Engaging in cross-cultural communication

Abstract

Goodenough (1964, p.36) argues that “culture is not a material phenomenon; it does not consist of things, people, behaviour, or emotions. It is rather an organisation of these things. It is the form of things that people have in mind, their models for perceiving, relating, and otherwise interpreting them”. Goodenough (1964) elevates culture to a more cognitive status where tangible elements which contribute to the overall phenomenon are more importantly the result of mind models. In more or less the same cognitive perspective Bhabha (1994, p.38) emphasizes the developmental process of creating and activating new schemata, claiming that “to that end we should remember that it is the “inter”, the cutting edge of translation and negotiation, the in between space, that carries the burden of the meaning of culture”. Assuming that it is difficult to give clear-cut definition of culture and willing to recognize the cognitive connotation of the term, what is the benefit of dealing with culture as an “in-between space”? Bhabha (1994, p.39) finds that “by exploring the Third Space, we may elude the politics of polarity and emerge as the others of our selves”. Kramsch (1993, p.235) states that “the telling of these boundary experiences makes participants become conscious of the paramount importance of context and how manipulating contextual frames and perspectives through language can give people the power and control, as they try to make themselves at home in a culture “of a third kind”. In so doing, there is a shift away from our initial position of egocentricity to reciprocity (Piaget and Well, 1951).