Communication in Credo: Intercultural Communication

From Encyclopedia of International Media and Communications
The technological advances that govern our travel, business, and communication patterns today require cross-cultural communication. When decisions are made in a global marketplace, it is not possible to operate effectively only within the cultural premises of the communicator.

In anthropology, the integrated system of socially acquired values, beliefs, and rules of conduct which delimit the range of accepted behaviors in any given society. Cultural differences distinguish societies from one another.

Process by which different parts of the globe become interconnected by economic, social, cultural, and political means. Globalization has become increasingly rapid since the 1970s and 1980s as a result of developments in technology, communications, and trade liberalization. In politics, a big buzzword in political speech and a ubiquitous analytical category in academic debate; globalization operates today rather like modernization did in the mid-twentieth century as the key term of a master discourse about the general state of the world. The most common political version of the discourse depicts globalization as an unstoppable process of global integration, a supposedly inevitable process that while being driven by free market capitalism also necessitates all the free market reforms of neo-liberalism.

Sign representing something that has an independent existence. The most important use of symbols is in language. To say so, however, does not solve the perennial philosophical questions as to the nature of the linguistic sign.

From Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology
The formation of anthropology as a subject of intellectual study was closely associated with the establishment of distinctive institutions.

The study of humankind. It investigates the cultural, social, and physical diversity of the human species, both past and present.

In its most restricted form [ethnicity] refers to a group’s shared biological origins; in its broader definition it more closely resembles the concept of nationality. Ethnicity and identity are closely aligned in popular and academic discussions. In fact, many often use the term ethnicity as a way to identify how individuals are grouped or group themselves according to some shared national or regional heritage, religion, class, language, or culture.

The word ‘ethnography’ has a double meaning in anthropology: ethnography as product (ethnographic writings – the articles and books written by anthropologists), and ethnography as process (participant observation or fieldwork).