Second Culture Acquisition And Its Implications For Intercultural Communication

With improving intercultural communication competence being focused on in the study of intercultural communication, various approaches have been proposed, such as language-specific, culture-specific, context-specific methods. This thesis attempts to approach the issue from the culture-specific perspective with a different focus----a focus on the important relationship between the covert culture and intercultural communication. Chapter One is an introduction to the present study. Previous studies in this field have generally agreed upon the importance of culture learning in intercultural communication; however, there is much controversy surrounding goals and methods of culture learning. The author of the present paper maintains investigations into the following problems can be of great significance in this regard: (1) what is the process of second culture acquisition (SCA) in the acquirers? (2) what is the outcome of SCA? and (3) what is the relationship between SCA and intercultural communication? Exploration is made with the aid of related theories in the fields of cultural anthropology, developmental psychology, cognitive psychology, sociology and intercultural communication studies.Chapter Two covers definition of culture, the structure of culture, characteristics of culture and the process of first culture acquisition, offering the theoretical basis for the present study.Chapter Three explores SCA in detail, covering the model, the process and the result of second culture acquisition. Based on the researches available so far on SCA, the author proposes a hypothetical model of SCA, which is mainly concerned with what happens during the process of second culture acquisition. In general, four major possible cases are involved in the process of second culture acquisition:â‘ absorption of new second culture (C2) elements,â‘¡selection of first culture (C1) or second culture (C2) elements,â‘¢contextualization of C1 or C2 elements, andâ‘£amalgamation of C1 and C2 elements. SCA, unlike SLA, involves the integration of new cultural elements into an already-existing system. On the whole, the process of second culture acquisition is the expansion of an existing system, rather than the development of a totally new one. The result of SCA rarely is full assimilation into the target culture, for SCA is a bidirectional process in which an individual retains values and practices of its heritage and simultaneously adopts those of a second culture. As the degree to which individuals retain their cultural values varies, so does the extent to which individuals adopt values and practices of other cultural groups. Chapter Four explores the relationship between SCA and intercultural communication by analyzing two key issues in both of them-----values and thought patterns. As the most difficult part of culture to acquire for second culture learners, values and though patterns constitute the greatest trouble for intercultural encounters as well. Compared with intercultural misunderstandings attributed to a poor command of the target language, intercultural conflicts and failures due to cultural elements, especially due to values and thought patterns, sometimes turn out much more discouraging and disconcerting. Moreover, major cultural barriers to intercultural communication, say, ethnocentrism, stereotyping and prejudice, mainly arise from the covert part of the target culture (i.e. values and thought patterns) which makes SCA rather complex and difficult as well.However, it has always been asserted that intercultural communication competence can be improved naturally with the improvement of foreign language competence. The author of the present paper doubts whether there exists such a straightforward parallelism between foreign language competence and intercultural communication competence (ICC). Based on the illustration of the relationship between SCA and intercultural communication, the author designs an empirical study in Chapter Five in order to test two hypotheses:â‘ students who possess high foreign language competence do not necessarily possess high intercultural communication competence.â‘¡ICC, to some degree, depends on sensitivity over values and thought patterns of different culture.The thesis finally draws a conclusion accordingly: improving intercultural communication can hardly be achieved unless culture acquisition receives sufficient attention; furthermore, acquisition of the covert part of target culture deserves special consideration from whoever is involved in intercultural communication.