Transcript Public Relations and Intercultural Communication


What is Public Relations?
› “the management, through communication,
of perceptions and strategic relationships
between an organization and its internal
and external stakeholders, aligned and
coordinated with other communication to
contribute to the corporate brand.” (Du
Plessis, 2006:193)
› Centrality of COMMUNICATION
All humans + all human organizations are
located within particular cultural
frameworks
 We need awareness and understanding
of the relationship between these
cultural frameworks and the nature and
processes of communication
 Key Issue: conceptions of
communication are culturally based


Individualised, linear, information
dominant
 “Communication is the management of
messages with the objective of creating
meaning.” (Griffin, 2003)


Confucian understanding:
› “infinite interpretive process where all parties
are searching to develop and maintain a
social relationship” (Jandt, 2008)
› Relationship dominant
› Controlling element of family relationships
encompass community and nation
› Ideal attitudes: family loyalty + respect;
subordinates honoring + obeying superiors +
meeting demands of elders

Terms:
› jiao liu
– to exchange
› Chuan bo - to disseminate
› Gou tong - to connect among people
Maintaining harmony, balance –
people, family, universe
 Ritual model: primary focus – sustaining
of society over time, construction of
commonly held beliefs

Dangerous to assume our
understandings of communication itself
are culturally universal
 Need to develop heightened awareness
of ourselves, our own cultural
assumptions and constructedness, as first
step to inter-cultural sensitivity

We are all located within specific
cultures
 Our culture is our socialization – the
social ‘air’ that we breathe
 We are UNCONSCIOUS of much of our
culturally shaped assumptions, beliefs +
practices
 INVISIBLE dimensions of culture – most
likely source of ICC difficulties


The evolving way of life of a group of
persons, consisting of a shared set of
practices associated with a shared set of
products, based on the world (Moran,
2001)
Culture is dynamic, changeable
(evolving) – thus variable
 Culture is social (rooted in shared
phenomena) – much cultural knowledge
exists between people, so is socially
distributed – mind-body-action-setting
 Culture is COGNITIVE – product of
learning (facts + processes: thinking
patterns, world views, beliefs

Culture is also material – products,
artefacts – from nail-clippers to poetry,
rap, opera, hip-hop to ballet, boiled
eggs to Eggs Benedict
 Culture is language, language is culture

Different languages ‘cut up’ and organize the
world for us in different ways from each other
Primary language community socialises us very
deeply

Culture involves symbols
› People use their symbols to frame their
thoughts and expressions in ways intelligible
to other members of their culture
› Symbols make culture possible, reproducible
and readable
› Culture is rooted in both our conscious and
sub-conscious selves, involving taken-forgranted beliefs, values, norms, basic
assumptions

Assumptions:
› culture is fixed and firmly bounded
› all members of one culture operate
according to cultural ‘type’
› culture is fairly simplistically associated with a
particular group, language, nationality
› Homogenised, stereotyped responses to
members of other cultures are acceptable
Aim to develop a deep, nonessentialised awareness of one’s own
and other cultures
 Consciously build awareness that many
things we take for granted in our own
culture are not universal
 Work on increasing sensitivity to cultural
differences along with sensitivity to how
individuals may differ from cultural
stereotypes

If an intercultural communication
interaction feels difficult, avoid assuming
it’s a personality problem of the other
communicator; ask yourself questions
about possible sources of cultural
misunderstanding
 Strive to avoid depending on cliched
cultural stereotypes in mass
communication campaigns
