Cross-Cultural Communication Do Icelanders have the ... - Skemman

LOK 2106 University of Akureyri
1 Theoretical discussion
1.1 Culture - definitions
“Culture usually refers to something that is made by human beings rather than
something that occurs in nature ….The most critical dimension of culture concerns
itself with people’s assumptions about life. Culture consists of the ideals, values,
and assumptions about life that are widely shared and that guide specific
behaviours. Triandis (1977) points out the distinction between objective and
subjective culture whereas the objective culture refers to the visible, tangible
aspects of culture, and includes such things as the artefacts people make, the food
they eat, the clothing they wear, and even the names they give to things. It is
relatively easy to pick up, analyze, and hypothesize about the uses and meanings
of objective elements of culture. Subjective culture on the other hand refers to the
invisible, less tangible aspects of a group of people. People’s values, attitudes,
norms of behaviour, and adopted roles - the things generally kept in people´s
minds - fall into this category. It is much more difficult for people to speak about,
observe, and understand what is going on when it is the subjective elements of
their culture that are in conflict with those of another. It is thought that most crosscultural
misunderstandings occur at the subjective cultural level, and that this
should be the focus of good cross-cultural training” (Cushner & Brislin, 1996, p.
5-6).
In his Intercultural research paper “The current state of knowledge” Stephan
Dahl (2004) gives a short overview of the main concepts and theories in
intercultural and cross-cultural communication which will be looked upon in
following paragraphs.
The first structured approach to form a theory how to classify cultural
pattern came from Edward T. Hall when he, based on his experience in the
Foreign Service, published two books, “The Silent Language” (1959) and
“The Hidden Dimension” (1969). In them, he identified two classic
dimensions of culture. Firstly the high-context and low-context cultures
which deals with how much information is needed to be formally written
down. Hall also representd a dimension of, polychronic, where many things
can be handled at a time, versus monochronic time orientation where one
thing is done at a time. Although both concepts are very useful, and like the
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