Intercultural Communication

Imtroduction
The cocept and the study of “Intercultural communication” is rather young. It became a subject of formal study in the higher institutions only about 30 years ago. However, It is becoming more popular and very important as it has shown its vital role and has made tremendous changes especially in the media and business world.
The disciplines for intercultural communication include the study of anthropology, international relations ,social psychology, sociolinguistics as well as psycholinguistics.

A Definition for “inter”, “Culture” and “Communication”
1. Inter means “between” two or more parties.
2. Culture is a learned set of shared interpretations about beliefs, values, norms, which affects the behaviors of a relatively large group of people. Culture is passed on from adults to children. We are not born with it, it is learned.
(Cultural means things which relates to culture or society)

3. Communication is a symbolic process of interaction among people,
in which they create shared meaning and foster understanding and relationship.

B. What is intercultural communication?
Based on the meanings above, therefore, Intercultural communication can thus be defined as human actions or processes where by people of different cultural backgrounds interact among themselves. Such an interaction takes place continuously around us. Such a process may take place among different communities within a country or happens between people of different nations around the world.
Intercultural Communication is a rather complex, diverse and broad field. In order to simplify its explanation and narrow it down to a few points, listed below are some of the most important features and components of intercultural communication:-
• the interaction and communication between culturally diverse people.
• the attempt to speak "the other person's" language.
• the adaptation of our communicative techniques to the background of the audience or to others.
• the awareness of diplomacy and negotiation techniques that are accepted in the other culture.
• the apprehension that negotiation is an exercise in language and communication.
• the attempt to create shared understanding.
• the knowledge of what certain key words and terms imply
C. What is actually happening when Intercultural Commincation takes place?
People uses all sorts of skills to inter change during the process of intercultural communication. When intercultural communication take places, the things that really happen are the changing of ideas and message transferring by the means language, gestures, facial expression, tone and character of voice, whisper, proximics which means the distance of the bodies when we speak to each other. Besides, intercultural communication also involves the cultural use of space, the cultural use of time, some of the hidden aspects of communication skills as well as the types of clothes that we wear when we go for certain appointments and functions.
D. What are the benefits of having intercultural comminication?
• adapting to global workplace diversity
• engaging in creative problem solving
• enhancing intercultural relationship satisfaction
• gaining intercultural communication flexibility
• deepening self-awareness
• creating an open-minded approach to "the other, the different"
• changing one's attitude and adapting new skills
Basically, any time whenever language is being used, culture enters the picture, and major challenges are ahead of us.
Excellent intercultural communication skills can help us to foster relationship, minimizing misunderstandings among people of different races especially in a multi-racial country such as Malaysia.
(Good relationship among the races can strengthen our nation and make our dream of 2020 vision come true!)
Intercultural communication enables us to know and to learn about culture of other communities around us. Learning about another culture means embracing "the other". Thus, intercultural Communications help to foster a “long lasting inter-human & cross-cultural relations that are built on shared understanding, flexibility and open-mindedness”. Indeed, this is the “dream” which is pursued by many countries.
An as an educator in a multi-racial countrty, having the knowledge and having comprtency in multicultural communication can definitely help us to interact with our student and to understand them better.

E. Problems and difficulties of Intercultural Communication
The human communication process is more complex than it initially seems. Hundreds of problems may arise when intercultural communication takes place. As a person interacts with another person of different cultural background, he may pause and ask himself: Did she understand what I have said ? Why did she look away from me?
Is it okay for me to sit down? What did he mean by that ……and many other questions!
Therefore , a person concerned should have intercultural communication
competence and be wised enough to solve the problem which if not properly handle, may lead to misunderstanding, uncertainty and anxiety.

Conclusion
Definitely, excellent intercultural communication skills which I possessed will enable an educator like me to perform well in my profession and to shine in my career.
We should always aware and realize that we are not only living in a multi racial country, but we are now in the era of globalization. Thus, a person with good intercultural communication skills is always a successful person as he is able to increase his mobility, able to venture into the global market and to conquer the rest of the world.







REFERENCES

1. Aitchison, Jean. 1998.
The articulate Mammal: An introduction to Psycholinguistics(Forth Edition) London :Routledge

2. Sharifah Zainab Syed Abd. Rahman (2001)
Introduction to Psycholingustics , a module for BBI 3215 UPM
Universiti Putra Malaysia.

3. R. A Hudson (1999),
Sociolinguistics,) second Edition, Cambridge University Press.

4. Steinberg, Danny D. 1993, An Intriduction to Psycholinguistics.
London Longman

5. Salzaman Zdenek,
Language, culture and society: An Intriduction to Linguistics Anthropology, Calorado: West view Press 1993
6. Gibson, R. (2002) Intercultural Business Communication. UK: Oxford University Press.