Intercultural Communication Ethics

Intercultural communication ethics is critically important in the United States today since it holds a huge diversity and requires awareness of a global economy. In order to protect and promote a given good of culture itself, we need to face our own stereotype toward outgroup and know how to deal with it. The author said, “Our communication ethics responsibility is to learn about other cultures without presupposing that each culture is simply equal in ethical importance and to forgo the assumption that the individual is primary.” (Page155) The word culture sounds to be broad and global, but it suggests a group of people sharing common practices and traditions and gives a sense of identity.

My intercultural experience taught me what means to be different and belong to a cultural minority group. Culture shock would be regarded as uncomfortable response, but it doesn’t necessary need to be negative. For example, when I came to the United States at the first time, I was shocked at the people’s custom of hold a door open for people behind them. Since people in my country close it without any consideration for others. It is not a conspicuous habit, but definitely part of American culture. According to the cultural iceberg concept I’ve learned in intercultural communication course, majority of culture is hidden and we tend to see only the surface of it. In order to communicate ethically with people with culturally different background, we need to consider our manner of listening, negotiation and attentiveness and respect other cultures. Looking at the current issues of refugees from Syria, whether we can respect other’s values and perspective would be key to help them. Comparing to other countries, I personaly believe majority of people in the U.S. are more used to accept differences and flexible about sense of ingroup.