Intercultural Communication: Barriers

B. Cultural Values and Practices

As has been explained before, defining cultures is extremely difficult. In the 1950s Kroeber and Kluckholm identified over 160 different definitions of culture. It is beyond the scope and purpose of this lesson to review in-depth the definitions of culture and how they affect interactions both on and off GV teams. However, a brief overview will be given to give a cursory understanding of how culture may affect communication and interactions between people.

Etic vs Emic. To begin it is important to differentiate between etic and emic sides of culture (Hall, 2005). Etic refers to things that are common across cultures. They are universal values and practices that are found in most if not all cultures. Etic items allow us to see commonalities and proclaim that the other culture is "just like ours", because of the shared beliefs and values.

Emic refers to those things that are meaningful within a specific group or society and may not be universal across cultures. The emic values are the things that make cultures unique from each other. The emic cultural values are the items that may give rise to conflicts, stereotypes, prejudice and discrimination. They are, at the same time, the values that other cultures see as important and needed and seek to adopt.

GV team members need to identify the etic items and use them to build strong team unity and trusting relationships. Emic viewpoints become important in engineering design as one understands and uses the emic standards to produce a product that caters to the unique characteristics of a specific culture.

Pause: Reflection and Practice

Identify 5 etic and 5 emic sides of your culture and share with an international team member. Do you have any etic cultural values that were originally emic cultural values either adopted by other cultures from your culture or adopted by your culture from another?