Culture Background Affects Communication

In this negotiation case, both parties have totally different cultural background. As culture might be defined as the scheme in which a person is socialized, it also means that culture influences the manner that people live, play, work and most importantly communicate with others. In order to understand and communicate effectively with people from different culture it is important to understand how culture affects communication. Culture can be conceptualized in many different ways but common conceptualization of culture focuses directly upon communication. This idea was advanced by Edward T. Hall, an anthropologist who spends years living among and observing people with many different cultures. In order to understand his idea it is important to understand the basic forms of communication: high context messages and low context messages. The messages can be placed along a continuum from low context to high context.

In order to be effective in their negotiation, students have to understand each other’s cultural differences and so expectations regarding the wedding. To do so, they have to communicate. However, cultural differences also imply different ways to communicate. The first key learning point for the students is the understanding of other party culture based on communication schemes. Our objective is here to remind to students that they must not neglect the process of the negotiation - here communication - to only focus on the content.

The two different cultures in this case might be defined as low context and high context ones based on Edward Hall theories. A high context culture is a culture in which the message contains a very little explicit verbal part. Most of the information is internalized in the person or in the physi...

... middle of paper ...

...may be located abroad, or connect two or more negotiators of different nationalities. This simple feature multiplies the variety of contexts: diversity derived from geographical conditions, laws and customs, language, political and cultural characteristics;

 the diversity of intercultural negotiation: negotiation involves many actors, with different nature and status. In the case of international negotiation, it is due to two facts: a large number of international negotiations go through third parties, in particular the states and local governments but international negotiations are also often played at many levels;

 requirement for experimented negotiators: intercultural bargaining is very complex and difficult. Indeed it must take into account both the fact that the actors belong to different cultures and, as a consequence, do not share the same way of thinking.