Culture, Intercultural Communications and Problems

 

            Humanity has always been different from the animal. This difference is that people can think and animals cannot this action. The thinking provides some skills to people. There are lots of skills about people but the most important one is language. The language is the basic element in the construction of humanity. Then, people has produced some factors which are nation, ethnicity and race. These factors cause that lots of different cultures all over the world and people learn the culture from the society which she/he was born. People need to communicate different people which has different cultural background so the intercultural communications existed. Because of that, some problems which are ethnocentrism, stereotyping and prejudice occurred. We will examine and focus on these problems in this article.

             First of all, we have to explain this question ‘’What is the culture?’’. Culture is learned and shared ways (1) believing/thinking and (2) doing.

            1-Material Culture means that the reflection of the social reality with architecture and things. For example, every village has a mosque in Turkey

            2-Symbolic culture is called non-material culture. The symbolic culture provides to connection of traditional behaviors between different generations. The generations can learn and transmit these behaviors such as values, norms, taboos and so on. For instance, In Turkish culture, young people should kiss elderly people’s hand because of their culture, when they see them

Also, culture is a unique combination of rituals, religious beliefs, ways of thinking and ways of behaving that unify a group of people (Pearson, et all, 2011, 170). In shortly, the culture teaches to new generation every behavior, mimic, values which come from old generation. It provides to create a unique society and culture. The culture is a lens through which we evaluate and perceive what is going around us. Additionally, there is a co-culture which described as non-dominant culture. It can explain like that ‘’a group that exists within a larger, dominant culture but differs from the dominant culture in some significant characteristic’’. (Pearson, et all, 2011, 170) For example, a person who is an Italian moved to another country so this person became a minority in this country or a man in matriarchal society. There are three outcomes which are assimilation, accommodation and separation. The culture can transmit in different ways because it comes from the past and it cannot be changeable. The culture has so huge in deep information so the learning process is so hard. The learning or transmission of the culture has three main ways. First one is enculturation. It can learn culture which you were born. So, it means that ‘’the process by which you learn the culture into which you’re born (your native culture)’’. (DeVito, 2015, 29) In this tittle, we can learn the culture from family, religious institutions, schools etc. When people migrate to another country(culture), they learn their culture so this culture called as host culture. People normally learn their culture and this transmission of culture is acculturation. However, if the people lose their native culture identities and they adopt the dominant culture. They start to learn their cultural values, languages, beliefs. They called as assimilated and this is the transmission of culture is Assimilation. Until this sentence, we answered the question of ‘’what is the culture?’’. After this section, we will talk about the question of ‘’why are so many cultures occur and what are main factors of the culture? ‘’. Every geographic area has different historical background, this background includes the religion, name of their culture(nation), name of their race, ethnicity etc. Even, the culture can be affected by the weather because if the weather is hot in this area, they have thin dress and it affect the cultural identity in time. There some main factors of culture, but the most important ones are nation, race, ethnicity, sex and gender, sexual orientation and religion. The culture is lens of the people and it has so huge background, it comes from the past by developing. So, we shortly tried to explain culture in this part.

              Secondly, we will focus on the intercultural communication. In the first part, we learnt that culture has unique combinations in deep of the people. For this reason, people have values, foods, traditions, religion etc. but they need to communicate with different people who has different cultural backgrounds. For example, when Arabian female person migrate to France, she come across different culture; language, foods, traditions so she should not judge French people and they have to live together so it is called intercultural communication. Briefly, the term of intercultural communication refers to communication between persons who have different cultural beliefs, values or ways of behaving. (DeVito, 2015, 38) Also, there are five main reasons to study intercultural communication, which are cultural, economic, existential, technological and political. These five reasons existed because this is requirement. The world became the global world and every person of the world can see, reach every information about the all people so they start to communicate each other. So, people started to see more and more different cultures. Also, the economical issues became the global economy so we see every product which come from all over the world. According to Marshall McLuhan ‘’ The world became a ‘’Global Village’’ (McLuhan, 1962;1964) Moreover, the religion, wars, crisis, migration affect the intercultural communication. This communication type can happen in different ways;

                 1- Communication between people of different national cultures. For instance, between Korean and Arabs.

                 2- Communication between people of different races. Native White Americans and Native Black Americans can be example for this.

                 3- Communication between people of different ethnic groups. For example, between Rums and Armenian people who live in Turkey.

                 4- Communication between people of different religions. The all religions can be example for this type.

                 5- Communication between nations. Russia and South Africa.

                 6- Communication between genders.

                 7- Communication between smaller cultures existing within the larger culture. Ottoman can be example for this type. In the Ottoman time, there lots of different culture have to live together. One of them is larger and others.

                The main and last part of this article is intercultural communication problems. Until this part, everything is gone well but intercultural communication has lots of problems because each people is not same and it causes the problems between people. The mass diversity causes the intercultural communication problems which are ethnocentrism, stereotyping and prejudice.

                  1- The first one is ethnocentrism and it is using your own culture to judge others. We think our own culture as the ‘’right’’ or ‘’normal’’ one. People see their culture the best one and look other cultures as an insufficient. Moreover, there is a cultural relativism, it is trying to understand culture in their own terms as different. It is the belief that another culture should be judged by its own context rather than measured against your culture (Pearson, et all, 2011, 172)

                   2- The second one is stereotyping and it is generalization to some group of people. According to Roger and Steinfatt (1999) ‘’ a generalization about some group of people that oversimplifies their culture’’ (Pearson, et all, 2011,172) People do more this behavior to group of people who there is no contact each other.

                   3- The last one is having bad ideas, attitudes to group of people because of their existence. It is the bad thing of the world because having negative ideas about group of people because of their religion, nation, identity and so on.

These problems cause the hate speech and people do hate speech without any information. The judgment of people is doing just because their identities so it causes the problems between nations. The hate speech problems come from the history but it is changing a little bit. However, it is using by politicians and it effects to society. For example, there was a war between Azerbaijan and Armenia. This war has a history and Azerbaijan think that Armenia occupied the area which belongs to Azerbaijan. Last month, Azerbaijan attacked this area and the war occurred and gave these areas. However, the politicians, news showed us the Azerbaijan is right and it causes that Turkish people start to use hate speech against to Armenian people because of their identity. (Turkish have good relationship with Azerbaijan Turks because of the race) Even, people celebrate this war and they look the people who living in Turkey badly because of their country. Also, Turkish people have prejudice toward to Armenia. I tried to look unbiased. The politics view affects to people in a bad way. This war happened between countries not people. So, the intercultural communication has so many advantages but there lots of disadvantages too. Another example is eating habits. In Asia, people have different kinds of food and they eat insects, cats etc. In Turkish culture, people eat less animal and when they see this culture. They think that our culture is the best, look at them what they are eating, it is disgusting because they look to Asian culture with their cultural lens. Also, there are lots of daily conservations about Kurds’ people. If someone do wrong thing, people think that this person is Kurd. This is so bad but people do this behavior, unfortunately. People generalize the Kurds. It is a little bit effect of nationalism and pkk. Another sample is Turkish people look to Russia as a fun place. When they see Russian people, they feel like that they only think drink alcohol and having fun or all of the Russian is communist. This is generalization of the all-Russian people and it is still going on. The world became global but people just try to be global so lots of problems occur.. Another example is Kadıköy and Üsküdar, these are districts in İstanbul. I gave this example without any generalization and people who prefer to go Üsküdar choose more conservative life style and they have prejudged about the Kadıköy. This prejudge is that the Kadıköy culture. If someone choose to go Kadıköy, this person is seemed alcoholic, non-Muslim or punk by the Üsküdar’s people. Opposite view is that Kadıköy people sees the Üsküdar people as a bigot or religious. Of course, every district has unique components in their cultural context but the generalization and prejudge leads to opposition and hate. The member of the LGBT+ seems as a sick person in Turkish culture because of the patriarchy and religion. The bad looking of these members happens because lack of connection, communication and people don’t enough information about these people. People should not put other people in a certain mold and should respect each other in return.

              In conclusion, we talked about the culture, intercultural communication and intercultural communication problems with examples. In my opinion, the most important thing is communication in the world and it is the key point of the people life for living. It creates our culture. However, it can cause some problems in different ways, but these problems can solve with understanding and respect.

 

 

 

                                                                                                                                                                             

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                             REFERENCES

 

 

Joseph A. DeVito, ‘’Human Communication: The Basic Course’’ 13^th Edition. 2015.

Judy C. Pearson, Paul E. Nelson, Scott Titsworth, Lynn Harter, ‘’Human Communication’’. 4^TH Edition. 2011. McGraw Hill.

Eric McLuhan (1996). ‘’The source of term ‘’global village’’. McLuhan Studies (issue 2). Retrieved 2008-12-30.