Cross-Cultural Communication: Theoretical Foundations

This report first examined the professional and scholarly literature on cross-cultural communication and its underpinning theory. The report contains an Introduction and purpose, a review of relevant literature, a discussion of theory, an explication of the research methodology used in a quantitative study of Arab (i.e., Kuwaiti) businessmen's attitudes toward Western communication styles and activities, and analysis of data generated by the study. Results indicate that Hofstede's Dimensions of Culture are reliable predictors of communication style preferences.

Culture is defined herein as "a shared set of meanings that are lived through the material and symbolic practices of everyday life (Knox & Marston, 2001, p. G-2)." A cultural system consists of a collection of interacting elements that taken together constitute a particular group's collective identity (Knox & Marston, 2001). While most individuals obtain from their surrounding and nurturing culture a broad as well as specific understanding of what is (and is not) valued in terms of individual behavior and attitudes, most cultures permit a significant amount of freedom in which individual personality is formed.

Culture, in the view of Geert Hofstede (1980; 2000), can be understood as having specific dimensions - dimensions that vary from one culture to another and which, taken as a totality, shape such cultural entities as behaviors, value

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82) and Zaharna (1995) have all asserted that there are critically important communicative differences between members of different cultures. Specifically, where Tannen (1982) focused on gender differences in communication and Hall (1976) looked for universal elements in communication, Zaharna (1991, 1995) specifically compared Western and Arabic speakers with respect to not only their communicative styles, but also their cultural typologies. Zaharna (1991; 1995) described Arabic culture as in direct opposition to Western culture on such dimensions as context, directness, doing versus being, linearity, and the function of language. This researcher suggests that Western cultures tend to be low-context to emphasize doing rather than being, to value direct rather than indirect communication and action, and to use linear communicative styles in information transfer. Arabic cultures in contrast are less linear, less likely to use language primarily to transfer information, more conscious of being than doing, indirect rather than direct in approaching goals and objectives, and high-context or focused on shared symbols and values. Other research also affirms that there is a gap between Arab and American and other Western busine
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Approximate Word count = 3176
Approximate Pages = 13 (250 words per page)

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