How Culture Colors Communication Style
- Felicity Douglas (Iowa State University)
Abstract
This workshop will examine the intersection of culture and communication style by looking at some of the building blocks of face-to-face communication, and how our own cultural assumptions color what we say, hear, and attend to. Besides analyzing features such as body language, turntaking, sense of self, and politeness, we will look at many communication examples to identify their cultural assumptions and when and why miscommunication occurred.
One meaning of culture is the ways a group of people has agreed to behave, to interact with each other, and generally to deal with the world. These ways have developed gradually over time and take the form of unconscious rules of accepted behavior which members of the culture do not even notice until they come in contact with another group of people with different cultural assumptions.
Awareness of what goes into their communication will give participants insights to recognize when miscommunication may be due to cultural factors and how to improve their cross-cultural communication skills.