The Manifestations Of Ethnocentrism In Intercultural Communication

Ethnocentrism is the belief that one’s own culture is superior to other cultures, which is thecultural egoism. Ethnocentrism is featured by the distinction among the cultural groups, holding theattitude of in-group favoritism and out-group derogation. Thus ethnocentrism could be regarded asthe“pride and prejudice”in intercultural communications. Ethnocentrism can be found in anyculture, which has its deep-rooted causes and profound impacts on the cultural group members. Theissue of ethnocentrism involves the individual attitude, emotion, behavior, social structure, culturalsymbols, ideology and so on. Therefore the ethnocentrism study is a complex research ofintercultural communication.The current domestic studies of ethnocentrism are rather one-sided and superficial. Althoughthe researchers are conscious of the impacts of ethnocentrism on intercultural communication, buttheir studies are lack of deep probing into the issue. The present paper conducts intensive andsystematic research on the essence, features, causes and impacts of ethnocentrism. The researchfocuses on the manifestations of ethnocentrism in the three main aspects of interculturalcommunication: language use, communication activities and social culture. They are theapplications of ethnocentrism theories in the context of intercultural communication. The in-depthstudies on ethnocentrism aim to make people more conscious of how cultural attitudes affect theintercultural communication, to identify the variety of manifestations of ethnocentrism, so as tocope with the problems caused by them.In this paper, the literature review, theoretical analysis and example analysis are applied. In thefirst three chapters, the research background, the purpose and significance of the research, themethod and framework of this paper is presented, and the in-depth study of the meaning,characteristics, causes and the impacts of ethnocentrism are systematically discussed. The fourthchapter, as the core component of this study, lays out the manifestations of ethnocentrism from theaspect of language use, communication activities, and social culture, which benefits from therichness and broadness of intercultural communication studies. This present paper breaks throughthe trend restrictions of the mainstream culture studies in intercultural communication, and paysattention to the subculture groups in the society. The interpretation to the ethnocentrism insubculture extends the theoretical perspective of this issue, which is also the relatively innovativepart in this paper. And the fifth chapter, as the extension thinking of ethnocentrism study, providesthe direction of the strategy to deal with ethnocentrism. The DMIS model is introduced to explainhow to develop cultural awareness to improve intercultural communication skills. The final chapter is the summary of this study as well as the limitations of the research.In the times of globalization, the international communications on politics, economy andculture progress with each passing day. The in-depth understanding and study of ethnocentrism isthe prerequisite to establish a rational cultural identity and a fair value. The research onethnocentrism is able to make people deepen the understanding of ethnocentrism and many socialphenomena and improve intercultural communicative competence and literacy.