Encoding And Decoding Language In Intercultural Communication

Nowadays, the phrase, intercultural communication, is becoming more and more popular, because it has a great influence in various areas, such as international business, politics, academy, daily life, etc. Intercultural communication happens at anyplace at anytime. It may happen in neighbors' daily conversations, in language classrooms, in business negotiations, in national political conferences, etc. The world can be divided into two parts, the eastern part and the western part. And obviously, the two parts have their own cultural patterns and their own communication rules.This thesis mainly discusses intercultural communication reflected through language expressions. Language exists throughout people's everyday life. So does culture. The thesis applies Sapir-Whorf hypothesis as the theoretical background to explain the relationship between language and culture, which becomes significant. In fact, language plays an important role in culture, which is also a tool in communication. Language is more than a group of symbols, but contains profound cultural insights. Culture makes different interpretations, results in different language expressions, and conducts different behaviors. So language and culture are intertwined together.Some important problems which may affect intercultural communication are discussed. Firstly, the definitions of culture and of language and the relationship between language and culture are introduced. And also the characteristics of the Chinese language, the English language and the Japanese language are dealt with. Secondly, communication styles are presented, including verbal communication styles and nonverbal communication codes. Thirdly, on the basis of different communication styles, two kinds of intercultural communication barriers are given with some specific language terms as examples. Then, in the following two chapters, some instances are listed to explain why so many misinterpretations happen during intercultural communication, especially in business communication and political communication, and to illustrate how different encoding and decoding rules either linguistically or culturally take effect in dealing with business or political situations. In the last chapter, three ways of achieving communication effectiveness are suggested.