Intercultural Communication

Written By: Hakim A. & Others 

Executive Summary

Intercultural communication is a very broad notion, its study is a crossroads for several approaches and disciplines: psychology, sociology and anthropology. Understanding what the notion designates leads us first of all to two central questions: what is culture?  And what is communication? What is the relationship between the two? 

Culture refers to the set of characteristics specific to each nation in the world (attitudes, languages, religions, arts, traditions, etc.) it is acquired through processes such as socialization and acculturation. The new child learns from his early years how to live in society, how to adapt to the cultural environment around him, communication is one of the great processes that the child uses to learn and that the agents of socialization use to educate him, this procedure is called intra-cultural communication.  However, the link between communication and culture is more complex, it can express other interactions between people who do not belong to the same culture "intercultural communication", several factors can trigger this type of communication: globalization, the international labor market, travel, etc..

Studies in social and cultural psychology have dealt with the problem of intercultural communication based on comparative research (analyzing communicative differences between cultures by studying variables such as values and perception) and interactionist research (analyzing the interaction between individuals from different cultures), but also based on research on culture shock and the importance of intercultural skills in increasing the quality of intercultural contacts between human beings and thus promoting peace between cultures.

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