A Study Of Inter-cultural Communication In Multi-cultural Context

Xinjiang is a multi-cultural district. There are about 13 ethnic groups living in Xinjiang for a long time. In 2004, Xinjiang government and Xinjiang Education Department made a policy that minority students should accept education in the same school with Han students, aiming to improve the minority students'Chinese. Since then ,the minority's schools have been combined to the Chinese schools. Minority students and teachers work with Han students and teachers in the same school, in whose campus the social culture transformed from single to double or multi. All of that aroused a series of questions: How different ethnic groups people feel when they are facing with the different cultural issues? How do they deal with the problems when they have difficulties in communication with other ethnic group members? What are their feelings and emotions? Is there any changes happened in people's language ,emotion or action?What caused these?By field-work in 3 multi-cultural schools, this paper gives a detail description about different ethnic groups people's inter-cultural communication in these 3 schools. It gives a vivid description of the scenes about communication between Uyghur students / teachers and Han students / teachers. On the foundation of Multi-cultural Education Theory, Educational Anthropology and Inter-cultural Communication Theories, using the cultural anthropological method, this paper gives a generalization that the inter-cultural communication between the two ethnic groups students shows several features, which are extensiveness, superficiality, and unbalancedness. The causes of the problems in inter-cultural communication between Uyghur and Han students are the huge differences between the two cultures, which are related to the language, religion, custom and psychology. While the inter-cultural communication between Uyghur teachers and Han teachers shows another features, such as extensiveness, superficiality, unbalancedness and complexness. Benefit is the superficial reason that caused the communicational obstructions between teachers, while langue, religion, custom and psychology are the deep-seated reasons. Finally, it points out that it is usual to be obstruction in inter-cultural communication between Uyghur and Han students with teachers, but with the time gone, there will be less obstruction in future.This research is valuable. First it helps us to understand the new situation of the relationship between Uyghur and Han people, and gives us a clear show-off about the features of different ethnic people's communication. Second, it gives a guide to the policy how to seek a good way to solve the problems happened among different ethnic groups when Xinjiang is in its modernizational development.