Broadening Horizons
Learning objectives
Successful interaction with this and associated course content will enable students to…
- Recognize the need for IC competence in today’s increasingly diverse communities.
- Develop balanced and informed views on the concepts of culture and communication.
- Perceive patterns in cultural traditions/values but be alert to over-simplifications
- Recognize the ethical issues in IC and the need for global citizenship
- Understand the role of media in framing cultural values
- List/discuss the benefits of intercultural communication
- Recognize increasing racial and ethnic diversity
- Discuss the role of technology in communication
- Discuss intercultural communication as a discipline
- Know about cultural taxomonies and their limits
- Identify/discuss the different contexts in which intercultural communication takes place
Topics covered
- Introducing intercultural communication
- What is intercultural communication?
- The need for intercultural communication today
- Culture: Central to our lives
- Culture from the perspective of complexity theory
- Communication: A human necessity
- Cultures under study and in the media
- Intercultural Communication as an academic discipline
- Cultural taxonomies and their dangers
- Ethics & intercultural communication
- Countering the media echo chamber
- Technically speaking: Information literacy
In this initial chapter we will be discussing some of the fundamental aspects of intercultural communication, including its importance in today’s world, its history as an academic discipline, and the typical approaches to its instruction. There will also be discussion of the role of media in intercultural communication as well as its relationship to ethics. This chapter, as do each in this text, concludes with a section related to technology (entitled “Technically Speaking”); in this case, dealing with the importance of digital and information literacy for intercultural communicative competence.
