In the course “Understanding Russians: Contexts of Intercultural Communications": we will: 1) Build skills in the analysis of the intercultural communication process using Russian-Western communication as an example. 2) Apply the knowledge of interrelations between different contexts of communication (cultural, institutional, professional, social, interpersonal, etc.) to the cultural history and national psychology of Russians. The purpose of the course is to provide the students with a broad overview of the basic principles governing the past, the present and the future interactions between Russia and the West, with a focus on the culture and national psychology of Russians and Western Europeans. For example, we will look at the cases when basic cultural values of Russians show up through the linguistic choices shaping language production which is consequently misattributed by Western partners. No matter what the language of intercultural communication is – Russian, or English – the meaning of many linguistic expressions may be reconstructed wrongly by the representatives of another culture. Some of the basic questions we will tackle are: • What are the concepts of culture that have the strongest influence on communication? • What are Russian basic cultural values and how they shape modern Russian consciousness? • What are the specific communication patterns of modern Russians, including those of public and electronic discourse? • What is important to know about communication with Russians in organizational contexts? Importantly, this course is NOT just a list of practical instructions of dos and don’ts of dealing with Russians. The course contains a substantial academic component introducing the key notions and concepts of the Theory of Communication, which will be extensively introduced throughout the first few modules of the course. These theoretical grounds will be further on used as a tool for analyzing the intercultural communications with Russians.
3.4. Communication as Transaction. Communication Functions
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Understanding Russians: Contexts of Intercultural Communication
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National Research University Higher School of Economics
45 classificações
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Theory of Communication
In this week's lectures we will shift our focus, and will be looking at the basics of communication in order to apply them later to the Russian communication style. We hope you will find this information useful for understanding various motives that govern the way people (not only Russians!) interact. Anna Skaya and Michael Johnston will continue to be our experts, and your weekly quiz will await you as well. We wish you a nice learning experience in this section of the course.
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Mira BergelsonProfessor
Philological Faculty
[MUSIC]
Communication cannot exist without certain medium,
because if we use a metaphor or if you know sending messages,
getting message across, getting message to our partner or addressee.
Then, this metaphor presupposes some medium, some instrument,
some channel through which we get it.
And you may use other metaphors to describe it.
Two important concepts when discussing medium of communication are the audience
and technology.
Because of course,
there is a lot of technology now, especially in the 21st century,
communication technologies are developing very fast and mediums may be different.
And this difference in technology, purely technical, at the same time, influences
the message and the communication process in general, not to say anything about
social networks, or mobile communication.
Even simpler things also make difference.
One thing is conversation over the phone, another is conversation face to face.
And various cultures prefer different mediums for communication.
Again, we need to specify the context.
For instance, as an example, in the business context,
Russians rely more on written communication than oral communication.
This is already an example of cultural preferences in medium.
Speaking about medium about delivering messages, about getting them across,
we actually talk about communication as a transactional process.
And in fact it is.
A transactional process we understand a process in which two or
more people exchange roles.
So, if we talk about roles of speaker and listener, or sender and
receiver of these different metaphors behind this, they exchange these roles.
They way they exchange it, how this is what differentiates
a various models of communication processs.
Transactional, or interactional.
And we come to this a little bit later.
But at this moment,
I only want to make point that communication in a way is a transaction.
One behavior of each person is dependent on and influenced by behavior or
the other.
And the exact model of a role exchange may differ in various communication theories.
But the very fact of exchanging roles and
passing something from one side to another and
then that is what makes the essence of transactions.
The most typical and physically understandable transaction
is an instance of buying and selling things, when we exchange goods and money.
A couple of other important concepts that are usually involved in this private
of communication are feedback and noise.
These are highly contextual concepts because feedback can be very different,
for instance, in a situation of a person listening to a friend and
nodding like that and saying, mm-hm, mm-hm.
Or by feedback we also understand a written report
given by a manager to his or her employee.
Noise, the same thing about noise.
It can physical noise that prevents you from listening me,
I hope it doesn't happen now, you can hear me well.
But, it also can be psychological noise that, a feeling of distress that
prevents a person from understanding actually what is being said to him or her.
It can be cultural noise, they screen that.
Again, prevents a person from getting the message correctly,
understanding all the meanings behind it, cultural meanings even if you know them.
So, both feedback and noise are highly contextual concepts.
And again, we hit into this
central for our topic, for
our course, the concept of what is context, what is communication context?
Looking at the communication from the functional point of view,
we approach the idea of communication functions.
Can we actually figure out what function, such a basic section, all embracing,
a process of human interaction involves what functions we can talk about.
Well, probably we can point to some most important and what it gives us.
Why would we need this?
We would need this because maybe
in different types of communication functions.
We will see some different ways how the message is shaped,
how it is interpreted, how the meaning is constructed.
So, from the functional point of view, or
what we see when we discuss communication is trying to achieve goals,
goal achievement, as the first communication function.
And this type of function has two aspects, so
to say informational aspect, exchanging information.
And task orientation, which is especially important when we
talk about communication in organizational context, professional context.
So, communication helps us to solve the tasks.
To achieve certain goals that we put for ourselves, or others put for
us in professional organization and business and other types of context.
The second function that communication realizes, provides for, is control.
Control through communication, we can control actions of other people.
We can be persuasive and that is a perlocutionary aspect of communication.
When something that we say is being interpreted by another party,
another side and it will influence this person's attitudes and
will lead to certain behaviors.
That's what understood under perlocution or aspect of communication and
we will see this term later when we will discuss the theory of speech arts.
And another aspect of control is the status building.
Through communication we achieve, we build, we edit so
to say we correct and regulate our social status.
Because communication involves everything.
It's also and let's say that you write and you get your grade and
it makes your status as a student, for instance, in the class.
But many other things, even within face to face,
friendly communication we talk about status building.
Remember how you first came to a new school or to a new company or
friends, where you had to show that you are someone who deserves attention.
You are building your status for communication.
And the third very important aspect of function of communication
is related to affiliation.
It is a relational, or emotional aspect of communications.
Where we through communication, we built our relations with other people.
We tell them, we show them whether we'll like them or not.
We actually create bonding through communication.
We become closer or we part through communication.
And of course cultures differ.
They differ not because they don't have this or that functions.
All cultures use communication in these three or other functions.
But the exact mix of these functions in specific context of
communication will create this unique cultural brand.
For instance, what do Russians stand to take into account when they communicate?
What kind of affiliation they will make?
How they will deal with providing information?
Is it somehow different from other cultures?
Yes it is.
And in what context?
How will it be judged professionally?
How persuasive you can afford to be in a social situation.
Different cultures differ very much in this aspect and
all this makes this cultural mix.
If we look at some other communication dimensions,
we could probably discuss it from the point of view of how formal or
informal is communication specific context and
how we move from formality to informality and whether you move back on the scale.
How communication differs if we look at small audiences,
like two people or three people talking together to large audiences.
What will be changes that will happen to the process
of human communication when we move along this scale.
How it, communication in the specific, in certain cultures different
when we go from familiar situations to unfamiliar situations.
What is being changed, how we get familiarized with people and
how it is reflected in communication,
in the actual linguistic form that this communication takes.
And again, building on this, building on this dimensions,
we could probably return to discussing certain formats of communication or
communication areas like intrapersonal communication.
When we make our decisions or
create our attitudes, express our own ideas within ourselves.
Preparing to talk or evaluating the experiences that we've got for
the outer world.
Interpersonal communication will also involve, for instance sometimes discuss
various roles that we play in the outer world as a professional, I am a teacher.
As a family member,
I am mother, I am daughter, I am wife, sister, and so on and so forth.
These different roles are also being played within
my mind through interpersonal communication.
Then interpersonal communication,
which involves usually face to face communication between two people, but
is actually more complex a definition than that.
Group and team communication, organizational communication,
public communication, mass communication, all these things are called communication.
They are all different depending on various scales according in which we could
distribute them and all of these formats or areas have a cultural specifics.
For instance mass communication in or mass media
in various cultures reflect the social and political situation of this culture.
Group and team communication in Russian culture very much depends on
a complicated twist between individualism and collectivism.
Characteristics of modern Russian culture and so on and so forth.
Difference in public communication, I usually discussed and
researched in communication studies.
For instance, what is a political speech in the United States,
in Israel, or in Russia?
These are all very different things that address and
that exploit cultural specifics of these countries.
And the last but not the least intercultural communication which as we
say can kind of overlap all these areas and add additional
Intercultural or interdiscourse aspect to communication formats.
To list communication processes, because communication, and
we use this word all the time now, the situation of communication involves
a lot of psychological, sociopsychological,
and other processes that actually make this process of creating,
constructing meaning, and interpreting it in a common effort between participants.
It involves perceiving and understand, engaging in verbal communication.
Engaging in nonverbal communication, body language,
gestures by a verbal characteristics, such as intonation and others.
Listening and responding.
Creating environment, the climate of communicative situation.
Adapting to contexts, very important.
And again, we're in the realm of context.
What types of contexts we would probably point to at this moment?
Already said physical, relational, cultural.
Cultural overlaps all of them.
And then, we understand the context in a narrow and
broad sense because by narrow sense usually linguists
understand context as something that is at the left side of what is being said and
what follows on the right side of what is being said or written.
This is the context in the narrow sense and
it is very important for us when we participate in the communication because
we base our interpretations and we need these interpretations and inferences,
as you remember, at every moment in communication.
So, we base these interpretations on what was immediately just said, that
what immediately precedes the moment of discourse that we are now at.
At the same, the wide understanding of the context can involve actually everything.
It can be something that happen to us a few minutes before,
something that we know about our apartment communication, general context.
Sometimes we sort of
immerse our messages in the broad context of our personal memories and
inclinations and it also creates a context for the message.
So basically, describing in context, we can say that,
if there is a message, everything else around can be called a context.
But this is a very broad understanding of it, and of course,
not usually operational.
We probably will speak about more specific understanding of context.
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