Quick Help: Communicating across cultures

Quick Help: Communicating across cultures

  • Recognize what you consider “normal.” Examine your own customary behaviors and assumptions, and think about how they may affect what you think and say (and write).
  • Listen closely to someone from another culture, and ask for clarification if necessary. Carefully define your terms.
  • Think about your audience’s expectations. How much authority should you have? Should you sound like an expert? a subordinate? something else?
  • What kind of evidence will count most with your audience?
  • Organize your writing with your audience’s expectations in mind. How direct should you be? If in doubt, be formal rather than informal.
  • Most ways of communicating are influenced by cultural contexts. Pay close attention to the ways that people from cultures other than your own communicate, and be flexible.
  • Don’t overgeneralize—respect the differences among individual people within a given culture. Don’t assume that all members of a community behave in just the same way or value exactly the same things.
  • Remember that your audience may be made up of people from many backgrounds who have very different concepts about what is appropriate. Don’t assume that your work will have just one audience!