A Study Of Intercultural Communication Competence On The Basis Of Schema Theory

The tide of globalization has swept all over the world. The interdependence and interconnectedness between different countries, regions and organizations are continuously growing. Under this background, the communication between different cultures becomes inevitable and more frequent than ever. Intercultural communication competence has become a necessary quality for modern talents and hence a research focus both at home and abroad. In view of the domestic study situation that is theory-lacking and unsystematic, this thesis, from the perspective of schema theory, reconceptualizes intercultural communication competence and builds a model of it accordingly, and at last proposes approaches to develop intercultural communication competence.This thesis is divided into five chapters. The first chapter is introduction, which briefly states the study background of globalization, the practical and academic significance of the study and the purpose of the study. The second chapter mainly reviews relevant study achievements at home and abroad, and points out the weakness of theoretical basis and the lack of systematicness in domestic study. The third chapter introduces schema theory and interpretivism as the theoretical basis and methodology. The fourth chapter is the main body of the thesis that analyzes intercultural communication competence systematically. The first part of the chapter is the reconceptualization. First of all, culture and communication are explained on the basis of schema theory; then the definition and model of intercultural communication are concluded; at last, a new definition of intercultural communication competence is derived. This thesis defines intercultural communication competence as the abilities to actively adjust and construct clear schemata to adapt to target culture, and further transform the schemata into symbols to exchange information with people from different national culture so as to realize the expected result. The second part is the modeling. It analyzes four basic elements of intercultural communication competence: cultural schema, language, attitude and context, on the basis of which it proposes that intercultural communication competence consists of cultural cognitive competence, linguistic competence, emotional competence and contextual competence. The four components are discussed one by one and their relationships are explored. The third part deals with the development of intercultural communication competence. First, the necessity and possibility of the development are pointed out; then the development goal of two levels and three principles are put forward; at last, the approaches of cultivating intercultural communication competence are discussed in foreign language teaching. The fifth chapter is the conclusion, which firstly summarizes research content and research achievement including conceptualizing, modeling and developing intercultural communication competence. Then it points out that it is an initiative attempt to combine schema theory with intercultural communication competence and there are limitations in the research depth and proposed development approaches of intercultural communication competence. At last, it is suggested to enhance theoretical basis in further studies and explore more approaches to develop intercultural communication competence.