Communication Is Linked to Culture
As you learn in Chapter 5, culture can dictate communication norms, such as defining personal space. In Mediterranean cultures, for instance, men stand close together and frequently touch during conversation. But in North American cultures, the appropriate conversational distance is generally about three feet, and men seldom touch each other during social interaction, except when they shake hands in greeting.
If you’ve ever traveled abroad, or even through the different neighborhoods of a large city, you know that communication is linked to culture. Culture refers to the shared beliefs, values, and practices of a group of people. A group’s culture includes the language (or languages) and other symbols used by group members as well as the norms and rules about appropriate behavior.
Most people are members of several co-cultures simultaneously. Co-cultures are smaller groups of people within a larger culture that are distinguished by features such as race, religion, age, generation, political affiliation, gender, sexual orientation, economic status, educational level, occupation, and a host of other factors.
Consider Angela, who identifies with a number of co-cultures: she is an American, an African American, a woman, a Midwesterner, a married lawyer with two children, a person with an income over $100,000 a year, a Democrat, and a Baptist. Each of these co-cultures carries different meanings for Angela and affects her communication—including the language she speaks, how she presents herself to others, how she evaluates her effectiveness, and how she interprets others’ behavior (Chen & Starosta, 1996; Zarrinabadi, 2012).
Cultural identities can even form around interests and hobbies. For example, a music critic at Pitchfork.com might distinguish among rock, soul, and hip-hop and might even break those styles down further, using terms like old-school, freestyle, classic, punk, techno, and R&B. For someone less involved or less interested in the music scene, such distinctions might seem unimportant—it’s all just popular music. We uncover the cultural complexities of communication in Chapter 5.