3
Technological
advances have made doing business more global.
Large and small companies now have both employees and customers in other
countries.
By understanding
customers from other cultures better, we will be better able to design products
and services that fit their needs.
Successful communication
across cultures improves productivity and creates a comfortable workplace.
Finally,
communicating with those from other cultures enriches not only the business but
also one’s personal life.
This slide can be
used for an interactive discussion. Ask
students to give examples they know of that support each of the points given
here.
You may want to
ask students to give examples of times they were embarrassed in a
cross-cultural situation or tell an anecdote of your own to break the ice. Did
they misunderstand someone’s accent or what someone was saying? Did they
accidentally offend someone from another culture?
On the positive
side, ask students if they’ve ever had a close personal or professional
relationship with a person from another culture. What communication challenges
arose? What did they gain from the relationship?
Another
entertaining possibility for discussion is sharing some famous, humorous
international gaffes that politicians have made when communicating with leaders
of other countries. The class can bond over these, since some are well-known,
and it adds a little laughter and familiarity to new material.
Slide 2-4
You can use this
slide to open up a rich discussion about culture.
Ask students if they agree with Dutch
sociologist Geert Hofstede’s definition of culture. Better yet, ask them to write down their own
definitions of culture before sharing this slide and then compare and contrast.
Slide 2-5
You can use this
slide to help students think about the big picture, as the text advises them to
do. Students are often too quick to zero
in on particular cultures’ habits and traits, which students are likely to view
as peculiar or to misunderstand, unless seen in the larger context of the
culture’s history, location, and so forth.
Help students appreciate the wide variety of cultures out there—and also
the similarities across cultures that enable businesspeople from these various
cultures to work together.
Slide 2-6
The three major
factors that affect culture are topography, history, and religion.
Chapter 2 contains an in-depth
discussion on each of these.
For students not
able to see these on a macro, international level across cultures, it may be
helpful to look at them on a micro, personal level.
Have them
consider, for a moment, their own hometowns and states. How was the culture
there influenced by topography, such as the tourist-trap lake community or
isolated farm community?
What was the
town’s or city’s history and how did it influence collective thinking and
beliefs?
What were the
different religions and how did they impact the overall culture? For instance, how did religious beliefs affect
collective thinking, politics, relationships, attitudes towards marriage,
entertainment, and the arts?
This discussion
may help U.S. students understand that even within their own classroom every
person has a slightly different cultural perspective. This can open their minds
to broader cross-cultural thinking.
Slide 2-7
Using examples
from the book, your own experience, and your students’ experiences, discuss the
different meanings of various body positions and
movements across cultures:
Gestures
frequently have very different meanings from one culture to another.
Eyes are used
differently in some cultures. What seems
like a stare to one may seem appropriate to another.
Touching and
handshaking practices and preferences vary by culture too.
Even facial
expressions such as smiles and raising of the eyebrows communicate differently
across cultures.
See if students
can think of examples of other physical signs whose meanings might be
miscommunicated across cultures.
Slide 2-8
The text gives
more examples of how meanings of these physical parts/acts can vary across
culture.
A fun class
activity at the start of the Chapter 2 lecture is to show this slide after
introducing the chapter, and have students “meet and greet” using one of the
handshakes. (You can call this the “cross-cultural cocktail party” without
cocktails.) Particularly since it’s the beginning of the course, it’s a great
opportunity for students to get to know each other and bring the material to
life. The student on the receiving end guesses if the handshake is French,
American, British, etc. and returns one of his or her own.
Or you can use
the activity to gracefully end the lecture and transition into group work.
Slide 2-9
Here, too, use
examples to heighten students’ awareness that many factors of human
relationships that they assume are universal (and therefore “normal”) are not.
Time is one factor businesspeople need to understand. Some cultures, such as the Germans, believe in
precise punctuality. Other cultures have
a much more relaxed attitude toward time, not valuing punctuality highly.
Space use differs across cultures. Some
cultures view space as belonging to all, and others believe in personal space. One from a culture where space belongs to all
might not recognize that he or she is violating the personal or intimate space
of someone from another culture.
Odors also carry different messages in different cultures. While one culture may value body odors,
another culture may value covering them up. As the text states, “Americans work hard to
neutralize body odors or cover them up and view those with body odors as dirty
and unsanitary. On the other hand, in
some Asian cultures people view body odors not as something to be hidden but as
something that friends should experience.”
Frankness variations can also impede communication. The directness that one person may view as
appropriate may seem too abrupt and unfriendly to someone else.
Social hierarchy can influence communication practices. In
some cultures, strict social classes exist. A person from one culture may quiz
a person from another culture to determine that person's class status.
Questions concerning occupation, income and title may even be asked. This can
be offensive to some cultures. Also, some Americans immediately call people by
their first names, a practice offensive to the Germans and English.
Workplace Values. Works ethics and values vary across cultures. Many
Americans, for instance, have a Protestant work ethic that puts work before
pleasure. In Spain
Expression of emotion can be causes of miscommunication. For example, the display of public affection
may be acceptable behavior in one culture and totally unacceptable in another.
You may want to
ask students to think of times when they felt surprised by a cross-cultural
interaction because of one of these factors or share one of your own anecdotes.
These may be
interesting points of discussion, assuming that cultural sensitivity and the
diversity of the classroom is taken into account.
Slide 2-10
Before moving on
to the second main topic of the chapter, you might pause to take a closer look
at the three Communication Matters boxes
that present different frameworks for understanding cultures.
Edward Hall’s framework (page 33) has been challenged but seems to have value
as a general interpretive tool. To help
students understand the “high-context/low-context” idea, you might have them
recall and share communication situations they’ve experienced in which much of the
background could be assumed (as when talking with a close friend) and those in
which very little could (as when talking with someone of a different age or
with very different frames of reference).
Geert Hofstede’s work on cultural difference (see page 34) is widely known
and applied. As you explain each
dimension, invite students to validate or challenge these with their own
experiences. When you’ve covered the
whole list, ask if anyone can think of additional dimensions that might be
added.
Richard Lewis’s framework (page 35) might actually be one possible
answer to this question, since his model arguably addresses a dimension that
Hofstede leaves out. Ask students what
they think about the usefulness of Lewis’s concepts.
The overall point
is that no one has a comprehensive, foolproof device for analyzing
cultures—these are just interpretive aids.
As the executive quoted in the box on Hofstede says, such aids are
helpful but crude; one must ultimately assess each situation and each
communication partner on one’s own.
Slide 2-11
The “Effects on
Business Communication” segment of this chapter (page 36) discusses these
issues in-depth. Students should understand that there is no formula for
communication when conversing across cultures.
The textbook was
written for U.S. U.S.
Even social
networking preferences vary from culture to culture.
Problems of Language
Slides 2-12, 2-13,
2-14, 2-15
This
slide identifies some of the problems the language imposes on communication
across cultures. It can be used to
introduce the specific examples in slides 2-13 to 2-23.
Lack of language equivalency: A lack of language equivalency is a
contributing factor to miscommunication.
Across the planet, people use more than 3,000 languages. Because few of
us can learn more than one or two other languages well, problems of
miscommunication are bound to occur in international communication.
Different
cultures have different concepts, experiences, and views. For example, our word
supermarket may have no equivalent translation because there is no need for it
if such stores do not exist. Similarly,
Italians have over 500 words for types of pasta since it is important to their
experience.
Sometimes
words have no equivalent because the language has no equivalent part of speech.
This is often true of gerunds, adjectives, and adverbs.
Multiple meanings of words: Adding to these equivalency problems is the
problem of multiple word meanings. Like English, other languages have more than
one meaning for many words. The Oxford
English
Dictionary uses over 15,000 words to define what. Unless one knows a language
well, it is difficult to know which of the meanings is intended.
Two-word verbs: One of the most difficult problems for
nonnative speakers of English is two-word verbs. This is defined as wording
consisting of 1) a verb and 2) a second element that, combined with a verb,
produces a meaning that the verb alone doesn't have. Examples include break up, break away, and break down.
Slang/colloquialisms and culturally derived
words/phrases: Within a
culture, certain manners of expression may also be used in a way that their
dictionary translations and grammatical structures do not explain.
See if
students can link the examples on slide 2-13 to the country/culture of the
language from which the examples come.
Help them see that language is an index to the values and practices of a
culture. Why might we not have any equivalency in the U.S.
For slide
2-14, ask students to consider why other cultures may not have these English
words. For slide 2-15, ask students to consider how certain English expressions
might be interpreted by other cultures.
Slides 2-16, 2-17
Multiple meanings of words contribute to the language problem. As the
Communication Matters box on page 37 points out, some U.S.
Use the simple
examples on this slide to sensitize students to the many meanings that some
words can have.
One technique
used to overcome these problems in important messages is called “back
translating.” It involves using two translators: each having first language and
second language skills in opposite relevant languages.
Slide 2-18
Two-word verbs often create difficulties for nonnatives. Two-word verbs combine a verb and a second
word to create a meaning that the verb alone does not convey. Taking care to substitute a more easily
understood word or phrase—as this slide illustrates—improves the communication.
Slides 2-19, 2-20,
2-21, 2-22
Culturally derived words also impede communication. Avoiding slang expressions, American idioms,
and colloquialisms will help immensely. Nonnatives
have often learned English from dictionary meanings, and they have trouble
discriminating between the different shades of meanings that we give words.
See if students
can think of additional problematic examples beyond those on these slides and
then replace them with more cross-culturally friendly substitutes.
For slide 2-22,
ask students to guess the meanings of these idioms from other cultures to
develop some empathy for nonnative speakers in the U.S.
Slide 2-23
Sometimes
companies make blunders in international business through their products, practices, and words.
You might ask
students to share their own examples of funny blunders experienced by marketers
attempting to reach across cultural boundaries.
Also, consider
asking students why they think this occurs. Did the marketing departments and
advertising agencies just not do their research? What do they think happened?
Researching the reasons for some of these famous incidents before the lecture
helps complete the discussion.
Advice for Communicating Across Cultures
Slide 2-24
Do your research. The
Internet makes it so easy to find out about other cultures that there is no
excuse for not doing so if one anticipates a cross-cultural communication
event. But more in-depth research may be
necessary. Discuss other good sources of
information.
Know yourself and your company. It is tempting to prepare
for a cross-cultural experience only by studying the culture of the “other”
country. But we all know that company
cultures vary widely even in one country—and people in other countries may have
certain stereotypical views of us. You
might discuss ways to analyze one’s company culture and one’s own values and
communication styles in order to be a more aware, agile communicator.
Be aware—and wary—of stereotypes. The word stereotypes has acquired a negative connotation
over the years, especially as we have become more appreciative of diversity of
all kinds. But stereotypes can be handy
interpretive devices. After all, most of
them have arisen because of perceived similarities or patterns, so they often
have some predictive value. But the
sensitive cross-cultural communicator is quick to alter the stereotype in the
face of contrary evidence. Not to do so would
be lazy and even unethical.
Adapt your English to your audience. Many nonnative English
speakers have an amazing grasp of the English language. Even so, certain features of our discourse
can give them undue trouble. To maximize
your chances of being understood, follow the advice listed here and on earlier
slides.
Be open to change. Businesspeople are goal oriented, and that
sometimes makes them plow ahead when they should be listening and
reflecting. Cross-cultural communication
is an opportunity to grow as a person, a businessperson, and a world
citizen. An open, flexible attitude will
help you reap these benefits.
That being said, intercultural businesspeople
do sometimes encounter indefensible business practices. Have an honest discussion with your class
about examples of these and explore possible solutions.
Slide 2-25
This slide presents an excellent
opportunity for students to follow the advice on cross-cultural communication
and “know themselves.” Consider forming
a quick self-test based on the three theoretical frames of communication in
your text, and discussed on slide 2-10, and have students discover their own
communication styles.
Resources
Slides 2-26, 2-27,
2-28, 2-29, 2-30
Many resources are available for learning
about other cultures and for help with other languages. Figure 2-3 on page 42 lists some of the best
of these.
These last slides show five helpful
computer-based tools. Travlang has a
wealth of assistance, from a translation program to a currency converter to
world facts (you can zoom into the links on the left to explore these).
Word comes with its own built-in
translation program (the slide shows a brief email in English translated into
French).
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