Cultural Barriers to Communication
• “Culture is the pattern of taken-for-granted
assumptions about how a given collection of
people should think, act, and feel as they go
about their daily affairs”
-Joynt & Warner, 1996
• In other words culture is the ideas, customs, and
social behaviour of a particular group of people
or society.
Causes of Cultural Barriers
• Language
– Different cultures have developed their own
language as a part of their heritage.
– People are comfortable communicating in their own
language whereas have to work hard to learn new
languages
– Even when people try to express in their own
language, many misunderstandings arise.
– It becomes more profound in people speaking
different languages
• A British boss asked a new, young American
employee, if he would like to have an early lunch.
The employee answered “Yeah that would be
great!”. The ‘yeah’ was misunderstood by the boss.
He assumed the employee was being rude, ill
mannered and disrespectful. The boss responded by
saying “with that attitude you may as well forget
about lunch”. This left the employee bewildered.
The boss had received an entirely different message
than what the employee intended to convey!
Causes of Cultural Barriers
• Signs and Symbols (Semantics)
– Signs, symbols and gestures varies in different
cultures.
– The use of the “Swastika” symbol in Hinduism and
for German Nazi can be taken as an example. The
symbol was used by Hitler for his rule and is taken
as something to fear, whereas Swastika in
Hinduism is taken as auspicious and lucky.
• For example, the sign “thumbs up” is taken as
a sign of approval and wishing luck in most of
the cultures but is taken as an insult in
Bangladesh. Similarly, the “V” hand gesture
with palm faced outside or inside means
victory and peace in US, but back of hand
facing someone showing the sign is taken as
insulting in many cultures.
Causes of Cultural Barriers
• Stereotypes and Prejudices
– Stereotyping is the process of creating a picture of a whole
culture.
– Generalizing all people belonging to the same culture as having
similar characteristics and categorizing people accordingly.
– Negative stereotyping creates prejudices as it provokes
judgmental attitudes.
– People look at those cultures as evil and treat the people
following the religion wickedly.
– Media is a tool of mass communication which promotes
stereotypes and prejudices and creates more communication
barriers.
• For example, Asian students are stereotyped
to be good at Math which is a positive
stereotype. But, there is also cultural
stereotype of all people following a particular
religion as being violent and is negative
stereotyping.
• Behaviour and Beliefs
– Cultural differences causes behaviour and personality
differences
• like body language, thinking, communication, manners, norms,
etc. which leads to miscommunication
– Culture also sets a specific norms which dictates
behaviour as they have guidelines for accepted behaviour.
– It explains what is right and wrong.
– Every action is influenced by culture like ambitions,
careers, interests, values, etc. Beliefs are also another
cause for cultural barrier.
• The Japanese are perceived to be devious and
unforthcoming with information. To indicate that he
is not interested in a sale, a Japanese businessman
would politely talk around the issue. He would tell
his Norwegian client “that will be very difficult”. He
believes that he has sent the message that there
will be no sale. The Norwegian would misinterpret
this as unresolved problems that his company
should focus upon and the deal is not off.
• Ethnocentrism
– Ethnocentrism is the process of dividing cultures as
“us” and “them”.
– The people of someone's own culture are categorized
as in-group and the other culture as out-group.
– There is always greater preference to in-group.
– There is an illusion of out-group as evil and inferior.
– This evaluation is mostly negative.
– Ethnocentrism affects the understanding of message,
and encourages hostility
• People from different cultural background, for
the same conversation have a different culture-
based interpretation to it.
• For example ,conversations that may appear
perfectly normal to the native Japanese speaker
but abnormal to the native English speaker and
vice versa will be analyzed for ethnocentric
tendencies.
• Religion
– Religion also disrupts communication as it creates
a specific image of people who follow other
religions.
– People find it difficult to talk to people who follow
different religions.
– Religious views influence how people think about
others.
– It creates differences in opinions.
Overcoming cultural barriers
• There are other cultural barriers like frames of
reference, political opinions, priorities of life,
age, etc.
• Cross cultural communication is not only a
barrier but also an opportunity for creativity,
new perspectives, and openness to new ideas
and unity in the world.
Conclusion :
• To make communication effective , the causes
of cultural communication barriers must be
eliminated as much as possible.
• Cross cultural understanding must be
increased as it decreases communication
barrier caused by culture difference.
THANK YOU
Attitudes toward time vary from culture to culture
• Attitudes toward time vary from culture to culture
• Countries that follow monochronic time perform only one
major activity at a time (U.S., England, Switzerland, Germany)
• Countries that follow polychronic time work on several activities
simultaneously (Latin America, the Mediterranean, the Arabs)
• North Americans are very time conscious and value punctuality.
Being late for meetings is viewed as rude and insensitive
behavior. Tardiness also conveys that the person is not well
organized
• Germans and Swiss are even more time conscious. People of
Singapore and Hong Kong also value punctuality
• In Algeria, on the other hand, punctuality is not widely
regarded. Latin American countries have a ‘manana’ attitude.
People in Arab cultures have a casual attitude toward time
