scholarly journals Comprehensive Model of Intercultural Competence: Theoretical Substantiation

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-28
Author(s):  
Oleg E. Khukhlaev ◽  
Valentina V. Gritsenko ◽  
Olga S. Pavlova ◽  
Natalya V. Tkachenko ◽  
Shushanik A. Usubian ◽  
...  

The paper presents theoretical substantiation and development of the authors’ comprehensive model of intercultural competence (ICC), based on the analysis and generalization of empirical models of intercultural interaction existing in Western and Russian science. The model is based on 9 constructs: intercultural stability/sustainability, intercultural flexibility, intercultural openness, intercultural interest, absence of ethnocentrism, cultural sensitivity, intercultural empathy, management of intercultural relations, and tolerance to intercultural uncertainty. Those constructs are combined into three groups of characteristics: 1) intercultural traits; 2) attitudes and mentality features; 3) intercultural skills. Basic mechanisms by which the distinguished constructs of intercultural competence contribute to intercultural efficiency are substantiated - this is maintenance of an optimal level of sensitivity to uncertainty and an optimal level of anxiety in the process of intercultural communication. The role of each component of intercultural competence is shown. Constructs “Cultural Sensitivity”, “Intercultural Empathy”, “Management of Intercultural Relations”, “Tolerance to Intercultural Uncertainty”, and “Intercultural Flexibility” make a significant contribution to maintaining the optimal level of sensitivity to uncertainty and thereby contribute to increasing effectiveness of intercultural interaction. Such components of intercultural competence as “Intercultural Empathy”, “Intercultural Interest”, “Lack of Ethnocentrism”, “Intercultural Openness”, “Tolerance to Intercultural Uncertainty”, maintain the optimal level of anxiety, which contributes to the effectiveness of intercultural communication. It is emphasized that none of the components of the ICC is a universal predictor of the success of intercultural interaction, this effect being achieved only through an integrative combination with other ICC constructs.

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 26-41
Author(s):  
O.E. Khukhlaev

Objective. Generalization of psychological approaches to the analysis of the effectiveness of intercultural interaction and their integration with related concepts, which will allowing to build an explanatory model for achieving the effectiveness of communication in a situation of intercultural communication. Background. In a traditional models of intercultural competence, the link in which a specific communicative situation is analyzed is missing. For the issue related to the effectiveness of intercultural interaction, the most relevant is a model that focuses on the result of communication — the communicative theory of anxiety / uncertainty management by W. Gudikunst. The combination of communicative and competence-based approaches can bring theoretical analysis to a higher level of understanding and predicting intercultural interaction. This approach describes the process of ensuring intercultural communication as managing uncertainty and anxiety. The socio-psychological mechanisms underlying these processes can be described using the theory of Uncertainty-Identity by M. Hogg and the theory of Intergroup threat by W. Stephan and colleagues. In this case, a comprehensive model using communicative and socio-psychological approaches will allow us to analyze the mechanism by which intercultural competence contributes to intercultural efficiency. Methodology. Systematic approach, method of comparative analysis. Main conclusions. An integrative socio-psychological model for assessing and predicting the effectiveness of intercultural interaction allows us to build an adequate fundamental scientific rationale for studying the effectiveness of intercultural interaction in specific communicative situations.


1970 ◽  
pp. 401-413
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Bogucka

The article focuses on intercultural communication, which creates a passage from a multicultural environment towards social integration and intercultural relations. The author introduces the topic by short characteristics of changes in the modern world, determined by social mobility and multiculturalism. The article presents then some chosen aspects of social integration of migrants seen as bilateral process which requires the development of intercultural competences of both migrants’ and the receiving community. The author further describes intercultural communication and stresses its importance for education and social development. Finally, some factors conditioning the acquisition of intercultural competence with reference to Gordon Allport’s contact hypothesis and informational influences are presented along with highlighting the importance of empathy.


Author(s):  
Бронислава Рафаиловна Могилевич

Риск и неопределённость онтологически присутствуют в жизненном цикле людей, и поэтому эти проблемы всегда актуальны, особенно в современном социуме постмодерна. Информационное постиндустриальное общество характеризуется большим объёмом разнообразной информации, легко доступной для всех членов социума. С одной стороны, доступ к информации и её количество представляют собой благо, с другой стороны, люди не могут адекватно выбрать, интерпретировать и оценить новые сведения. Возникающая в этом случае неопределённость дезориентирует людей, нарушая стабильность их социокультурных коммуникативных связей. Неопределённость амбивалентна по своей природе - она субъективна как проекция личностного восприятия социальной реальности; она объективна как актуализация слома/смены социальных смыслов и институтов. Исследование о природе неопределённости и рисков едины в том, что высокий уровень неопределённости современности обусловлен такими факторами, как глобализация, информатизация и цифровизация. «Текучая современность» как социальная реальность характеризует сегодняшнюю жизнь людей в ракурсе основных концептов жизнедеятельности: свободы, индивидуальности, времени и пространства, работы и сообществ. Концепция рисков как продуктов неопределённости варьируется - от сравнения рисков с аварией на Чернобыльской АЭС до оценки рисков как мобилизующих сил. Социокультурные риски, межкультурные в частности, приобретают особую значимость в эпоху постмодерна. Выделенные 6 универсальных категорий культуры определяют межкультурную интеракцию в ракурсе учёта культурных характеристик, детерминирующих успех межкультурного взаимодействия. Теория сокращения неопределённости предлагает пути установления успешной межкультурной коммуникации. Обозначены стратегии смягчения неопределённости (пассивные, активные и интерактивные), и факторы её успеха обусловлены уровнем межкультурной компетенции коммуникантов. Следование принципам Кооперации и Вежливости способствует снижению межкультурной неопределённости и рисков как видов коммуникативного дискомфорта. Risk and uncertainty are ontologically linked with the life cycle of people, and therefore these problems are always relevant, especially in the contemporary postmodern society. The informational postindustrial society is characterized by a large amount of diverse information that is easily accessible to all members of society. On the one hand, access to information and its amount is a real value, on the other hand, people cannot adequately select, interpret and evaluate new information. The uncertainty arising in this case disorients people, disrupting the stability of their socio-cultural communicative ties. Uncertainty is ambivalent in nature - it is subjective as a projection of personal perception of social reality; it is objective as an actualization of the breakdown/change of social meanings and institutions. The study on the nature of uncertainty and risks is unanimous in the fact that the high level of uncertainty of our time is due to such factors as globalization, informatization and digitalization. “Fluid modernity” as a social reality characterizes everyday life of people from the perspective of the main concepts of life: freedom, individuality, time and space, work and communities. The concept of risks as products of uncertainty ranges from comparing risks with the Chernobyl accident to assessing risks as mobilizing forces. Socio-cultural risks, intercultural in particular, acquire special significance in the postmodern era. The identified 6 universal categories of culture define intercultural interaction from the perspective of taking into account cultural characteristics that determine the success of intercultural interaction. Uncertainty reduction theory offers ways to establish successful intercultural communication. The identified strategies for reducing uncertainty (passive, active and interactive) and the factors of its success are determined by the level of intercultural competence of the communicants. In addition, adherence to the principles of Cooperation and Politeness helps to reduce intercultural uncertainty and risks as types of communicative discomfort.


2019 ◽  
Vol 83 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-79
Author(s):  
Stephanie Swartz ◽  
Belem Barbosa ◽  
Izzy Crawford

By means of a cross-cultural virtual teams project involving classrooms in Scotland, Germany, and Portugal, students were exposed to the challenges of collaborating internationally with the intention of increasing their intercultural competency. Intercultural sensitivity and intercultural communication competency were measured using responses to surveys before and after the 6-week project. Students reported, among other aspects, a heightened awareness of the difficulties of intercultural communication. Despite a general appreciation of the project and its outcomes, negative results, such as an increased dislike of intercultural interaction, emerged. Contradictory results warrant further investigation with data from future collaborations.


2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 102-112
Author(s):  
V.V. Gritsenko ◽  
O.E. Khukhlaev ◽  
R.I. Zinurova ◽  
V.V. Konstantinov ◽  
E.V Kulesh ◽  
...  

The aim of the study is to determine the role of intercultural competence in the adaptation process of foreign students studying at Russian universities. The research is based on the author's model of intercultural competence, the main components of which are intercultural stability, intercultural interest, the lack of ethnocentrism and the management of intercultural interaction. The sample of the study consisted of 291 foreign students from Turkmenistan studying at universities in Kazan, Saratov, Penza, Rostov-on-Don, Khabarovsk, 291 students (48.5% — Women, average age is 22 years). We showed that intercultural com petence is a significant predictor in the adaptation of foreign students. We revealed different contribution of intercultural competence components to the effectiveness in the adaptation of foreign students. Among the components of intercultural competence only intercultural stability directly affects sociocultural adaptation. The absence of ethnocentrism reduces the effect of culture shock when a student enters a new cultural environment, but increases the success of his/her adaptation in this environment only together with intercultural stability. Two other components of intercultural competence: intercultural interest and the management of intercultural interaction have an impact on the successful adaptation of foreign students not directly, but through the activation of the desire to interact with Russian students and to increase the self-esteem in the effectiveness of intercultural communication with them. In turn these mediators are directly related to both psychological adaptation and intercultural stability. Thus we revealed the mechanism of intercultural competence influence on the adaptation of foreign students. The obtained results can be used to predict the adaptation of foreign students and to reduce the possible risks of their maladjustment in a new culture.


2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 459-474
Author(s):  
Natalya V. Tkachenko ◽  
Oleg E. Khukhlaev

The study of intercultural interaction has recently become one of the topical problems of social psychology. Considered often in the context of developing intercultural competence, they nevertheless ignore the mechanisms that underlie the causes of effective or ineffective communication. The mechanism by which intercultural competence contributes to intercultural efficiency is described in an integrative model of intercultural interaction, which unites a group of theories of communicativistic and socio-psychological approaches. This model substantiates the contribution of uncertainty and anxiety to the effectiveness of intercultural communication, which has been widely studied in quantitative studies. The aim of the study is to test the idea of the role of the situation of uncertainty and anxiety in the situation of intercultural interaction using qualitative analysis. The research was carried out based on a theoretical socio-psychological model of intercultural interaction. Using the in-depth interview method and subsequent phenomenological data analysis, a dense description of effective and ineffective intercultural communication was obtained from the point of view of each of the four aspects of the model: anxiety, uncertainty, social identity and intergroup anxiety. As a result of the analysis, data were obtained that reveal the content of some of the blocks of the model (intercultural abilities, communication efficiency, management of uncertainty), as well as a new block (emotion management) was identified and the properties of connections (between anxiety management and communication efficiency, between emotion management and anxiety management) were highlighted. Since the qualitative analysis made it possible to adjust the theoretical integrative model of intercultural interaction, and also revealed additional components of the model that develop theoretical ideas about the mechanisms underlying effective and ineffective communication, the results of this study can serve as a basis for the practice of the training of specialists working in the field of international relations: teachers of multicultural education, HRs in the field of international business, specialists in intercultural consulting, etc.


2021 ◽  
Vol 125 ◽  
pp. 01001
Author(s):  
Natalya Vladimirovna Chernyishkova ◽  
Daria Valerievna Sukhorukova ◽  
Marina Vadimovna Aroshidze

The importance of intercultural communication in today’s globalised world is undeniable. Scholars from different countries have contributed to the development of this field and created educational materials – textbooks on intercultural communication devoted to classifications and features of different cultures – and textbooks on foreign languages that include exercises devoted to developing intercultural skills in everyday and professional contexts. Teachers of foreign languages are making an effort to use the available materials that provide a wide outlook on various cultures and help students prepare for being a part of intercultural community. However, there is an evident shortage of such materials in languages other than English. The article provides the results of the analysis of online sources that demonstrates that the majority of available resources that are in any way connected with intercultural communication are in English. The article dwells on the reasons for English dominance in intercultural communication study and suggests a global effort as a solution. Whether we are looking at textbooks purely on intercultural communication or foreign language learning resources, it is important to understand that the English language cannot be the only medium of intercultural competence formation – other languages can and should be a prism through which intercultural communication is studied.


Author(s):  
Will Baker

AbstractEnglish as a lingua franca (ELF) research highlights the complexity and fluidity of culture in intercultural communication through English. ELF users draw on, construct, and move between global, national, and local orientations towards cultural characterisations. Thus, the relationship between language and culture is best approached as situated and emergent. However, this has challenged previous representations of culture, particularly those centred predominantly on nation states, which are prevalent in English language teaching (ELT) practices and the associated conceptions of communicative and intercultural communicative competence. Two key questions which are then brought to the fore are: how are we to best understand such multifarious characterisations of culture in intercultural communication through ELF and what implications, if any, does this have for ELT and the teaching of culture in language teaching? In relation to the first question, this paper will discuss how complexity theory offers a framework for understanding culture as a constantly changing but nonetheless meaningful category in ELF research, whilst avoiding essentialism and reductionism. This underpins the response to the second question, whereby any formulations of intercultural competence offered as an aim in language pedagogy must also eschew these simplistic and essentialist cultural characterisations. Furthermore, the manner of simplification prevalent in approaches to culture in the ELT language classroom will be critically questioned. It will be argued that such simplification easily leads into essentialist representations of language and culture in ELT and an over representation of “Anglophone cultures.” The paper will conclude with a number of suggestions and examples for how such complex understandings of culture and language through ELF can be meaningfully incorporated into pedagogic practice.


2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (15) ◽  
pp. 9-21
Author(s):  
Tetiana Hantsiuk ◽  
Khrystyna Vintoniv ◽  
Nataliia Opar ◽  
Bohdan Hryvnak

Cultural competence, as the ability to interact effectively with the culturally diverse others, is a key component to your success in the globalized world. Developing cultural competence gives us an insight how to benefit from the diversity within intercultural interactions. Everyone may misinterpret the cultural differences due to the low level of cultural competence. That can influence further cooperation with different cultures. Therefore, it is very important to foster students’ intercultural skills, in particular by using different learning techniques and implementing new ideas into the traditional teaching methods. One of them is design thinking as a practice that encourages collaboration and can help students to manage intercultural challenges. Hence, the research problem for this study is to reveal the correlation between the development of students’ intercultural competence and design thinking method application. The purpose of the study is to summarize and synthesize the research on cross-cultural interactions and design thinking to build a framework that shows how the implementation of the design thinking method into the learning process facilitates the development of students’ intercultural competence. The tasks of the research are:a) to review the main contributions to the field of design thinking by analysing multidisciplinary studies on how design thinking fosters development of variety competences including intercultural competence;b) to design the framework to reveal the correlation between the components of intercultural competence and the stages of design thinking process;c) to observe the changes in the students’ intercultural competence level by analysing learners’ responses to the case of intercultural misunderstanding at the beginning of studying the cross-cultural communication classes and after finishing the course.d) The study uses mixed approaches such as quantitative and qualitative methods, scientific literature studies, intercultural competence assessment, grouping, comparative analysis, synthesis, inductive and deductive methods.The key results are presented in the framework that demonstrates the ways how design thinking method supports the development of intercultural competence. This framework can be used by educators to teach intercultural competence and everyone involved in cross-cultural interactions, and who would like to benefit from the diversity.


2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-44
Author(s):  
I Gusti Ayu Ratna Pramesti Dasih

The process of social interaction in the community is very close to communication and culture because of the harmonious reciprocal relationship. Culture and communication influence each other. Cultural differences will have the potential to cause uncertainty and anxiety disorders, so that the possibility of cultural shock occurs. The existence of a shift in the value of diversity, an important role of intercultural communication in bridging the obstacles to understanding society can be explained by intercultural interactions so as not to cause misunderstandings. This article analyzes the role of intercultural communication in religious interactions at Pura Bukit Kampung Anyar Karangasem using qualitative research methods. The results showed that: first, the historical background of the conquest of the Karangasem Kingdom over Lombok. Second, the process of adaptation and intercultural interaction carried out by Hindus and Sasak Bayan ethnic people creates religious social beliefs. Third, intercultural communication has implications for socio-religious interactions, such as: implications for religious values, implications for socializing activities, implications for the value of solidarity, and implications for the value of tolerance.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document