intercultural communication

The Intercultural Communication
Introduction
In the century of knowledge and technology, the importance of intercultural communication is inevitable. Many Scientists and researchers emphasize in the importance of international communication in today's life. Fast travel, internet and international media, made it easy for us to communicate with people all over the world. In the century of globalization, humans as social beings need to interact with each other for survival. Today many problems that the world confronted with have a global nature. The world challenges with problems such as: poverty, international terrorism, immigration, global warming, and destruction of nature which needs the cooperation between nations. International communication is not an option or selective choice but a necessity.
Nowadays, one of the main questions among citizens of nations is, whether the communication between different nations is effective or not. Individuals try to improve their communication skills by dealing with the people of other cultures. Individuals with intercultural competence can be more successful in their career, education and daily life. The importance of this need appears particularly when we travel or migrate to another country for specific purposes such as studying or business. It is necessary to learn the target culture to communicate with the people who have different backgrounds. The number of people who interact in different languages and cultures is growing fast. This communication appears for variety purposes, business, education, health, military cooperation, etc. In such communications we need to be aware without misunderstanding. Studying on the nature of linguistic and cultural similarities and differences can play a positive and constructive role.
The intercultural communication can apply in many fields such as education, management, marketing and advertisement. In an international business the intercultural communication competence is a very important factor because many company managers need to know how to run their firms, manage staff and communicate with customers. Intercultural communication knowledge has an utmost effect in other fields such as education, health care and other public affaires because of growing multicultural populations.
Definition of intercultural communication:
Intercultural communication is fields of research which tries to find out how people from different countries and cultures behave, interact and perceive the world around them. The findings of such research are applied to real life or authentic situations, how to combine different people from different cultures within an environment is a very important factor in this field.
In the definition of intercultural communication we need to contribute other scientific fields such as: anthropology, psychology and communication.
There are different definitions for intercultural communication. Intercultural communication can be defined as the interpersonal interaction between members of different groups, which differ from each other in respect of the knowledge shared by their members and in respect of their linguistic forms of symbolic behavior
The term ' intercultural communication' refers to communicate between people from different cultures also refers to symbolic exchange processes whereby individuals from two or more different cultural communities negotiate shared meaning in an interactive situation
Because of different cultural backgrounds, when two or more people attempt to communicate, a lot of cultural barriers often arise due to the differences in their ways of life, social styles, customs, world views, religions, philosophy and so on.
"The overall internal capacity of an individual to manage key challenging features of intercultural communication to efficiently negotiate a mode of communication and interaction.
Successful communication doesn't simply acquire a language, but different cultural values reflected in the language as well believes that international communication tends to describe the relations between members of different ethnic groups and languages, interacting in an international context such as the united nations or in a context where one culture is dominant such as in societies with minority migrant groups.
Intercultural communication is sharing the information and knowledge among people with different cultural backgrounds and with different levels of awareness; this differences include both national- cultural differences and professional /social differences.
What does Intercultural competence mean?
The individual's skills in order to communicate with others from a different culture independently and in an appropriate way to their culture called intercultural competence. Having enough information about his/her own culture and also understanding and respect for the values of other culture is very important.
One of the great desires of humans is to communicate with people who are similar to them. This is because they use the same ways of doing things, the same values and function under similar rules. When we are with people similar to us, a sense of empathy and unity will arise.
Lack of knowledge of another culture can cause nervousness or misunderstanding in communication. If we want to understand deeply, using words isn't enough, it is necessary to understand meaning effectively. It helps in developing a common understanding of the needs, reason for being, philosophy and history of other cultures.
By communicating with the people of different cultures we can be acquainted with new beliefs, values and a new ways of life, although it is difficult for us to adapt ourselves to the new culture, language and community.
It is believed that when people want to get married or when they want to leave their homeland to continue their studies in other countries it is essential for them to gain some cultural information of the people of the new contexts.
Why intercultural competence is important?
Nowadays the population of the world especially in Europe, Asia, America are growing fast. There are a lot of multicultural countries and because of the advance of technology we can see different people from different culture in every country. Also we can see more international students in advanced countries or more people from different nationalities in business fields, so in spite of these facts the intercultural competences has an important meaning in these societies.
Economical, political, commercial are the fields that we must increase our intercultural competence in order to get best results.
Because of the rapid advance of communication technology through media, people can communicate easily with each other, so here again the intercultural competence has a significant effect.
The immigration and job seeking factor leads to intercultural contacts.