The Importance of Developing and using Cultural Stereotypes to Enhance Cross-Cultural Communication - Literature review Example

Name : xxxxxxxxxxx Institution : xxxxxxxxxxx Course : xxxxxxxxxxx Title : Developing and Using Cultural Stereotypes Tutor : xxxxxxxxxxx @ 2009 The importance of developing and using cultural stereotypes to enhance, or make more effective, cross-cultural communication A very significant issue which highly impacts on effective cross-cultural communication is to welcome differences in customs, social morals as well as practices that different cultures may display; for instance, differing cultural views of time. Culture is a people’s way of life. It is also known as the divided patterns of conducts and interactions, relative constructs, and sentimental understanding that are studied through a procedure known as socialization. The divided patterns recognize the members of a culture cluster while also distinguishing those of another cluster (Baskerville 2003). Cultural stereotypes are used in making the cross-cultural communication more effective. A stereotype is a most frequent held community belief on a particular social group or types of people. Stereotypes are regular in different types of culture. Stereotypes are frequently based on aspects such as exaggeration, ignorance, distortion racism, cultural aspects or even past experiences. Stereotyping is termed as a negative way of describing people. However, cultural stereotypes contribute a lot in accepting and in analyzing other cultures leading to a cross- cultural communication (Friedman 1994). Cultural competency is a word used to portray the aptitude to work, communicate freely and live with different cultures and cultural limits. This is achieved through an inspired understanding of cultures on a universal level as well as a knowledgeable one about precise cultures on a more comprehensive level (Baskerville 2003). As well as information it has to work in tandem with behavioral and outlook changes. When people originating from different countries, backgrounds, cultures and religions immigrate to distant lands; they face a lot of cultural differences. In order to avoid these differences, both the local people and the immigrant need to develop intercultural tolerance and consideration of the differences between them (Moran 2007). Cultural stereotypes models have been developed and play a role in making cross- cultural communication more effective. The stereotype content model (SCM) suggests potentially widespread principles and their relation to community structure. The SCM discloses theoretically based, cross-cultural, inter-groups similarities and difference across nations. The SCM acts as a pancultural device in predicting group stereotypes from structural relations with the rest groups in the society and make comparisons across societies. In the United States, this model together with its social structures relation has led to systematic in three factors. First, across culture, stereotypes use a common content of dimensions like warmth and competence. Warmth in this case stands for good-natured, friendly, warm and sincere culture while competence portrays capability, competent, skillful and confident (Eunson 2008). Secondly, most out-groups get ambivalent stereotypes which are more positive on a certain dimension and less on the other side. Lastly, the SCM follow from societal structure. This is because apparent status predicts proficiency stereotypes and apparent competitiveness forecast lack of warmth stereotypes. Most of US illustrations inclusive of a survey that is representative are for these models. This model calls for the human universals and without considering the population and their cultures. This help in developing cross-cultural communication as the model is not discriminative but take in to account all people world wide despite their culture. Alternatively, SCM phenomena can be termed to be culture-bound whereby it is indigenous to the United State. For instance, US perceivers in this model balance a subjectively positive stereotype with a negative one resulting to ambivalent stereotypes (Eunson 2008). According to Friedman (1994), SCM can also reflect the unusually multicultural of US only. SCM is also applicable to cultural differences. This is due to the reason that the relationship between the status and competence are positive while those between warmth and competition are negative bringing out the differences. High status individuals are termed as highly competent and those in competitive category are recognized as lacking warmth (Blaine 2007). This will discourage cross cultural communication making the use of cultural stereotypes as a way of enhancing this communication futile. This is evident as cultural influences will preclude worldwide standards of stereotyping. Model minority is another cultural stereotypes model. The word model minority originated in 1960s by William Petersen. He used the term to depict Asian Americans as racial minorities who, in spite of marginalization, have succeeded in the States. The model was intended to compare socialist and capitalist economies. As capitalism was equated with disparity, mainly in reference to poor African Americans, Asian Americans were selected as an instance of a minority group who could thrive by merit only (Eunson 2008). Model minority refers to marginal racial, ethnic or sacred groups whereby their members get a major degree of success than the community average. It labels an ethnic minority that achieves a lot of success as compared to another ethnic minority. The success is determined by the level of education, income and related aspects like low rate of crime and high stability in family. The term is mostly described as a myth which results to racial stereotyping (Blaine 2007). There is a universal misunderstanding that the affected people generally hold pride for being labeled as the model minority. Statistics are mainly quoted to support their model minority rank like high level of educational achievement and having white collar jobs. The myth in the minority model depends on the aggregation of achievement indicators, concealing the plight of recent initial generation immigrant below the high achievement rate of the most ascertained communities. This model enhances cross communication only to the individuals that share the same cultural aspects. For instance, people who are equally educated will communicate freely and illiterates will do the same. The model also supports racism hindering cross cultural communication (Eunson 2008). Cultural stereotypes should be considered dynamic artifacts that change over time. As time goes on, only a few of the cultural stereotyped aspects will be recognizable. This is because of culture commercialization and westernization. People are emulating western countries hence loosing their cultural stereotype. According to Eunson (2008), in cases whereby the cultural stereotype of a certain group was their mode of dressing it has resulted to commercialization loosing its identity. This specific group treats their culture as a tourism attraction and only practices it in exchange for money. Also, due to cultural differences, individuals are trying to imitate other cultures making theirs to fade away. In enhancing cross-cultural communication, there is need to end up cultural differences and this results to changes in the cultural stereotypes (Baskerville2003). For instance, Since 1960s the stereotypical figure of black people has been altered in most media. More optimistic representations appeared where black people and African-Americans are depicted as huge athletes and excellent singers and dancers. The stereotype changed in 1970 as most films and television series portrayed black people and African America as well natured, honest, kind and intelligent persons (Blaine 2007). Change in cultural stereotypes has both positive and negative impacts. Positively, the changes help in enhancing the cross-cultural communication where the changes are towards clearing the cultural differences. The negative changes are that, the change makes some culture to become non-existed as they tend to be forgotten as people are busy emulating others (Blaine 2007). In conclusion, cultural stereotypes empower individuals by offering them with tools for sense making and adaptive and flexible trouble solving. Cultural competent people apply these tools in cross-cultural communication. However, it is evident that multicultural experiences promote the aptitude to flexibly use cultural knowledge in cross-cultural communication (Blaine 2007). Cultural competency is essential in life as discussed. Individuals are no longer shut in to their national and cultural borders. In most cases there are a mixture of persons from diverse cultures, religions, ethnicities, and colours on an every day basis. Moran (2007) notes that in order to ensure that cross-cultural knowledge work on all stages from learning to commerce to government, people have to increase basic skills in cross-cultural communication and understanding. Bibliography Baskerville, R.F., (2003), Hofstede never studied culture’, Accounting, Organizations and Society, vol. 28, no. 1, pp. 1-14. (c) Blaine, E., 2007, Understanding the Psychology of Diversity, London, SAGE Eunson, B., 2008, Intercultural communication in Communicating in the twenty-first century, Butterworth Heinemann, London Friedman, J., 1994, Cultural identity and global process, SAGE, New York Moran, T., 2007, Managing cultural differences: global leadership strategies for the 21st century, Butterworth Heinemann, London. Read More