Intercultural Communication Problems and Solutions I. Intercultural Communication Problems A. Stereotyping — Definition: a selec

Intercultural Communication Problems and Solutions
Good morning, everyone. Today we will look at the intercultural communication problems and solutions.
Generally speaking, three types of problems are involved in the intercultural communication. They are stereotyping, prejudices, and discrimination. Let me explain each one to you with examples.
First, about stereotyping.[1]Walter Lippmann introduced the term in 1922 to refer to a selection process that is used to organise and simplify perceptions of others. Stereotypes are a form of generalisation about some group of people to all people who belong to that category. Examples for stereotyping are such beliefs as: "Women are emotional",[2]"Politicians are dishonest", "Germans are cold and too serious", "Latinos are lazy".
Secondly, about prejudices.[3]Prejudices refer to negative attitudes toward other people that are based on faulty and inflexible stereotypes. Prejudices include irrational feelings of dislike and even hatred for certain groups of people, who are not based on direct experiences and first-hand knowledge.
Whereas prejudice refers to a people’s attitude or mental presentation,[4]the term discrimination refers to the behavioural aspect, prejudice in action. For instance, you hold a resentful attitude towards the idea that women are equally capable in law business. This prejudice might lead you to a discrimination against women in women attorneys.
As we understand the problems involved in intercultural communication, let’s talk about the solutions. We have a 5-step approach we can follow. First Step:[5]Examining our Perception
A not-OK feeling is indubitably uncomfortable for every person affected by it and should therefore be avoided.[6]In addition, it keeps us from finding good and proper solutions to our problems. That is why it is so important to examine this feeling.
An example from a workshop with British students should make this clearer.
A student reported the following German university experience:[7]"I found the German students cold. I was at the university the first day and was supposed to contact a seminar group. The students were sitting around a table talking.[7]No one paid any attention to me; they ignored me, and I left." I asked the student to play the scene. She had the workshop students spread themselves out around a table the way she remembered the German students to be sitting and stood at a distance to it. It was quickly clear that the group around the table probably had not even seen her and[8]that the student’s feeling of being rejected and ignored had only been in her imagination.
Feelings are real and, even when they are objectively irrational, perceiving them is the first step towards change. Second Step: Looking for Evidence
A second step is then the question where these feelings come from: do they have to do with the momentary situation or are they older feelings that are re-released by the current situation?[9]Searching for this evidence almost always brings us into contact with the wounds or fears of a small girl or boy.
Thus too in our account: the student was reminded spontaneously of a childhood scene: she saw herself as a small, skinny, ugly little girl together with her younger, beautiful sister; everyone look at the enchanting little sister, and[10]she felt in her little sister’s shadow, inferior, because she thought she wasn’t as pretty, not as original. This feeling left her feeling as though paralysed. She had become an attractive young woman,[11]but there were occasions time and again in which she retreated into herself and slipped into the shoes of a 5-year-old girl. Third Step: Observing the Reaction
A further step would then be to examine our individual reaction. In our example: in situations in which our student felt rejected and inferior, she was projecting her own feelings onto others. They are the ones who reject her, and therefore they are unfriendly, mean and nasty. Our student took on the typical loser position. It is important here to look closely. Since it is difficult for all of us to cope with seeing ourselves as inferior, with having this feeling within us as our feeling,[12]the almost automatic tendency exists to put the blame on others for exactly this feeling. Not I feel rejected but YOU reject me. And because YOU reject me, I think you’re stupid and therefore reject you. This rejection will be felt by the other and, if he is neither a saint nor a therapist, he will react with rejection, too. This spiral of feelings which create facts also functions analogously with positive feelings. If I awaken a feeling of being recognised in another, his behaviour will be positively strengthened. Fourth Step: Perception of the Others
After one’s own mechanisms have been recognised, it is as important to think oneself into the other. To do this, we need to put ourselves into others’ shoes and ask ourselves: how does the other see the world and how are his reactions to be explained? Fifth Step:[13]Change
Following upon the previous steps, the decisive step is consequentially to ask how I can do it differently. In our example, I asked the student to try to see in another role game what she could change. This time she went to the group, introduced herself and said she was happy to meet her fellow German students. And that was over: she felt good, and she felt active and full of energy again.
An important requirement to change something is to control our own perception[14]by becoming aware of our own subjectivity and[15]by objectively gathering or using more information, for instance by questioning others or through technical evidence like a tape recorder or a video. The idea can be helpful that all of us are similar to the blind who wants to describe an elephant. We don’t know what the elephant really looks like. We can only describe our reality. Important is that we are conscious of our blindness, for then we can ask and paint ourselves a picture.
OK, so we have talked about the three problems in inter-cultural communication, which are stereotyping, prejudices, and discrimination and we also touch upon the solutions to these problems, a five-step approach. Next time, we will put this approach into practice, to give you a real sense of to what extent it works.