An Introduction to Intercultural Communication. Fred E. Jandt
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Learning Objectives
After studying this chapter, you will be able to:
1 Explain the regulators of human behavior and identity
2 Understand the meanings and connotations of the terms culture, subculture, co-culture, subgroup, counterculture, and microculture
3 Explain why this text recommends we prioritize the terms culture and community over other terms to describe those concepts
4 Describe how communication is defined by different cultures and understand how people of diverse cultures communicate differently
5 Describe the relationship between culture and media
Have you ever considered why there’s not just one human culture rather than many cultures? Biologists Rebecca L. Cann, Mark Stoneking, and Allan C. Wilson (1987) studied genetic material from women around the world and contend that all humans alive today share genetic material from a woman who lived some 200,000 years ago in sub-Saharan Africa. Their African “Eve” conclusion is supported by linguistic observations. Cavalli-Sforza, Piazza, Menozzi, and Mountain (1988) have shown that considerable similarity exists between Cann et al.’s tree of genetic relationships and the tree of language groups, which hypothesizes that all the world’s languages can be traced to Africa.
The languages that vary the most from other languages today can be found in Africa. This suggests that these African languages are older. Africa’s Khoisan languages, such as that of the !Kung San, use a clicking sound that is denoted in writing with an exclamation point. Such evidence, along with genetic evidence, suggests that almost 7 and a half billion of us alive today share ancestry from one group in Africa. Yet among all of us there are diverse ways of understanding the world, languages, beliefs, and ways of defining our identities. In this chapter, first you’ll read about the regulators of human behavior and identity. Then you’ll read about the related concepts of culture, subculture, co-culture, subgroup, and microculture. Finally, you’ll read about the concept of communication as something that is itself a product of culture, meaning that how communication as a concept is defined and how communication is performed are very much part of each cultural group—so much so that it has been said culture and communication can only be understood together.
Sources of Identity
How, then, did so many distinct human identities develop? Climate changes and other pressures led to migrations out of Africa. The first wave may have been along the coastline of southern Asia through southern India into Australia. The second wave may have traveled to the Middle East, and from there, one branch went to India and a second to China. Those who left the Middle East for Europe may have actually traveled first through central Asia and then throughout the world to other parts of Asia, Russia, the Americas, and Europe (Wells, 2002). Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio (2010) contends that our world, our environment, is so complex and so varied on the planet that diverse social networks developed to regulate life so that we could survive. Centuries of geographical separation led to the development of diverse social network regulators of human life. These social network regulators of human life over the history of humanity have been the basis for ways of understanding the world, for beliefs, and for shared individual identities, which at times resulted in confrontations and conflicts between groups. Understanding these identities and the resulting confrontations explains our past, provides insights about the present, and predicts our future. Sir David Cannadine (2013) posits six forms of regulators of human life and identity: religion, nation, class, gender, race, and civilization.
Generational transmission of important cultural rituals provides cultural continuity through the ages.
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Religion and Identity
Cannadine (2013) argues that religion is the oldest source of human identity. Religion can clearly be a regulator of how we live our lives. Religious identity can affect all elements of our lives. For example, the Hindu writes from left to right, prays to the rising sun, and keeps a mustache. The Muslim writes from right to left, faces the setting sun when praying, and always shaves the upper lip (Jacoby, 2011).
Religion provides a sense of identity and source of conflicts. Religious wars are those clearly caused or justified by differences in religious beliefs exclusive of other issues. Even with that restrictive definition, religious wars have resulted in tens of millions of deaths. The Crusades of the 11th through 13th centuries against the Muslims were blessed as a bellum sacrum (“holy war”) by Pope Urban II. In the 16th century, there was a succession of wars between Roman Catholics and Protestants known as the French Wars of Religion. The Nigerian Civil War (1967–1970) pitted Islam against Christianity, as does ongoing violence in the Central African Republic. In the early 1990s, Serbs, Croats, and Bosniaks in the former Yugoslavia were divided along Orthodox, Catholic, and Muslim lines. In Iraq, Muslims are divided between Sunni and Shiite. India, founded as a secular, pluralist republic, has passed a new citizenship law that critics say marginalizes Muslims. Late in 2019, protests had spread across the country. At other times, of course, religious groups have coexisted without conflict.
In Chapter 8, you’ll read more about religion and identity, but first let’s look in more detail into Cannadine’s remaining five sources of human identity and conflict.
National Identity
The nation-state may be the most significant political creation of modern times. For much of humanity from the 18th century on, national identity has superseded religious identity as a primary identity in many parts of the world. It has become common practice today to equate nation-state identity with cultural identity. In most cases, this is largely true. Ladegaard (2007), for example, demonstrated that in a large global corporation employing some 8,500 people in nearly 40 countries, employees perceive their nation-states as the frame of reference or identity while any conceptualization of a global identity is perceived as a hypothetical construction. An individual born and raised in Spain who has worked for years for the Swedish technology company Ericsson at its service center in India most likely self-identifies as Spanish.
Map 1.1 Catalonia, a Semi-Autonomous Region With a Distinct History and Language
National identity is not descriptive when arbitrarily drawn political boundaries do not reflect peoples’ identities. For example, in Europe there are several examples of popular support for secessionist states. In the United Kingdom, a vote for independence for Scotland was held in 2014. In a hotly contested election, nearly 45% voted for independence. While the referendum failed, British prime minister David Cameron pledged reforms granting Scotland greater autonomy. Catalonia is a region of about 7.5 million people in northeastern Spain with its own culture and language. In 2017, 90% of the 2.26 million Catalonians voted in favor of independence. Against Spain’s government’s objections, the region’s parliament has begun the process of separating from Spain. The Spanish government suspended local government and jailed leaders of the independence movement. In Belgium, Dutch-speaking Flemings in the north have pressed for separation from the French- and German-speaking Walloon population in the south.
North and South Korean athletes perform under the Korean Unification Flag as a symbolic break in the tensions between the two countries.
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