Intercultural Communication

This course focuses on how key cultural values are embedded in language use, and how these hidden assumptions can impede effective communication across cultural groups. Aspects such as organisation of discourse, preferred mode of communication, nonverbal communication, intonation patterns, politeness, address terms, greetings, and requests will be examined across cultures. The analysis will focus on how these relate to the broader definition of cultural values in terms of collectivism versus individualism. The objective is to develop students' sensitivity to cross-cultural variation in communication and to provide a theoretical framework for interpreting variation.