What are the three ingredients of culture?
1. Artifacts (the material and spiritual products people produce)
2. behavior (what they do) 3. concepts (beliefs, values, world views…)
Decoding ◦ Decoding is the opposite process of encoding and just as much an active process.
Receiver response ◦ It refers to anything the receiver does after having attended to and decoded the message.
Culture is shared.
Culture is learned.
◦ Enculturation(文化习得) : all the activities of learning one’s culture are called enculturation.
Culture is dynamic. (pg. 6)
Global village: All the different parts of the world form one community linked together by electronic communications, especially the Internet.
Melting pot: a socio-cultural assimilation of people of different backgrounds and nationalities.
Message ◦ The term message identifies the encoded thought. Encoding is the process, the verb; the message is the resulting object.
Channel ◦ The term channel is used technically to refer to the means by which the encoded message is transmitted. The channel or medium, then, may be print, electronic, or the light and sound waves of the face-to-face communication.
The concept of culture
Culture: a learned set of shared interpretations about beliefs, values, and norms, which affect the behavior of a relatively large group of people.
Nowadays, more and more English-speaking people address others by using the first name, even when people meet for the first time. (pg. 23)
In China seniority资历 is paid respect to. Juniors are supposed to address seniors in a proper way. The use of given names is limited to husband and wife, very close friends, juniors by elders or superiors.
Culture is ethnocentric(文化中心主义).
◦ Ethnocentrism: the belief that your own cultural background is superior.
Communication
Communication: meaning to share with or to make common, as in giving to another a part or share of your thoughts, hopes, and knowledge.
Noise ◦ The term noise technically refers to anything that distorts the message the source encodes.
Receiver ◦ The receiver is the person who attends to the message.
◦ Acculturation(文化适应): the process which adopts the changes brought about by another culture and develops an increased similarity between the two cultures.
Characteristics of Communication
Communication is dynamic Communication is irreversible. Communication is symbolic.
Communication is systematic. Communication is transactional. (pg. 8) Communication is contextual. (pg. 8)
ቤተ መጻሕፍቲ ባይዱ
Unit 2-4 Verbal Communication
Pragmatics: the study of the effect that language has on human perceptions and behavior.
Semantics: the study of the meaning of words. Denotation: the literal meaning or definition of a word
Cultural Diversity: the mix of people from various backgrounds in the labor force with a full mix of cultures and sub-cultures to which members belong.
How is Chinese addressing different from American addressing? (p22-23)
Addressing by names
Name order ◦ Surname + given name / He Xiangu ◦ Given name + surname (AE)/ Linda Smith
Feedback ◦ Feedback refers to that portion of the receiver response of which the source has knowledge and to which the source attends and assigns meaning.
Addressing by title, office, profession
Another common Chinese form of address is the use of a person’s title, office, or profession to indicate the person’s influential status. In English, only a few occupations or titles could be used. (pg. 24)
(what they think)
The aspects of culture that are explicit, visible, taught.
The aspects of culture that are intangible and not taught directly.
Characteristics of Culture
--- the explicit, particular, defined meaning. Connotation: the suggestive meaning of a word --- all
the values, judgments, and beliefs implied by a word, the historical and associative accretion of the unspoken significance behind the literal meaning. Taboo: some objects, words or actions that are avoided by a particular group of people, or in certain culture for religious or social reasons. Euphemism: the act of substituting a mild, indirect, or vague term for one considered harsh, blunt, or offensive.
Context ◦ The final component of communication is context. Generally, context can be defined as the environment in which the communication takes place and which helps define the communication.