The E-Journal of Intercultural Relations, Fall 1998, Vol. 1(4)   Posted: 11/15/98   Academic Paper

Intercultural Communication via E-mail Debate Guo-Ming Chen Associate Professor Department of Communication Studies University of Rhode Island

 

Abstract

This article reports the results of international e-mail exchanges between students in the United States and their counterparts in Denmark, France, Germany, Hong Kong and Turkey. The intercultural e-mail exchanges took place in a debate format.   The American students took pre- and post-tests to measure their intercultural sensitivity. Although the results do not show a significant improvement in intercultural sensitivity among the participants on Likert scale questions, most participants do give positive responses in the open-ended questions. Plausible reasons for the results and suggestions for future studies of international e-mail exchanges are also discussed.

This project was supported by a FIPSE grant.

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Introduction

The world is shrinking. People of different cultural backgrounds are more interdependent than ever. The 21st century will confront ever-shifting social, cultural, and technological challenges. The rapid development in every aspect of the 21st century requires that we see things through others' eyes and develop a new way of living together. This global mindset can only result from competent intercommunication among people from diverse cultures. Thus, the need for intercultural communication enhancement across disciplines becomes critical for success in our world.

Five trends have combined to promote a more interdependent future that shapes our differences into a set of shared concerns and a common agenda. These trends have transformed the 21st century into the age of the global village in which people must develop a global mindset in order to live meaningfully and productively. They include: (1) technology development, (2) globalization of the economy, (3) widespread population migrations, (4) multiculturalism, and (5) the demise of the nation state (Chen & Starosta, 1996,1998). These dynamics argue strongly for the development of more proficient intercultural communicators.

The coming of new transportation and information technologies connects all nations in ways that were possible only in the imagination before this century. Communication technologies including the Internet computer network, facsimiles, the cellular telephone, interactive cable TV systems, and the anticipated information superhighway permit us instantaneous oral and written interchange at any hour to most locations domestically and internationally. Porter and Samovar (1994) indicated that information technology has greatly reshaped intercultural communication. It has created common meanings and a reliance on persons we may or may not meet face-to-face at some future date in our lives. Government is no longer the only source to disseminate information across cultural boundaries; indeed, common people daily talk and type their way into a web of mediated intercultural interactions. The immediacy of our new technology involves us with persons from different regions and ethnicities within our own nation and the world, and builds in us a new sense of national and global community. We find ourselves moving from unconcern, to curiosity, to an active need to improve our understanding of persons and groups from outside our immediate circle.

The progress of communication and transportation technology has made markets more accessible and the world of business more globally interdependent in the past decades. The trend toward a global economy brings people and products together from around the world. It requires nations to decide how to remain competitive in the presence of new trade communities, and to try to find ways to promote products and services in places where they have not historically existed. Such interdependence among national economies hinges on effective intercultural communication, and calls for ever more skillful interaction in the future across linguistic and national boundaries. Education and training for greater cultural and ethnic understanding becomes necessary both to carry out world business, and to preserve threatened cultural diversity.

Added to technological development comes the influence of cultural migration between nations. Conditions at home and abroad push or pull persons to leave their country to find peace, employment, learning, or a new start. The trend leads to a multi-ethnic social composition in which contact among co-cultures becomes inevitable. Children in multicultural classrooms and workers in multinational corporations look for ways to learn and work efficiently in settings that are no longer defined exclusively by mainstream norms and rules. The quest for more productive interaction in international and domestic settings calls for the detailed understanding of the dynamics of communication among persons of diverse national and ethnic origin. Intercultural communication as a field of study investigates the dynamics of interaction among persons of differing ethnic or national origin.

Multiculturalism has changed the demographics of modern societies in a way that affects every aspect of life. These demographic changes will produce classrooms and work places that are defined by no predominant ethnic culture or gender. The tributaries of different ethnic groups, nations, genders, ages, tribes, and languages will flow into the mainstream of the classroom and workplace. Cultural diversity or multiculturalism will become the norm, not the exception. Intercultural communication scholars will be needed to smooth the transition to bi-cultural, bi-dialectal classrooms, to multinational boardrooms, to multiethnic neighborhoods, and to gender and ethnic sensitivity on the part of professionals and service providers.

While new immigrants are arriving and co-cultures are making headway in achieving fuller participation, our very idea of identity will be sure to change. Increasingly, the de-emphasis of the nation state pulls us into regional alliances, such as NATO or NAFTA, that are larger than the nation. In addition, we see the re-assertion of ethnic and gender differences within the nation. To be able to negotiate meanings and priorities of diverse identities becomes a prerequisite of being competent in modern society (Collier & Thomas, 1988).

These trends have combined to provide a foundation for the indispensability of intercultural communication competence in the upcoming global society in which we are required to demonstrate "tolerance for differences and mutual respect among cultures as a mark of enlightened national and global citizenship" in individual, social, business, educational, and political institutions levels (Belay, 1993). In other words, the predicted rapid change of every aspect of our lives in the 21st century demands that we see things through others' eyes and develop a new way of living together. This global mindset can only result from competent communication among people from diverse cultures. Thus, the need for intercultural communication enhancement, especially intercultural sensitivity, across disciplines becomes critical for future success.

These trends bring about a great challenge to American higher education as well: the challenge of globalization. College and universities, as higher educational institutes, must provide an environment in which students can learn the nature of global society and skills for effectively communicating with people of diverse cultures. The key to successfully facing the challenge academically is to internationalize the curriculum by helping students (1) understand the goal of globalization in order to make their choices, (2) understand sensitizing cultural concepts that will assist them in their interaction with people from other cultures, (3) change aspects of their performance such as cultural self-perception and emotional and cognitive acquisitions in order to reach a higher level of empathy, (4) govern their performance and emotions in working and in living with people from other cultures by increasing their adaptability, and (5) adopt a changed way of perceiving and behaving so that they can improve their social performance in other cultures (Stewart, 1979). All these can only be reached through the enhancement of intercultural communication by sensitizing students to understand, acknowledge, and respect the cultural differences of people from diverse backgrounds. With the development of communication technology the global internet exchange provides us a great opportunity to help our students better equip themselves with knowledge and skills for survival in the 21st century.