Identity process in the intercultural communication

An anthropological perspective

for reading its experiences of « otherness » 

A.Gohard-Radenkovic2008

Complexity of the communication because every individual has multiple belongings and

identities• Collective / individual• Linguistic • Social / cultural• National / regional• Urban / rural / rurban• Local / global• Familial / clanic• Sexual• Generational• Professional• Economical, and so on…

Complexity of the relation to otherness and to one's self because of the…

• Representations / images / cliches / prejudices

• Implicite shared culture / hidden values and beliefs / «invisible evidences» / reproduction of unaware attitudes

• Cultural norms / social codes / rules / expected behaviours / rituals

• Unconscious social classifications / projection of hierarchies

• Social status / cultural practices

A.Gohard-Radenkovic2008

An identity process in the intercultural communication

• In Part I, we try to understand the social and cultural judgements and values that WE ALL spontaneously reproduce on the “others”, their respective languages, societies and cultures, through our own experiences of “otherness”.

Everybody is the result of its different experiences

• Aim: a way to introduce one's self to others through the presentation of one's life history. To know one another a little bit better, to discover its individual and collective representations of others and of one's self through a reflexive practice, raising an awareness process on its own judgements, habits and values, and on its so called “familiar environment” that we have to revise, to visit again with a new look and a new perception.

Activity (1) individual

• Draw the “mapping” on a big sheet of paper of your own trips and moves in Europe and in other foreign countries with words (nouns, adjectives) qualifying the judgements, you had of the “others” and words qualifying how the “others” defined you, as a “Dutch person”.

• Find a title that would symbolise your mobility mapping.

Activity (2) on my own History life and mobility

• Present and explain your “mapping of your history life” in a few minutes. After these different experiences, tell your comrades with full honesty if you changed or reinforced your judgements of others and of one's self.

• Conclusion: our unconscious grid of values, norms.

A.Gohard-Radenkovic2008

ANTHROPOLOGICAL TOOLS FOR THE OBSERVATION OF THE INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION

• In the Part II, we present the socio-anthropological grid of values and norms, expected behaviours in different formal and informal situations that every individual or collectivity may reproduce or project in communication.

• BUT each social group and each individual may interprete according to its own context and history life. In many situations of intercultural communication in a foreign language, each social or national group share “invisible evidences” (because “obvious” to everybody) or what we call “a shared implicit or hidden social culture” that can change from one generation to the other, from one social group to the other, from one sexual culture to the other, from one professional context to the other.

• .

ANTHROPOLOGICAL TOOLS FOR THE OBSERVATION OF THE INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION

• Aim: we consider a few basic anthropological tools to identify the sociocultural dimensions embedded in the inter-individual communication

• We try to understand the social and cultural hidden rules and to identify the misunderstandings that may appear in the daily life and daily professional life.

ANTHROPOLOGICAL TOOLS FOR THE OBSERVATION OF THE INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION:

• Greeting rituals • Giving - giving back presents • Expected behaviours (dress, food

practices, etc.) • Working methods (or relation to work)• Organisation of the hierarchy• Space distribution,• Time organisation, etc.

A.Gohard-Radenkovic2008

Activity (1) on Greetings

• First example. Expected mimics and behaviours in greetings situations (Text: French and Chinese students in an academic environment)

• Tell your own experiences in smaller groups

Implicits and misunderstandings in daily communication: Greetings

• Some students don’t know how to “faire la bise” (kiss on the cheeks):• “Something happened to me recently, a French friend invited me to a dinner

with other French people. He and I were the first to arrive to the restaurant. A little later, a French man and two French women arrived and sat across from me. They say hello. And one of the two girls comes towards me. What does she want to do? She holds her cheek out to me. I’m uncomfortable, but I still kiss her cheek and then move back, because I think it’s over. But, she holds her other cheek out to me. I am already sitting back down, there is already a distance between us. Having noticed my reaction she says, ‘You’re not French, are you?’ Very embarrassed, I respond, ‘No.’ I think that she is a lot more embarrassed than me. She goes back to her chair with a long face. She doesn’t talk to me. It wasn’t my fault. I didn’t know how it was done – I thought one kiss was enough.”

• Here, “You’re not French, are you?” isn’t a question, but rather a reproach.

• Compétence culturelle et politesse en situation de communication sino-française: implicites et malentendus , Zhi Hong PU, Septentrion, Paris, 2003

IMPLICITS AND MISUNDERSTANDINGS IN DAILY PRIOFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION :

GREETINGS• Some students find French greeting rituals impossible to

understand• “The French say ‘Bonjour’ (Good morning/Hello) multiple times

throughout the day: the morning, at noon, and in the evening. In the evening, when it’s time to leave, they also say ‘Bonsoir’ (Good evening).”

• “In the company where I had my internship, one French guy goes to every office every morning to greet everyone. Our office has two floors. He enters without fail in every office and shakes the hand of all the employees. It’s a little bit of a waste of time.”

• “A lot of French experts greet people they don’t know. In a café or in the office of the factory, they say hello to people they don’t even know. This isn’t the same for the Chinese, we don’t say hello to just anyone.”

• (Zhi Hong PU, op. cit.)

Hospitality rules in the social communication

• Second example: hospitality rules in different countries (Grid: results of an enquiry made by a research-group in different European countries)

• Tell your own experiences in smaller groups.

Invitation for dinner: Hospitality rules and expected behaviours?

• 1) Taking the example of having guests for dinner, to what extent and in which respects do intercultural models of hospitality differ in various European countries?

• 2) What are the verbal and non-verbal behaviours and habits used in the contexts what have been selected as showing significant diversity?

Activity (2) my own experience of hospitality rules

• Arrival

• Gift for hosts

• Foods and Drinks

• Distribution around the table

• Conversation

• Offering help

• Leaving

Activity (3) on Hierarchy and savoir-vivre

• Third example: expected behaviours at the table and relation to authority (distance hiérarchique) in a professional situation (Video-film: a Japenese staff of a firm in a French restaurant in Tokyo)

• Tell our own experiences in smaller groups

Saving the face

A few Conclusions

• These implicit rules may interfere in the daily professional communication and generate “misunderstandings” and even “conflicts”. It is a normal process in every situation of communication, in every entreprise, in every institution, more widely in every society.

• But a fundamental process called the “preservation of my face / your face” allows to maintain and, or repair the communication

• Attention: we must care about any abusive generalization of these sociocultural rules !!A.Gohard-Radenkovic

2008

Conflicts and resolvation of conflictsin the intercultural communication

Part III: we work on the intercultural dimension in bi-multinational professional contexts by studying the expectations, challenges, stakes of the different actors, and making hypothesis on the possible reasons of misunderstandings and conflicts through one study case.

A.Gohard-Radenkovic2008

CONFLICTS DURING MEETINGS IN PROFESSIONAL CONTEXT: A critical point of

view English Partners on French Partners

• The English don’t have a clear position; they are “vague” when it comes to making a yes or no answer.

• “Other experiences I’ve had with the English have always been vague. I mean, we never get anywhere to have a clear yes or no, it’s always somewhere in between,” notes Sylvie.

• It’s the same for Daniel, “What’s puzzling is the vagueness, meaning they (the English) are sometimes incapable of getting their point across. They can have certain demands of you and then you leave, for example at a reunion where you made sure everything was black and white, well, not black and white, but you said things to each other stating, ‘Ok, Ok, you need this, etc.’ So, you leave their meeting saying, tomorrow, I’ll confirm everything in writing, he confirms and it’s all good. And then, three weeks later, nothing. You have to pester them every day. Everything remains undecided.”

• La mésentente cordiale : Voyage au coeur de l’espace interculturel franco-anglais, de Christine GEOFFROY, Grasset / Le Monde, Paris, 2001.

CONLICTS DURING MEETINGS IN PROFESSIONAL CONTEXT: Critical Point of View of French Partners on

English partners

• Still hearing from John, the “heated” quality of discussions is taken for rudeness and provokes an irritation with his compatriots.

• “Often, it gets heated, which isn’t very polite. In England, we’re a little cooler and sometimes people meetings aren’t as heated, they don’t argue about the little things. They don’t get moody in front of others. And really, it annoys the English to have French who argue in a meeting when they don’t think it’s necessary.”

• The irritation is reflected in the “shouter” characteristic of the French made by Nichola: “It’s the French that scream the loudest in meetings.”

• Weary from the conflict in discussion, the English prefer to withdraw, Donald asserts: “We often leave meetings totally exhausted. We even sometimes stop fighting for what we believe to be a better idea. We just tell ourselves, ‘I can’t communicate, I’ll never get anywhere with this person because they’re not open to other suggestions.’”

• This refusal of conflict-driven discussion hasn’t been missed by Vincent, from the French side: “The English don’t tolerate that at all. They don’t tolerate arguing in a meeting, that we don’t all agree. When we go to that type of a meeting, the English don’t want to debate.(Geoffroy, op.cit.

Activity on conflicts and mediation

• Aim: we study the conflicts and mediation steps : ways of behaving and speaking through the example of the film: “When the green ants were dreaming” from Werner Herzog

• Activity in smaller groups and in the big group

Conflicts and Mediation

A mediation process in the intercultural communication

• What is the function of a mediator ?

• How can we anticipate the conflicts?

• If we can’t prevent the conflict, how can we solve the situation?

• What sort of abilities must he have ?

• Different types of mediators exist: which ones?