1. Understanding InterculturalUnderstanding Intercultural
CommunicationCommunication Second EditionSecond Edition
Chapter 2
What is Intercultural Communication
Flexibility?
StellaTing-Toomey & Leeva C. Chung
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
PowerPoint Slides Designed by Alex Flecky and Noorie Baig

2. MENUMENU
I. Defining Intercultural Communication:
A Process Model
II. Practicing Intercultural Communication
Flexibility
III. Developing Intercultural Communication
Flexibility

3. Intercultural communication:
• symbolic exchange (digital, analogic)
• process (transactional, irreversible)
• cultural community
• negotiate shared meanings (content, relational,
identity meaning)
• interactive situation (relational, psychological,
physical)
• embedded societal system (multilayered
context)
I. Defining ICC: A Process ModelI. Defining ICC: A Process Model

4. I. Defining ICC: A Process ModelI. Defining ICC: A Process Model

5. II. Practicing Intercultural CommunicationII. Practicing Intercultural Communication
FlexibilityFlexibility
Introduction Section:
1. Flexible and inflexible intercultural
communication
2. Ethnocentric and ethnorelative
mindset

6. II. Practicing ICC FlexibilityII. Practicing ICC Flexibility
Ethnocentric mindset…
- Stuck in own cultural worldviews, using our own
cultural values as standards to evaluate others’
behaviors.
- Viewing our cultural way of living as “natural” and
what’s going on in other cultures as “unnatural.”
- Evaluating the communication norms of our own
cultural group as more “proper.”
- Acting in a conscious or unconscious manner
in favor of the ingroup standard to the exclusion of
outgroup standard.

7. II. Practicing ICC FlexibilityII. Practicing ICC Flexibility
Ethnorelative mindset…
- Understanding behavior from the other
person’s cultural frame of reference.
- Suspending ethnocentric, reactive judgments
and engaging in a systematic cross-cultural
comparative analysis.
- Promoting a respectful, inclusive climate via
competent communication skills practice.

8. II. Practicing ICC FlexibilityII. Practicing ICC Flexibility
A. Three Content Components:
Knowledge, Attitude, and Skills
B. Three Criteria:
Appropriateness, Effectiveness, and
Adaptability

9. III. Developing Intercultural CommunicationIII. Developing Intercultural Communication
FlexibilityFlexibility
A. Staircase Model: Four Stages of Flexible
Intercultural Communication
1. Unconscious incompetence: blissful ignorance
2. Conscious incompetence: semi-awareness
3. Conscious competence: “full mindfulness”
4. Unconscious competence: “mindlessly mindful”

10. III. Developing ICC FlexibilityIII. Developing ICC Flexibility

11. III. Developing ICC FlexibilityIII. Developing ICC Flexibility
B. A Mindful Perspective: Flexible
Communicators:
• Attune to their own internal assumptions,
values, and expectations.
• Attend to alternative assumptions, values, and
expectations of the cultural strangers.
• Learn to understand unfamiliar behaviors from
multiple cultural angles.
• Are committed to shift communication styles
when appropriate to the persons, goals, and
cultural context = ICC Flexibility.

12. IV. Deepening Intercultural Process ThinkingIV. Deepening Intercultural Process Thinking
Realize that ICC often involves these principles:
• Mismatched expectations stem from group differences.
• Involves degrees of biased intergroup perceptions,
overgeneralizations, stereotypes.
• Simultaneous decoding and encoding of verbal/nonverbal
messages.
• Multiple goal transactions: content, relational, identity.
• Calls for understanding of diverse communication
approaches and styles.
• Often involves well-meaning culture bumps or clashes.
• Always takes place in context and in embedded systems.

13. IV. Deepening Intercultural Process ThinkingIV. Deepening Intercultural Process Thinking
Mindfulness
Flexibility

14. Parting Thoughts…Parting Thoughts…
A traveler without observation
is like a bird without wings…
~ Author unknown