Тема 6.

Lecture 6. Underlying Dimensions of Culture

Culture is more than elements in a system. Culture also involves a shared per­ception about self and others. Culture includes how people think—their beliefs, values, world view, and information processing. These are all part of a less obvi­ous yet highly significant nature of culture: cognitive culture. Culture has structure—it is a system with behaviors, rules, and institu­tional factors. However, culture involves vision, beliefs, truths, and outlooks that have an impact on its members.

Cultural Differences in Information Processing

Monochronic Time Orientation

Edward T. Hall's Beyond Culture (1976) expresses an important theory about the way cultures process time. According to Hall, the element of time structures our in­teraction. Indeed, there appears to be a continuum of time orientation, with monochronic time on one end and polychronic time on the other.

Monochronic time urges people to do one thing at a time. Time, for them, is like a long ribbon of highway that can be sliced into segments. Monochromes believe that accomplishments and tasks can and should be performed during each segment. Monochronics have a high need for closure—completing a task or coming to a conclusion in a relationship.

Polychronic Time Orientation

Although monochronic individuals think in terms of linear-sequential, time-ordered patterns (1, 2, 3, or A, B, C), there are cognitive cultures whose mem­bers think in terms of pictures or configurations. The configurational pattern of thought that follows a nonlinear order of attention to stimulus is called poly­chronic time orientation. Here, the stimulus items may follow an attention pat­tern unique to that culture, as for instance, 1, 16, 37, 2, or A, M, Z, B. Polychrome individuals tend to think about and attempt to do a number of things simultaneously.

High- and Low-Context Cultures

Another way that cultures process information revolves around how much its members are expected to know about procedures and rules without being told. Some cultures expect you to know what to do in certain situations. Other cul­tures do not make these assumptions. To put the idea another way, some cultures are not high in providing members with information about routines or rituals or about how to behave in common, everyday situations. Other cultures, however, provide information to equip members with procedures and practices in a num­ber of situations.

A culture in which information about procedure is not overly communicated is called a high-context culture or HCC (Hall 1976). Members are expected to know how to perform, so information and cultural rules remain implicit. The context is supposed to be the cue for behavior. In a low-context culture, or LCC, information is explicit; procedures are ex­plained, and expectations are discussed.

Stella Ting-Toomey provides several additional communica­tion principles concerning low- and high-context cultures. First, low-context cul­tures encourage communicators to separate the issue from the person, sometimes however, at the expense of personal relationships. Often, the rhetorical ideal of avoiding attacking the person is clearly the ideal: "Just get the facts." By con­trast, high-context cultures tend not to separate the person from the issue. If you attack the issue, you are assumed to be attacking the person and would create embarrassment or ill will. Such perceived attacks, from a high-context-culture viewpoint, need smoothing. Thus, the motive to save face is usually very strong in high-context cultures.

Second, members of low-context cultures typically do not like things they do not understand. That is, they typically avoid uncertainty, which explains the small talk in conversations. In contrast, high-context cultures live with more ambiguity. They want informa­tion, of course, but they can process information amid uncertainty. Often silence is used as a major part of the strategy in high-context cultures.

Third, low-context culture members use a very direct style of communica­tion. They seek and absorb quantities of information and direct the communica­tion process. A good example is a conflict style that centers around an informa­tional and somewhat confrontational approach. In contrast, high-context cultural members use more indirect styles of communication. For instance, among Japanese cultures, extreme politeness and extreme tact are standard. They are concerned about group harmony, and a nondirective social style may be the best way to engage in communication accommodation. Given that cultural motiva­tion, one can understand strategies of cooperation and participation.

Fourth, negotiation differs. People in low-context cultures tend toward linear logic. Analysis is essential for such cultures—in short, a cognitive, using-the-head approach marks the bargaining style. In contrast, high-context cultures use a soft bargaining approach, preferring communication involving feelings and intu­ition; it is a communication style of the heart (intuitive) rather than the head.

Fifth, low-context cultures seek interpersonal data emphasizing personal, in­dividual aspects, not social or group aspects. In contrast, high-context cultures emphasize social factors in their interaction. In other words, each culture searches for different categories. Because they are scanning for totally dif­ferent categories, what is heard may not be what was said. An LCC person wants prediction about this individual (who he is, what he does, his worth, his compe­tency). An HCC person is listening for group loyalties (organization, family, na­tional loyalty, value) in order to answer questions of trust and respect.

Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions

Hofstede analyzed questionnaire data from multinational corpo­rate employees in over forty countries. He asked a number of extensive survey questions and applied these to a statistical process by which four central factors indicated significant communication qualities about members from those cul­tures. These four factors include individualism-collectivism, masculine-feminine, power-distance, and uncertainty avoidance.

Individualism-Collectivism

Individualism concerns personal achievement. In contrast, collectivist cul­tures are those that emphasize community, groupness, harmony, and maintaining face. We would expect the accompanying communicator style to be correlated with each of these cultural dimensions. For instance, one could expect a great deal more assertive behavior, self-disclosure, and other personal-advancement issues to arise in an individualistic culture. On the other hand, we could expect far more strategies of people pleasing, solidarity, relational issues and face sav­ing to occur in a collective culture.

Masculine-Feminine Cultures

Hofstede's work borrowed the masculine-feminine metaphor to describe a gender role differentiation in cultures. By suggesting characteristics traditionally as- sociated with masculinity or femininity, Hofstede's masculine cultures are those that exhibit work as more central to their lives, strength, material success, assertiveness, and competitiveness. Masculine cultures also differentiate gender roles more than feminine cultures. Feminine cultures are those that tend to accept fluid gender roles, embrace traits of affection, compassion, nurturing, and interpersonal relationships.

There are also communication-style differences that seem to emanate from these cultures. The masculine cultures tend to use more aggressive styles of communication. Their problem-solving methods and conflict-management tech­niques would center around bottom-line issues, strict coping and debriefing in­formation techniques. In contrast, the feminine cultures are probably much more capable of reading nonverbal messages and are better prepared to deal with am­biguity. Perhaps not so surprising is that masculine cultures display higher levels of stress and also have lower percentages of women in technical and profes­sional jobs when compared to feminine cultures.

Power-Distance

Another dimension of Hofstede's research involved what he called the power-distance index. Cultures with a high power index are said to accept in­equality as the cultural norm. In other words, these cultures are vertical—that is, they are hierarchical cultures. People expect hierarchy, and authoritarian style communication is more common. We could expect much more oppressive be­havior in high power-distance cultures, as well as more formalized rituals signal­ing respect, attentiveness, and agreement. Those cultures that are low in power-distance are more horizontal. That is, they are not fundamentally organized around hierarchical relationships.

Uncertainty Avoidance

Hofstede questioned the extent to which a culture would avoid or tolerate uncertainty. Obviously, some cultures cannot stand the un­known. For them, avoiding uncertainty would be very difficult without increasing the number of rules of behavior to compensate for the uncertainty. Other cultures, however, seem more comfortable dealing with diversity and ambiguity.

Cultural World View

World view is a belief system about the nature of the universe, its perceived effect on human behavior, and one's place in the universe. World view is a fundamental core set of assumptions explaining cultural forces, the nature of humankind, the nature of good and evil, luck, fate, spirits, the power of significant others, the role of time, and the nature of our physical and natural resources. Because it is so fundamental, world view affects communication.

Elements of Cultural World View

Shame and guilt cultures. Some cultures can be characterized by their per­ceived sense of personal guilt (usually found in individualistic cultures) and shame (usually found in collectivist cultures). This organizing feature of shame suggests that cultures feel a sense of obligation when things go wrong. In Asian cultures, for instance, shame is not good, almost as bad as losing one's group identity. Shame cultures have a way of looking inwardly for obligation and responsi­bility. If duty is overlooked, it could cause shame to someone else, which in turn would cause you to be shamed. In contrast, guilt cultures (often individualistic) experience remorse for per­sonal actions but not for group mistakes. These cultures feel a need to reduce guilt and lean more toward personal blame than for group blame.

Task and people cultures. Some cultures emphasize task accomplishment over relationships, while other cultures emphasize relationships over task. There is reason to believe that a fundamental belief system is part of the task-people dichotomy. Task cultures may well have an underlying cognitive world view structure of what makes a person good. Task world views stress how self-worth comes from accomplishment and success. Therefore, working hard and success­ful task completion are methods to prove oneself. Relationship cultures, of course, also accomplish tasks. The driving force, though, is thinking of others and finishing the relationship needs ahead of per­sonal goals and schedules.

Spirit and secular cultures. Another important continuum by which a cul­ture can be evaluated for its cognitive cultural world view involves whether or not the culture accepts the notion of a cosmos filled with spiritual beings and forces or whether a spiritual dimension plays a lesser role or any role at all. An­thropologists traditionally have labeled this factor as sacred-secular, meaning that some cultures accept a spiritual vitality or the presence of culturally defined spirits and beings, while other cultures reject or devalue a spiritual dimension in their world view.

This continuum explains an area of difference not always appreciated as a part of a culture's perceptions and explained as a matter of an open or closed system. Francis Schaeffer concludes that a secular culture has an implicit faith in the presupposition of the uniformity of natural causes in a closed system. A spirit culture accepts the presupposition of an open system, implying the alternative of categories for God and spiritual di­mensions. Essentially, a spirit (or sacred) culture places faith in the spiritual realm, which a secular culture does not accept.

The role of dead to living. Some cultures are characterized by their view of the relationship between living and dead. The well-known ancestor rituals in certain Asian and African cultures remind us that some people see death as an event that can be bridged with ceremony and ritual.

The assumption indicates a layered universe. Some of the powers available to a person are believed to come through ancestors, at a certain layer in that uni­verse, who can be called upon to perform certain things on behalf of the person asking. This same layered world view, however, may also involve impersonal spirits, magic, formulas, and rituals that perform services for the living.

Some cultures hold assiduous beliefs about ancestors, though in a some­what different way than beliefs about the afterlife in general. True ancestor cults remain in Oriental and African societies in which each major lineage honors its own set of founding ancestors.

Nature of humankind. According to Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck (1961), cultures perceive humans in one of three ways. The first is that human nature is considered good. The implications of this view are that people can handle re­sponsibility, do the right thing, and make their own decisions.

A second positive of the nature of humankind assumes a mixture of human goodness and evil, while a third position assumes that humans are basically evil. With this presupposition, communication strategies gravitate toward such vari­ables as control, regulation, protection of information, and a communication cli­mate stressing upward and centralized communication.

Humans and nature. Another element of world view is the amount of con­trol over nature one believes. There are three possible positions here, too. One cultural position is that humans are subject to nature. A person believes nature was not meant to be controlled. A second position is that humankind should be in harmony with nature, preserving and working in coordination with natural conditions. A third position is that humans should control nature especially in ways that benefit humankind, such as placing dams in rivers or cutting forests.

Doing and being cultures. The doing-being duality is another world view difference between cultures. One cultural pattern is to prefer activity and pro­ductivity and measurable accomplishment. In fact, a doing culture often devel­ops strategies to invoke guilt on its members for inactivity and loss of productiv­ity. Such cultures emphasize goals, functional information, and less interpersonal dimensions. Many of the world's technology cultures typify this type of culture. Being cultures emphasize a meditative value, stressing personal thought, discussion, interpersonal relationships, spontaneity, and harmony.

Life cycle. Several examples noted in this text imply that life can be viewed in two ways. One view suggests that life is linear—that birth, life, and death mark each person's existence. According to this view, there is no rebirth, only this life in which to accomplish. Therefore, use of time is considered important. Individuals who maintain this linear view may or may not believe in an eternal existence after death.

A second view suggests that life is cyclical—that birth, life, death, and rebirth mark each person's existence. This view also affects use of time. Since another earthly life follows, cyclical cultures may believe that time pressures are not as important.

Fatalism. Rogers with Svenning defined fatalism as "the degree to which an individual recognizes a lack of ability to control his future." A fatalistic outlook on life “results in a failure to see a relationship between work and one's economic condition. Having enough is thought to be almost entirely due to luck and is never believed to be brought about or furthered by personal initiative”.

Mechanisms of Cultural World View

In addition to the elements of cultural world view, we also can identify the mechanisms by which world view beliefs are said to operate. These mechanisms are said to represent the methods by which members engage their world view.

Mana. Mana is the belief that material objects have special powers. Originally a South Sea Island belief, this force is believed to be inherited, acquired, or conferred.

Animism. Animism refers more broadly to the belief that impersonal spirits dwell in material forms of nature, such as rocks, rivers, plants, weather, certain places, and special places. These spirits are believed to be capable of a benevolent or a malevolent influence.

Shamanism. A shaman is an individual who acts as a diviner, curer, spirit medium, or magician. The belief in a shaman's power is called shamanism. Shamans are recognized by others as being different from the ordinary and usually take the lead in religious ceremonies, magical arts, or curing especially in traditional cultures. Personal Communication and World View

Personal communication world view (PCWV) is de­fined as how much control characterizes one's communication climate. The fundamental theory of PCWV posits that individuals have a communi­cation construct concerning the operation and management of communication control. We organize information about ourselves and develop a communication style that reflects fundamental beliefs about the amount of control believed available within communication contexts. In this sense, one end of the contin­uum measured by PCWV relates to metaphors such as helplessness, powerlessness, external locus of control, and fatalism, while the opposite is true for the other end of the continuum.

The research connecting personal world view to intercultural communica­tion holds far-reaching implications. First, this construct appears to influence values. Sec­ond, PCWV explains specific communication qualities known to be important to intercultural skills and culture sensitivity. For instance, a person with high com­munication control finds choices and decision making easier. That person typi­cally exhibits a communication style consistent with numerous communication qualities including: openness, low communication apprehension, innovativeness, high self-esteem, organizational cooperation, cognitive complexity, and opinion leadership. The opposite characterizes those individuals who feel little control over their communication climate.

Values and Intercultural Communication

Values refer to long-enduring judgments appraising the worth of an idea, object, person, place, or practice. Sometimes, our opinions and attitudes reflect deep-seated and fundamental values. While attitudes tend to change, values are long lasting. Fundamentally, values relate to questions of whether something ought or ought not to be—when we discover the why of those questions, we dis­cover the values. Value differences affect intercultural communication.

Relationship with Family

A number of values center around evaluations concerning family and kin, espe­cially values toward elders, parents, and ancestors.

Source of identification and self worth. Family serves as an organizing so­cial unit from which to develop personal identification.

Obligation. Another family value varying across cultures is obligation to family. In many cultures families must take precedence over self. Obligation in many cultures, however, is broader than just family.

Shame. Family members in certain cultures cause group embarrassment, or shame, for all family members. Anytime a child violates norms or law, the shame poten­tial exists.

Relationship with Others

Another set of values focuses on interpersonal relationships. One's personal dealings with others is considered a sacred trust in some cultures but is treated casually in other cultures.

Equality of people. Humanitarianism. Honesty. Harmony. Mentoring relationship. In-groups and out-groups. Inclusion and exclusion.

Relationship with Society

Another set of values predisposes cultural members toward salient societal be­havior. Some of these values relate to personal behaviors, and some relate to group behaviors. In either case, it is very clear in many cultures that personal ac­tion and thought affect the group. In those cases, individuals or families are monitored for implications affecting the entire group.

Morality and ethics. Personal freedom. Emotions. Work and play. Time. Tradition.

Relationship with Self

Another set of value variables deals with personal values toward success and ma­terial well-being. These values also relate to personal qualities of individualism.

Success. Individualism. Material well-being.

Relationship with Natural Resources

The values centered around land and animals are very significant. The larger issues are actually how cultures come to view the totality of their natural resources. Cultural rules for the working out of natural resources become intricate and could appear quite foreign to a culture that does not place importance on natural resource values.