The Influence Of Individualism/Collectivism On Communication Style In The School Setting

In the21stcentury, the rapid development of technology brings a lot of changes tohuman beings. The whole world has become smaller thanks to the convenience oftransportation system and the advanced communication technology, so the cross-culturalcommunication between countries has become more frequent. In order to communicatebetter with people from different cultural backgrounds, it is very necessary tounderstand the cultural differences between different countries. Since Hofstedeproposed the theory of four dimensions of culture in the field of cross-culturalcommunication in1980, a large number of scholars focus on the research ofindividualism/collectivism dimension and apply Hofsetede’s findings widely to fields ofbusiness, organizational behavior, psychology and so on. However, among the studieson individualism/collectivism in the cross-cultural communication field, most Chinesescholars pay great attention to the theoretical studies; foreign researchers conduct lots ofempirical studies but they emphasize the comparative study onindividualism/collectivism between China and the United States; there are few studieson individualism/collectivism between China and Italy. Meanwhile, communicationstyle plays a crucial role in cross-cultural communication. Hence, this present thesistakes Hofstede’s individualism/collectivism theory and theories on communication styleas framework to conduct am empirical study on communication styles of Chinese andItalian college students. Based on Hostede’s descriptions of key differences betweenindividualism and collectivism in family, school and work situation, the author uses aself-designed questionnaire on communication style in the school setting to investigateChinese and Italian college students’ respective communication style, then makes acomparative analysis with SPSS and Excel software, and studies theindividualism/collectivism orientation of Chinese and Italian college students bydiscussing the cultural characteristics reflected by their communication styles. Theresult of this empirical study is also used to verify the conclusion by Hofstede thatChinese is a collectivist country while Italy is an individualist country.The empirical study shows that: firstly, Chinese college students are more inclinedto use communication style of “we” subject, implicit, stating, competitive andinterdependent; Italian college students are more likely to use “I” subject, explicit, describing, cooperative and independent communication style. Among the styles ofinformal/formal, dominant/obedient and contentious/compromising, there is nosignificant difference between Chinese and Italian college students. Secondly, in groupsof “I”/“we” subject, explicit/implicit and independent/interdependent, the most parts ofcultural characters of Chinese college students belong to collectivism while Italiancollege students belong to individualism. In groups of stating/describing andcompetitive/cooperative, the Chinese reflect individualist traits whist the Italians showcollectivist traits according to their communication styles. For groups ofinformal/formal, dominant/obedient and contentious/compromising, no significantcultural orientations are shown by Chinese and Italian college students. Thirdly, fromthe overall perspective, Italian culture remains individualism but Chinese culture isindividualism-characterized. Whether Chinese culture has deviation from collectivismto individualism or not needs further exploration.