跨文化交际复习资料

一．名词解释

1.Globalization is worldwide interconnectedness,evidenced in global movements of natural resources,trade goods,human labour,finance capital,information,and infectious diseases.P2

2.Intercultural communication is communication between people whose cultural perceptions and symbol systems are distinct enough to alter the communication event.P12

3.The dominant culture is a type of culture that one group possesses the power to speak for the entire culture while setting the tone and agenda that others will usually follow.P12

4.Co-cultures are cultures discussing groups or social communities exhibiting communication characteristics,perceptions,values,beliefs,and practices that are sufficiently different to distinguish them from other groups and communities and from the dominant culture.P13

5.Communication is a dynamic process in which people attempt to share their internal states with other people through the use of symbols.P16

6.Culture is a set of human-made objective and subjective elements that in the past have increased the probability of survival and resulted in satisfaction for the participants in an ecological niche,and thus became shared among those who could communicate with each other because they had a common language and they lived in the same time and place.P23

7.Values are culturally defined standards of desirability,goodness,and beauty that serve as broad guidelines for social living.P25

Values are shared ideas about what is true,right,and beautiful which underline cultural patterns and guide society in response to the physical and social environment.P189

8.Stereotypes are a collection of false assumptions that people in all cultures make about the characteristics of members of various groups.P42

A stereotype is a cognitive structure containing the perceiver’s knowledge,beliefs,and experiences about some human social groups.P170

9.Objectivity is the state of being objective,just,unbiased and not influenced by emotions or personal prejudices.P43

10.Social organizations or social institutions are the groups that members of a culture turn to for lessons about the meaning of life and methods for living that life.P49

11.Family is a group of intimates,who generate a sense of home and group identity,complete with strong ties of loyalty and emotion,and an experience of a history and a future.P54

12.Individualism is a kind of thought that involves self-motivation,autonomy,and independent thinking,which takes in the following forms.People’s personal goals take priority over their allegiance to groups like the family or the employer.The loyalty of individualists to a given group is very weak;they feel they belong to many groups and are apt to change their membership as it suits to them,switching churches,for example,or leaving one employer for another.Such thought stresses personal rights and responsibilities,privacy,voicing one’s own opinion,freedom,innovation,and self-expression.P198. P199.P67

13.Collectivism is a kind of thought that people primarily view themselves as members of groups and collectives rather than as autonomous individuals.In such cultures people emphasize community,collaboration,shared interest,harmony,tradition,the public good,and maintaining face.Collectivism means greater emphasis on the views.needs,and goals of the in-group rather than oneself;social norms and duty defined by the in-group rather than behavior to get pleasure;beliefs shared with the in-group rather than beliefs that distinguish the self from in-group;and great readiness to cooperate with in-group members.P200.P198.P67

14.History is the witness that testifies to the passing of time;it illumines reality,vitalizes memory,provides guidance in daily life,and brings us tidings of antiquity.P75

15.(不考)Worldview is a culture’s orientation toward God,humanity,nature,questions of existence,the universe and cosmos,life,moral and ethical reasoning,suffering,death,and other philosophical issues that influence how its members perceive the world.P97 The worldview of a people is the way they interpret reality and events,including images of themselves and how they relate to the world around them.P97

Worldview functions as a guide to help people determine what the world looks like and how they should function within that world.P98

16.(不考)The idea of secularism is connected with questions about the meaning of life and explanations about death.P101

17.(不考)Religion deals with the nature of life and death,the creation of the universe,the origin of society and groups within the society,the relationship of individuals and groups to one another,and the relation of humankind to

nature.P104

18.Identity is the reflective self-conception or self-image that we each derive from our family,gender,cultural,ethnic,and individual socialization process.

Cultural identity:the identification of communications of a shared system of symbolic verbal and nonverbal behavior that are meaningful to group members who have a sense of belonging and who share traditions,heritage,language,and similar norms of appropriate behavior.Cultural identity is a social construction.P154

19.Prejudices are deeply held negative feelings associated with a particular group.

Prejudice amounts to a rigid and irrational generalization about a category of people.Prejudice is irrational to the extent that people hold inflexible attitudes supported by little or no direct evidence.Prejudice may target people of a particular social class,sex,sexual orientation,age,political affiliation,race,or ethnicity.P173

20.Racism is the belief in the inherent superiority of a particular race.It denies the basic equality of humankind and corelates ability with physical composition.Thus it assumes that success or failure in any societal endeavor will depend upon genetic endowment rather than environment and access to opportunity.P177

21.Ethnocentrism is the notion that one’s own culture is superior to any other.It is the idea that other cultures should be measured by the degree to which they live up to our cultural standards.We are ethnocentric when we view other cultures through the narrow lens of our own culture or social position.P179-P180

22.(1)Perception is the means by which you make sense of your physical and social world.

(2)Perception is the process of selecting,organizing,and interpreting sensory data in a way that enables us to make sense of the world.

(3)Perception is the process whereby people convert external events and experiences into meaningful internal understanding.P185

23.Beliefs serve as the storage system for the content of our past experiences,including thoughts,memories,and interpretations of events.P187

24.Cultural patterns are a useful umbrella term that allows us to talk about values,beliefs,and other orientations collectively.P190

25.Uncertainty avoidance defines the extent to which people within a culture

are made nervous by situations which they perceive as unstructured,unclear,or unpredictable,situations which they therefore try to avoid by maintaining strict codes of behavior and a belief in absolute truths.P201

26.Power distance is a characteristic of a culture defining the extent to which the less powerful person in society accepts inequality in power and considers it as normal.P203

27.Masculinity and feminity refer to the degree to which masculine or feminine traits are valued and revealed.P205

28.A being orientation refers to spontaneous expression of the human personality.P213

29.The being-in-dong orientation stresses the idea of development and growth.It emphasizes the kind of activity that contributes to the development of all aspects of the self as an integral whole.P214

30.The doing orientation describes activity in which accomplishments are measurable by standards external to the individual.P214

31.Context is the information that surrounds an event;it is inextricably bound up with the meaning of the event.P215

32.(不考)Language is merely a set of shared symbols or signs that a cooperative group pf people fas mutually agreed to use to create meaning.P225

33.Nonverbal communication involves all those nonverbal stimuli in a communication setting that are generated by both the source and his or her use of the environment and that have potential message value for the source or receiver.P246

34.All human interaction is influenced to some degree by the cultural,social,and physical settings in which it occurs.These settings are called the communication context.P285.

35.Intercultural communication competence is the overall internal capability of an individual to manage the key challenging features of intercultural communication:namely,cultural differences and unfamiliarity,inter-group posture,and the accompanying experience of stress.P384

36. (1)Culture shock is a mental state that comes from the transition that