Cross-cultural Communication

Perspectives in Theory and Practice

Thomas Warren, Thomas L Warren

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781351845137
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

"Cross-Cultural Communication" is a collection of essays that examines how practitioners can improve the acceptance of their documentation when communicating to cultures other than their own. The essays begin by examining the cross-cultural issues relating to quality in documentation. From there, the essays look at examples of common documents, analysing them from several perspectives. Specifically, the author uses communication theories (such as Bernstein's Elaborated and Restricted Code theory and Marwell and Schmidt's Compliance-Gaining theory) to show how documents used by readers who are not native speakers of English can be written and organized to increase their effectiveness. The principal assumption about how practitioners create their documents is that, while large organizations can afford to write, translate, and then localize, small- to medium-size organizations produce many documents that are used directly by people in other cultures-often without translating and localizing. The advantage the writer gains from these essays is in understanding the strategies and knowing the kinds of strategies to apply in specific situations. In addition, the essays can serve as a valuable resource for students and teachers alike as they determine ways to understand how cross-cultural communication is different and why it makes a difference. Not only do students need to be aware of the various strategies they may apply when creating documents for cross-cultural settings, they also need to see how research can apply theories from different areas-in the case of these essays, communication and rhetorical theories. Another value of the essays is to show the students the role standards play in cross-cultural communication; standards are written by committees that follow style rules developed by the International Standardization Organization in Geneva. Thus, both students and practitioners can find valuable cross-cultural communication advice in these essays.

CHAPTER 1
Introduction

Transferring information across cultures has often presented difficult and complex communication problems. For example, avoiding cultural mistakes that would prevent or modify the communication has frequently occupied technical communicators, especially because of the international character of their documents, not to mention their importance and the recently enacted guidelines for documentation (in the European Union, for example). Advances in translation and attention to localization have gone a long way to improving these communications. But such translation services are expensive, and many small- to medium-size companies cannot easily afford such costs yet want to participate in the worldwide market. Likewise, the advances in localization come at a financial cost that these companies also cannot afford. And a new problem is beginning to appear: outsourcing of jobs, particularly jobs related to technical translation and localization, and while the costs for both are reduced, many times the quality is lower. One set of problems emerging with outsourcing relate to cultural differences between the author and the reader, magnified by adding another culture to the process.¹ One solution is to analyze the recipients of the information better, especially their culture, and to develop writing strategies that help enhance the value and acceptance of the information.

Technical communicators typically analyze their audiences, focusing on such elements as demographics, the audience’s role and responsibilities within an organization, and the psychological/ cognitive need for the information [1]. Communicators are also concerned about where the user will use the information (sitting comfortably in a chair or on an off-shore oil rig); the user’s attitude to the whole process (including the attitude toward the subject, the communicator, and the genre); and a myriad of other issues. Realistically, when communicators must produce information in a form and format that the product or service requires, they facea series of strict deadlines so that when the need for audience analysis arrives, they have had very little time to do a thorough analysis. Some large companies establish predetermined audience analyses for their product and service documentation in an effort to produce uniform documents [2]. Smaller companies, however, rely on the communicators to be well-trained in audience analysis and to perform it, when appropriate, as they develop their documents.

My concern in these essays is not translation (although some of the advice could prove useful when preparing documents for translation and localization). Rather, my concern is with the technical communicator who prepares documents in American English for users whose first language is not American English. In instances like these, the communicator faces two problems.

1. Does the communicator rely exclusively on a limited vocabulary for the documents (such as one of the many forms of Basic English)?

2. How much time is available to do a cultural analysis of the users and then adapt the text accordingly?

The first problem involves one or more of the many forms of Basic English (also called Simplified English). Basic English may work well for documents that will be translated (or at least localized), saving considerable time and money in the translating costs, but such an approach often leaves the document devoid of nuances, depth or richness, or style, or all three. In addition, many communicators are unfamiliar with the linguistic, semantic, and syntactic requirements imposed by Basic English [3].

The second problem is more acute. The communicator must determine the cultural context for the document and construct or adapt a document that not only will be acceptable to the users but will also demonstrate cultural sensitivity. Such a process involves understanding just what culture is. One definition [4] sees some cultural elements as being made manifest in the objective characteristics of a society: codified rules, regulations, and laws of the society’s legal, moral, ethical, and religious systems. Other cultural elements are identified through the subjective codes: interpretations of the objective elements as well as rules, regulations, and laws of a society that are not codified in their legal, moral, ethical, and religious systems. The first set of codes is readily available for those wanting to learn about any given culture. The Bibliography at the end of this book is full of such resources. The subjective codes, however, are not as readily available, so that the communicator must infer them. Both learning efforts are time-consuming and, especially in the case of the subjective systems, prone to misinterpretation. However, this approach to defining culture is relatively simplistic. Another approach that often works is to think about the cultural elements as being those elements that guide people through their daily lives [5]. These include such things as language and gestures, philosophy and values, courtship and marriage, food, work, education, health care, and various systems such as governmental and communication. The definitions provided in dictionaries use these approaches [6–9]. The approach I prefer to use in this book is the one I mentioned above: the objective and subjective elements of the cultural group [4].

OBJECTIVE ELEMENTS IN CULTURE

Objective elements in a culture include such things as the rules and regulations that govern the people and are codified in the various laws (city, county, state, federal). For example, most countries have speed limits for their highways. In addition, religious cultures have codified the expected behaviors of the people accepting that religion, and these are available in the sacred books and commentaries. For example, most religious cultures prohibit killing another person. Language is another kind of culturally objective element. It typically has grammars, dictionaries, and style manuals that codify the language.

These laws and regulations are constantly evolving in the legalistic, legislative, and religious parts of the culture through regulatory bodies as well as secular courts where offenses against the civil laws are tried and ecclesiastical courts where violations of religious codes are prosecuted. In short, these objective elements are quite visible, and the technical communicator needs to be aware of them when writing documents. While the objective elements are visible, the subjective ones usually are not.

SUBJECTIVE ELEMENTS IN CULTURE

The subjective elements are much more difficult to identify and to locate. These include such things as a culture’s values, norms, beliefs, and attitudes. (For early research on the subjective elements of a culture, see Hofstede [10–12].) In the example of speed limits, what is the attitude of the drivers toward speed limits? Do they try to evade the law? In the United States, several companies make radar detectors that are popular and, though illegal in some states, sell extremely well. Laws have other subjective sides based on how judges and law enforcement officers interpret them—the circumstances when speeding is permitted. In most religions, you can identify conservative, moderate, and liberal interpretations of the objective codes. These tend to be orally transmitted or inferred from pronouncements of the religious leaders. Killing another person may be justified, for example, in a war. In language you also have subjective elements in the connotative meaning of words. There are also disagreements about permissiveness relating to grammar, usage, and spelling. Again, the acceptance of these positions is usually inferred.

Further complicating the issues is a traditional versus a modern interpretation of situations. For example, we frequently generalize about the “traditional” Eastern attitude toward some aspect of the culture. Time is a good example. McGrath’s anthology [13] has several essays that examine time in a cultural context, comparing actual attitudes to “traditional” attitudes concerning time. This and many similar issues are causing problems when in conflict with the more “traditional” view. In the case of time, are the people of Japan abandoning their traditional view about time in favor of a more Western view? Robert Levine’s essay on the pace of life [in 13] shows that the Japanese involved in the study tend toward a more Western approach to the pace of life—much faster than the traditional view.

Because such interpretations are seldom written down but are intuitively known by the members of the group, technical communicators writing documents for use in these cultures have a difficult job. Communicators certainly do not want to offend their users by committing a cultural gaffe in their documents. Consequently, they localize their documents or at least have some sort of review before distributing them. This approach is reactive. What I am suggesting is a proactive approach when developing the document.

The difficulties arise when communicators confuse the subjective elements of a culture with the objective elements. They can more easily identify the objective “rules” that govern a culture (such as the religious, linguistic, and legal laws published for all to know), and consequently will often rely completely on them. Knowing the more subjective elements of a culture (elements that are not codified in sets of “rules” or “laws”) can help communicators prepare documents that users will more willingly accept. For example, what is the cultural attitude toward time (linear or circular? a river or a pool?); business communications (get the message up front fast or establish a relationship between writer and reader before getting to business?); the individual—my example below—(an independent person seeking personal success or a person seeking to have the group rather than the individual succeed?).

Certainly, it is difficult for the communicator to prepare documents for native English speakers that have all the quality characteristics normally associated with professionally prepared materials without having to consider various cultural issues. Yet, the global economy demands that the materials cross cultures.

The kinds of problems and the subsequent embarrassments are well known [14, pp. 370–371], and the sources in the Bibliography show that a lot of people have been concerned about this problem and have offered multiple suggestions in many disciplines and from many perspectives. Nancy Hoft’s 1995 book [15] has proven invaluable for communicators wanting to make their documents more acceptable to cross-cultural audiences. Especially useful are her worksheets that help the technical communicator analyze the culture of the user. Even textbooks in technical report writing are now including a section or a whole chapter on communicating across cultures, offering advice for students on how to be aware of what they say and the cultural impact it will have. For example, two approaches used by textbooks are providing an individual chapter on cross-cultural...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1 Introduction
• Chapter 2 Issues in Internationalization of Technical Documentation: Quality Control
• Chapter 3 National Cultures in International Communication
• Chapter 4 Communicating Style Rules to Editors of International Standards
• Chapter 5 Cultural Influences on Technical Manuals
• Chapter 6 Increasing User Acceptance of Technical information in Cross-Cultural Communication
• Chapter 7 Conclusion
• Appendix
• Bibliography
• Index