Cross Cultural Communication

Abstract

With the imperatives of globalization, it has become inevitable that people of diverse cultures, backgrounds & linguistic orientations will meet and interact with each other at some juncture whether it is an educational institution, trading or companies having diverse work force participating in global economy. Where different perspectives cross ways, it becomes essential for thoughts to get across to all stakeholders with explicit clarity to avoid misunderstandings .There may be a possibility of communication casualties like missing the main idea of the conversation, misunderstanding or misinterpretation of one’s words and being offended by use of certain non-verbal gestures. Each individual belonging to a particular culture has social habits or values that influence the verbal expression of emotions and even aspects of non- verbal communication, like gestures, facial expressions and body language. Symbols and images necessarily do not all translate well across cultures and need deeper than skin understanding to interpret and conclude justifiably. This paper, while suggesting cultural sensitivity and related aspects as the vectors to cross cultural communication, also highlights the major barriers to effective communication elucidated through a Primary research survey, conducted among Engineering students of one of India’s premier institutes. The student profile are natives of the same country - India, they belong to different regions, culture, societal grade segregations and hence use different paralinguistic and prosodic features while communicating. The survey analysis examines the obstacles in effective communication, cross culturally, using evaluative parameters like difference in cultural norms, status and various other factors.

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Author Information
Vineeta Kaur Saluja, Indian Institute of Information Technology Design and Manufacturing, India

• Category: Cross-Cultural Communication

Posted by James Alexander Gordon

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