An Empirical Study On The Relationship Between Intercultural Communicative Competence And Communication Styles

As globalization and multiculturalism develop,intercultural communication plays a significant role in a multicultural society.The advocation and blossom of the Belt and Road Initiative leads to continual intercultural communication.Thus,communicators’ intercultural communicative competence(ICC)needs to be cultivated.In the process of intercultural communication,communicators with different cultural backgrounds are equipped with different communication styles,which are likely to cause cultural conflicts and misunderstandings.Therefore,it is necessary for communicators to gain the knowledge of different communicators’ styles in intercultural communication.Besides,few studies are involved in the relationship between ICC and communication styles in intercultural communication study.Based on such background and provided with the cultural context of Dalian University of Technology(DUT),this paper tends to use Arasaratam’s ICC instrument and Norton’s and Gudykunst et al.’s communication styles instrument to figure out the relationship between ICC and communication styles from the intercultural perspective.By the method of questionnaire,203 samples were collected in DUT for the quantitative study aiming to figure out the relationship between ICC and communication styles.This empirical study uses data analysis software SPSS17.0 with the statistical methods of descriptive analysis,correlation analysis,simple regression and multiple regression analysis.The results are as follows.(1)The descriptive analysis shows that ICC and communication styles of 203 samples in DUT are in the median level with a large room to enhance their competence.(2)The correlation analysis indicates that there is a high positive correlation between ICC and communication styles.Simple regression discloses that intercultural communicative competence has a larger effect on communication styles compared with the effect degree of communication styles on ICC.(3)Multiple regression analysis demonstrates how internal factors of ICC affect communication styles and how internal factors of communication styles affect ICC.In this thesis,intercultural communicative competence contains cognitive competence,affective competence and behavioral competence.The results prove that affective competence makes the most contribution to communication styles,which mainly include friendly,precise,inferring meanings and interpersonal sensitivity and that interpersonal sensitivity is the best predictor for ICC.The results show that there is a significant and positive correlation between ICC and communication styles.For Chinesestudents,the enhancement of intercultural sensitivity and interpersonal sensitivity is an effective way to improve intercultural communicative competence and form different communication styles in intercultural communication.