[Ebook PDF] Intercultural Competence: Interpersonal Communication Across Cultures, 8th Edition

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Intercultural Competence: Interpersonal Communication Across Cultures, 8th Edition

ISBN-13: 978-0134003238
ISBN-10: 0134003233

Author: Myron W. Lustig (Author), Jolene Koester (Author), Rona Halualani (Author)

Fosters the proficiency in intercultural communication vital for students to thrive in private and public life
Intercultural Competence: Interpersonal Communication Across Cultures, Eighth Edition gives students sufficient knowledge, appropriate motivations, and useful skills that enable them to experience how cultural differences can affect communication with others. The authors offer some practical suggestions concerning the adjustments necessary to achieve intercultural competence when dealing with these cultural differences. Upon completing this text, students will be able to appreciate the impact of cultural patterns on intercultural communication; use both practical and theoretical ideas to understand intercultural communication competence; understand some of the central contexts in which intercultural communication occurs; and discuss cultural identity and the role of cultural biases.

PREFACE

We live in very interesting times.On the one hand, we are surrounded with unrelenting messages that encourage us to fear and distrust others: stories of hostile and combative enemies, of untrustworthy and
duplicitous leaders, of dangerous threats to the ideas and to the people we care about, and of maleficent intentions directed at us by foreigners and even by locals who are “different.” Given this view, it is easy to believe that people who are not like us should be avoided, and contact with them should be discouraged, lest suffering inevitably follows.
On the other hand, for many of us our individual social worlds are full of positive experiences. We have many “friends,” for example, that we experience primarily or exclusively via social media such as Facebook. That’s where we exchange illusions of intimacy and mirages of shared involvements. That’s where we connect with people whose ideas and experiences we “Like” ( ) without having to experience the vulnerabilities that are a necessary part of ongoing interpersonal relationships. And since we only interact with people whom we choose to befriend, social media often provides us with an optimistic, though perhaps sterile, interpersonal world.
Taken together, these two tendencies might suggest to some that there is little about intercultural communication that is worth knowing. We authors respectfully disagree with that worldview.
Neither media-reinforced distrust of those who seem most different, nor isolation in ephemeral soap-bubbles with like-minded individuals, will prepare you to experience the richness of living in an intercultural world. Nor, for most of us, is an isolated and “culture-free” world even possible to achieve, were it desirable to do so. Innovations in communications, transportation, and information technologies—on a
global and unprecedented scale—have created vast economic interdependencies, demographic shifts both within and across nations, and the greatest mingling of cultures the world has ever seen. These changes bring with them not just threats but also real and substantial opportunities to make your life, and the lives of countless others, better and more fulfilling than they might otherwise be. Consequently, competence in intercultural communication is vital if you want to function well in your private and public life. This need for intercultural competence creates a strong imperative for you to learn to communicate with people whose cultural heritages make them different from you.
Our purpose in writing this text is to provide you with sufficient knowledge, appropriate motivations, and useful skills that allow you to experience how cultural differences can affect your communication with others. We also offer some practical suggestions concerning the adjustments necessary to achieve intercultural competence when dealing with these cultural differences.
Acknowledgment of
Cultural Ancestry
At various points in our writing, we were amazed at how subtly but thoroughly our own cultural experiences had permeated the text. Lest anyone believe that our presentation of relevant theories, examples, and practical suggestions is without the distortion of culture, we would like to describe our own cultural heritages. Those heritages shape our understanding of intercultural communication, and they affect what we know, how we feel, and what we do when we communicate with others.
Myron (Ron) Lustig lives, simultaneously, in two cultural worlds. One is a culture characterized by prejudice, discrimination, and marginalization. The other is a culture marked by privilege, access, and inclusion. As a Jewish American, Ron has experienced the hatred, fear, and malevolence that targeted him and marginalized him solely because of his religious beliefs. But as a white-skinned
European American male, he has also experienced innumerable instances in which he could be and do whatever he desired, impeded only by the limits of his own abilities.
The juxtaposition of these two cultural worlds—of prejudice and privilege—have made him deeply curious about and passionately concerned with issues of culture, social justice, and intercultural communication.
Jolene Koester is a European American woman who was raised in a working-class family in a tiny town in rural Minnesota. That town was very homogeneous, and cultural differences—or any differences—were neither appreciated nor tolerated. The first in her family to attend college, she found university life to be eye-opening and boundary-expanding.
There she eagerly sought international education opportunities to interact with people from around the world, and these experiences started her on an adventure that continues to this day. While an undergraduate, she studied for year at a university in India. There she experienced the joys and tensions of adapting to another culture, which triggered an enduring interest in intercultural communication.
Rona Halualani has a multicultural background (Japanese American, Native Hawaiian, and White/European American). A typical day in Rona’s life while growing up included speaking Hawaiian to her father, attending a mainstream U.S. American school in California, and then attending Japanese language lessons in the evening. Rona was raised in a gender-egalitarian household in which both
parents performed all household duties, and she is married to a Chinese American man who is the eldest son in a family that expects more hierarchy in responsibilities. As such, her notions of gender roles, desired traditions, and cultural expectations differ from her husband’s. Together, they are raising fraternal twins (a boy and a girl) whose multiple cultural identities (Native Hawaiian, Japanese American,
Chinese American, and European American) are being integrated successfully.
Our families, backgrounds, and the communities in which we were raised have influenced the cultural perspectives we provide in this text. Many of our ideas and examples about intercultural communication draw on these cultural experiences. We have tried, however, to increase the number and range of other cultural voices through the ideas and examples that we provide. These voices, and the lessons
and illustrations they offer, represent our colleagues, our friends, our families, and, most importantly, our students.
Issues in the Use of Cultural Examples
Some of the examples in the text may include references to a culture to which you belong or with which you have had substantial experiences, and our examples may not match your personal knowledge. As you will discover in the opening chapters, both your own experiences and the examples we recount could be accurate. One of the tensions we felt in writing this text was in making statements that are broad
enough to provide reasonably accurate generalizations, but specific and tentative enough to avoid false claims of universal applicability to all individuals in a given culture.
We have struggled as well with issues of fairness, sensitivity, representativeness, and inclusiveness. Indeed, we have had innumerable discussions with our colleagues across the country—colleagues who, like ourselves, are committed to making the United States and its colleges and universities into truly multicultural institutions—and we have sought their advice about appropriate ways to reflect the value of cultural diversity in our writing. We have responded to their suggestions, and we appreciate the added measure of quality that these cultural voices supply.

Importance of Voices from Other Cultures
Although we have attempted to include a wide range of domestic and international cultural groups, inevitably we have shortchanged some simply because we do not have sufficient knowledge, either through direct experience or through secondary accounts, of all cultures. Our errors and omissions are not meant to exclude or discount. Rather, they represent the limits of our own intercultural communication experiences, which is a limitation that holds for everyone. We hope that you, as a reader with a cultural voice of your own, will participate with us in a dialogue that allows us to improve this text over time.
Readers of previous editions have been generous with their suggestions for improvement, and we are very grateful to them for their comments. We ask that you continue this dialogue by providing us with your feedback and responses. Please send us examples that illustrate the principles discussed in the text. Be willing to provide a cultural perspective that differs from our own and from those of
our colleagues, friends, and students. Our commitment now and in future editions of this text is to describe a variety of cultural voices with accuracy and sensitivity. We ask for your help in accomplishing that objective.