Barriers to Cross Cultural Communication

Seminar paper from the year 2011 in the subject Business economics - Business Management, Corporate Governance, grade: 1,3, University of Applied Sciences Südwestfalen; Hagen, language: English, abstract: Nowadays we talk and hear about the big topics like ¿Globalisation¿, ¿Internationalisation of markets¿ and ¿New Technologies for Communication¿. In our today¿s world boundaries be-tween states as well as big distances between particular states do not play a big role anymore. Nearly everyone is able to get in connection with everyone he likes to; not matter what coun-try he lives in, what time it is or with whom he likes to talk.

This development leads to the arising importance of ¿Cross Cultural Communication¿. Think-ing about business for example most of all existing companies operate all around the world by now. If a salesman from England wants to make profit, he will have to offer his products not only in his home country; he also will have to offer them in Japan and Germany. So for doing his job he has to communicate across cultures. It is the same in many other branches, like pol-itics or movie makers for instance.

It is an evident aspect that communicating across cultures is associated with problems and barriers to communication. The first big problem getting in mind is the language itself, because two communication partners must own one language which both of them are able to speak.