diversity management october 2009 -...

Intercultural Communication

Dr Alison Gourvès-Hayward & Dr Cathy Sablé Monday April 18th 2016

http://www.equipes-notre-dame.com/international/home.html

direction ou services LCI page 1


Main Objectives

Develop cultural awareness of own and other

cultures Develop communication skills in an international

context Develop knowledge and skills in order to work with

multicultural teams locally and at a distance.

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Main Contents

The cultural iceberg metaphor What’s behind the words? Cultural glasses : language symbolises,

categorizes, classifies and expresses cultural reality

What are the underlying values of your culture?

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Iceberg

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Presenter

Presentation Notes

I guess jackie & dean will talk about this iceberg, so I will not spend too much time on it


Iceberg analogy of cultural items

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The Iceberg Model

Behavior

Language

Music Symbols

Tradition

Values Faith

Heroes

Norms Religion Attitudes

Philosophies Education

Art

Greetings

Sport Architecture

Food & Drink

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Presenter

Presentation Notes

NA


Example : greetings

Get into twos or threes with someone from the same culture

Greet them in a formal way & an informal way Observe the others Find a partner from another culture and practice

greetings in both languages What are the differences & similarities?

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“We all view the world through our own cultural glasses.” Geert Hofstede

Intercultural competence means becoming aware of this!

Cultural Spectacles

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Cultural spectacles

Once upon a time, there was a girl named Mari,

who lived in a small country called Marila. The special thing about Marila was, that every citizen was born with an implanted set of spectacles with yellow glasses. These spectacles made everything Mari could see appear in a friendly yellow, but she couldn’t take off her spectacles.

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Cultural spectacles

One day she decided to live for a while in the neighbour country called Azuro. The Azurans as well were born with implanted spectacles, but with blue glasses! Because of the different colour of their spectacles, Mari saw things differently than the Azurans - yellow instead of blue.

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Cultural spectacles

But Mari was well prepared before she left for Azuro, she

learned a lot about different colours of spectacles. After some time she managed to put on some blue spectacles, not exactly the same tone of blue the Azurans had, but very close. By and by, she was able to see things like the Azurans, but only partly: Because she couldn’t take off her yellow, she had to wear her new blue spectacles on top of her own yellow ones - and everything appeared to her in green! Even the blue spectacles could not be taken off again, not even after she returned to Marila. By understanding more about the perspective of the Azurans, she developed a new perspective on her own culture as well.

(Source unknown)

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Language symbolises cultural reality

Cultural spectacles influence or constrain:

How we construct reality

How we categorise and divide up reality

How we name, describe and symbolise reality

A rose is a rose is a rose? Rose - rose – rosa-

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Language symbolises cultural reality

Words which do not exist in other languages

Privacy - Hereith - tesknota – gemütlich

• Arabic words for camel • Eskimo words for snow

• Chinese kinship • Gouro words for colour

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Language expresses cultural reality

Imagine you are trying to explain to someone from

another planet what bread is - or another staple food like rice which is important in your culture.

Draw a picture and write down the words for the food in your language

Compare with as many others as possible

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Cultural encodings: Words for bread

Translations of even a simple

word conjure up different realities :

bread/pan/Brot/naan/

roti/xneb/chlieb/miàn bao

Language expresses cultural reality

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Le pain

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Rice, noodles, beans ….

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3/ Interculturality and Unfamilar surroundings

As we saw with the iceberg, we are human beings who are involved in groups, who have built common symbols.

These symbols and codes are so well-known that we do not realize that they might not be so obvious for everybody, for people coming from other… planets

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3/ Interculturality and Unfamiliar surroundings, let’s play …

Here are some simple arithmetic problems… But as you are on another planet, symbols are quite different :

- means to multiply ÷ means to add + means to divide X means to subtract

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Off you go : calculate … 8-2 12+4 4x3 6÷2 9+3 7x4 4-2 12x2 20+10 10÷5

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3/ Interculturality and unfamiliar surroundings, let’s play …

- means to multiply ÷ means to add + means to divide x means to subtract

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Presenter

Presentation Notes

With a top chrono …( a timer )


4/ Interculturality and Decentring

Conclusion of this funny game: This was to help you be aware that what is

obvious to you might not be obvious to others. That is why, if you want to work more easily with

others, it is important to know your own cultural habits and to consider them as cultural and therefore relative habits.

We call this: « Decentring »

Let’s find out more about it…

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Presenter

Presentation Notes

Stand back from yourself


4/ Interculturality, decentring and values

A nice story : A young married woman, whose husband works a lot , feels

lonely. She is seduced by a man and decides to spend a night at his place. He lives on the other side of a river. In the morning, she wants to get home before her husband is back from a business trip. To do so, she has to cross a bridge.

However, a madman stops people crossing this bridge. She decides to ask the guardian of the bridge for help but she has no money. She explains everything to him, begs him to let her cross the bridge but he won’t let her until she pays. She then runs to her lover who refuses to give her money and he gives no explanation.

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The story ( end)

She goes to an unmarried friend, who has always been in love with her but she has never had an affair with him. She explains everything to him but he refuses to help her considering she has behaved badly.

She decides to go over the bridge where the madman kills her.

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French version 1

Une jeune femme mariée, délaissée par son mari trop pris par son métier, se laisse séduire et va passer la nuit chez son amant dans une maison située de l’autre côté de la rivière. Pour rentrer chez elle, le lendemain au petit matin avant le retour de son mari qui rentre de voyage, elle doit traverser le pont. Mais un fou lui interdit le passage. Elle court alors trouver un passeur qui lui demande le prix du passage. Elle n’a pas d’argent. Elle explique et supplie. Il refuse de travailler sans être payé d’avance. Elle va alors trouver son amant et lui demande de l’argent. Il refuse sans explication.

Elle va trouver un ami célibataire qui habite du même côté et qui lui voue depuis toujours un amour idéal mais à qui elle n’a jamais cédé. Elle lui raconte tout et lui demande de l’argent. Il refuse ; elle l’a déçu en se conduisant si mal. Elle décide alors de passer sur le pont après une dernière tentative vaine auprès du passeur. Le fou la tue.

Lequel de ces six personnages est responsable de la mort de cette femme : 1. La femme 2. Le mari 3. L’amant 4. Le fou 5. Le passeur 6. L’ami

Classez-les du plus responsable au moins responsable. Expliquez votre choix et débattez pour convaincre votre interlocuteur.

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What do you think ?

Which of these 6 people is responsible for her death ? :

1. The woman 2. The husband 3. The lover 4. The madman 5. The bridge keeper 6. The unmarried friend Make a list starting with the most responsible one

and ending with the least responsible. Explain your choice.

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Presenter

Presentation Notes

Classify : from the most responsible to the lest responsible : let’ s speak about it and try to convince the others…


4/ Interculturality, values and decentring

Conclusion : One important cause for cultural misunderstandings is the

fact that we do not explain the values that are always included in any interaction.

For example, in this game some of us associate responsibility with morality ( the woman is responsible), others associate responsibility with high quality of friendship ( the friend is responsible), some others consider that actions are more important ( the crazy man is responsible)

To avoid this sort of misunderstanding, it can help to explicate the values you refer to, or to refer to a specific context : in my country, the law says …

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Values

Write the most important value for you in large letters on a piece of paper

You have 5 minutes to find an order of importance for the whole group, from most important to least important

Be prepared to negotiate but you can change your mind too!

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Debriefing and conclusions: • not always easy to know our values and to share

them.. • individual similarities and differences in values

are likely to exist within any group • our perceptions of someone operating from a

different value system are often negative. That is why we need more information and distancing to help us understand his or her point of view.

Values : the hidden face of the iceberg…

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Cultures, pluri cultures

Let’s not forget that any meeting is a meeting between someone with his or her habits coming from their native group but also an individual developing through life.

Intercultural Communication means to « saisir la multiplicité et la diversité du quotidien, et réfléchir sur l’humain et le social ».

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Presenter

Presentation Notes

Fred dervin , 10-11


Conclusion

Intercultural approaches pay attention to : interaction, people as being involved into a

dynamic way To facilitate these interactions, we have seen a

few elements which are a first step. • being conscious that any perception is particular • that the self is constructed with specific influences,

specific values • it is important to be able not to consider these

habits as universal • Knowledge but also Openness, Tolerance and

Decentring Then: you’ll have fun!

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CULTURAL GLASSES

? Todo depende del color del cristal con que se mira -

Spanish Proverb


xièxie 谢谢 Go raith maith agaibh + شكرا Diolch Merci Thank-you Köszönöm Dziękuję Ďakujem Danke Gracias Благодаря

diversity management october 2009 -...

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