Intercultural communication conflicts

Seminar paper from the year 2010 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 1, Université Toulouse II - Le Mirail, language: English, abstract: Our world today is characterized by a growing number of contacts resulting in communication between people with different languages and cultural background. The contact with persons from other cultures is often frustrating and full of misunderstanding. Good intentions and a friendly approach don¿t seem to be sufficient. Respect for other cultures is one of the key needs in communication. No one should look down on those with different customs, languages or cultures, but try to look through their eyes and to understand, what and how they are seeing the world. Communication between cultures takes place because of contacts within the areas of tourism, education, science, entertainment, but also business, politics or immigration. In all these cross-cultural contacts, communication needs to be constructive without any misunderstandings, just because the group to which a person belongs is different. Currently new types of relationships are presenting communication challenges that few people are ready to meet .

In this paper I intend to deal with the concept of communication, especially non-verbal communication and its features in communicating a message when it happens between different cultures.