This module will reflect on what ‘culture’ is and how cultural practices can differ. We also consider how behaviour, thinking and language can be adapted to enhance communication in a way that minimises miscommunication and maximises understanding.
We will also explore how people accommodate their communicative styles in order to communicate effectively, and the implications this has, especially for global languages such as English.
The module will also reflect on and challenge the knowledge we have of ourselves and our culture(s), as well as our knowledge of others. This includes consideration of how meanings are interpreted differently among people with different backgrounds. We will examine stereotypes, and consider how people accept, consume and perform social difference. Then, through intercultural dialogues, we will look at how we interact with, observe and build knowledge of culture and intercultural communication.
The areas typically include:
- What culture is and how it relates to communication and language
- How intercultural competence and intercultural awareness can be developed in practice and through reflection and dialogue
- What research in the field tells us about effective and problematic practices in intercultural communication
- The role of language, particularly English, in intercultural communication
- How globalisation disseminates and recontextualises cultural meanings and practices
- The implications of the Web for intercultural communication and social identification
- The roles and domains of stereotypes and issues accompanying them in an increasingly globalised world
- Factors that influence working and studying in multilingual and multicultural groups
- Differences between cross-cultural and transcultural communication and intercultural communication, and why this matters in discussions of culture and communication
- Social dynamics of communication and representations of culture in the media (e.g. mass media, popular culture and social networks)