commucation across culture

Communication is a dynamic process

Communication is an ongoing, ever changing activity. It is not fixed.

“You can’t stand in the same stream twice.”

When people communicate, they are constantly affected by each other’s messages and as a consequence, people undergo continual change.

Each time one is influenced, one changes in some way and people never stay frozen when in communication.

Once a word or an action is employed, it cannot be retracted.

Communication is symbolic

Communication involves the use of symbols.

A symbol is a word, action, or object that strands for or presents a unit of meanings. Meaning, in turn, is a perception, thought, or feeling that a person experiences and might want to communicate to others.

People’s behaviors are frequently interpreted symbolically, as an external representation of feelings, emotions, and internal states.

Communication is interactive/transactional

Communication must take place between people.

When two or more people communicate, their unique backgrounds and experiences serve as a backdrop for the communication interaction.

Communicators are simultaneously sending and receiving messages at every instant that they are involved in conversations.

There are no such entities as pure senders or pure receivers.

Communication is systemic/contextual

Communication does not occur in isolation or in a vacuum, but rather is part of a larger system.

Setting and environment help determine the words and actions you generate and the meanings you give the symbols produced by other people.

Dress, language, topic selection, and the like are all adapted to context.

People do not act the same way in every environment.

Communication is contextual/systemic

All communication takes place within a setting or situation called a context.

By context, we mean the place where people meet, the social purpose for being together, and the nature of the relationship.

Thus, the context includes the physical, social, and interpersonal settings within which messages are exchanged.

The physical context includes the actual location of the interactants: indoors or outdoors, crowded or quiet, public or private, close together or far apart, warm or cold, bright or dark. The social context refers to the widely shared expectations people have about the kinds of interactions that normally should occur given different kinds of social events.

The interpersonal context refers to the expectations about the behaviors of others as a result of differences in the relationships between them. (examples---p69-70)