This morning was the first lecture. Actually it was the second – yesterday the whole group got an introduction into ‘the swedes and swedish culture‘ – but this was the first one of my programme of courses.
This first course I’m following is about the anatomy of intercultural interactions.. Yes, this first lecture was an introduction to the course title :) The course is about laying the basics for the course and giving a theoretical overview of intercultural communication. We’ve been talking about the meaning of ‘inter’, ‘culture’, ‘interaction’ and we talked about things like managing, communication, meaning, context, interpretation and generalization.
I learned a lot about context in the IDSS project in Istanbul. Here Jonas (the teacher) talked about high- and low-context cultures. When someone says something, a part of what is meant lies in the language (being it spoken, unspoken, or body language for example) and another part lies in the context of the culture (and other context too of course). In so called ‘high context cultures’ more meaning lies in the context than in the language itself.
In the end we talked a bit about the ‘similarities / differences’ topic going around cultural discussions. Jonas supposed to talk more about ‘variations’ instead. This can cover both and also implies that they are both there. And it leaves the door open for group variations and individual variations.
Yesterday, the first -whole group- lecture ended with a quote which I forgot to post. I really like this point of view.
“The tourist sees what he has come to see.
The traveler sees what he sees.”
G. K. Chesterton
Tags: anatomy of intcult interact, context, differences similarities variations, interpretation, language, meaning, traveling
Categories: a cultural journey, an academic journey
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