week 10 Flashcards
Lexicon
Words contained in a language
Syntax and grammar:
System of rules governing word forms and how words should be strung together to form meaningful utterances
Phonology
System of rules governing how words should sound in a language
Semantics
Meanings of words
Pragmatics
System of rules governing how language needs to be used and understood in social contexts
High context communication
most of the information is already in the
person, while very little is in the coded, explicitly transmitted part of the message.
- Important to read between the lines and consider the rank, age, gender, and class
of the communicator - “Hear one and understand ten”
- “Silence is golden”
- How the message is delivered is more important; what (content) is secondary
Low context communication
the mass of the information is vested in the
explicit code
- Direct message:
- “Get to the point”
- “I mean what I say, and I say what I mean”
- What (content) is said is more important; how is secondary
Sapir–Whorf Hypothesis
Claims that Speakers of different languages think differently because of the differences in
their languages
Linguistic Relativity
Challenges to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (3)
Berlin & Kay – suggested that 11 basic color terms form a universal hierarchy.
Pinker – Thoughts can be formed without words and language.
Breugelmans & Poortinga – Rara muri Indians in Mexico use 1 word for guilt and shame but nevertheless differentiate between shame and guilt characteristics.
Speech illustrators:
Non-verbal behaviors that accompany speech.
Emblems
Culture-specific gestures that convey meaning without words (ear rubbing as an apology in
Nepal)
- Intracultural communication
- Occurs among people of the same cultural background
- Intercultural communication
- Occurs between people of different cultural backgrounds
Mindfulness
: Allows people to be conscious of their own habits, mental scripts, and cultural expectations concerning communication
* Components that affect intercultural effectiveness
* Motivational, knowledge, and skill factors
Uncertainty reduction
Efforts to reduce the level of uncertainty and
anxiety that one feels when decoding intercultural messages
Frame-switching
= people maintain multiple self-concepts and switch between them depending on context
* Such self-concepts are represented by a network of ideas in the mind
