Ethical Aspects Of Intercultural Communication

1. Regardless of if you subscribe to the idea of America as a melting pot or America as a salad bowl, both concepts embrace the idea that America is inseparable from the diverse cultures contributing to the larger society. Inherently, understanding those cultures and maintaining a general idea of how to mediate between cultures remains important to not only keeping society peaceful, but productive. For a legislator, it’s imperative to understand constituents in order to represent them positively. For your work, understanding the national history Americans share, or accepted chain of political events and historical interpretations (Martin & Nakayama, 2014, Page 73), as well as the individual cultural group histories that create cognitive dissonance

Not only does your job rely on it, but any career that requires interaction with others and innovating new ideas aided by diverse perspectives, which is nearly every career. Besides the utilitarian’s compulsion to learn and use it, we have an ethical imperative to understand intercultural communication. Intercultural communication aids in self-discovery, but also just being a morally and civic minded person within a community. Because politics, media, education, communication, pop culture, and business inevitably shapes the perspectives of yourself and those around you, it’s the duty of every citizen to create a better, more inclusive world (Martin & Nakayama, 2014,

a. define/explain each individual term

Ethnocentrism: The attitude of valuing one’s own culture, perspective, and community over any others’, thus devaluing other cultures by proxy (Martin & Nakayama, 2014, 55) Ethnocentrism serves as a more extreme form of nationalism or tribalism, in that an individual believes their language, customs, and beliefs are preferable to others purely because they belong to a perceived superior group.

Stereotypes: Tropes or caricatures that one categorizes others by based on perceived differences (Martin & Nakayama, 2014, 57) These tropes don’t even have to be fully fleshed out expectations for behaviors of an individual, in fact they are more commonly often tied to one or two behaviors. Stereotypes exist because the one person buying into them has very little experience with the group they’re singling out, or has experience but excuses their personal relationships as aberrations to the ‘rule’. Some examples include the ‘mammy’ stereotypes for black women in America, in that they are expected to be asexual and motherly to white