 I guess it seems only logical when we start any new endeavor, such as the sojourn into intercultural communication, to ask, why? Why is this important? Why do we need to know this and what benefit we'll have for us in the long run? So I wanted to do just that with this video, and let's take a look at why study intercultural communication? Why is this important? Well, before we jump into the why, let me start with the what, and let's define intercultural communication. Intercultural communication is very briefly and very simply. It won't take long because intercultural communication is just communication between people from two different cultures. It's as simple as that. People from two different cultures. So in the broadest sense, we tend to think of cultures as people from different countries, and that's certainly true. Different countries generally have different cultures or will have different cultures, and so that's an appropriate topic of conversation, but culture doesn't just exist in different countries. Culture exists in different people all around us. We all have different cultures and co-cultures that we subscribe to and that we belong to. So when we communicate with virtually anybody, we're really communicating with somebody from a different culture. So let's start with that, that intercultural communication is communication between people of two different cultures, and that really describes just about anybody we're going to come across to some extent or another. Some are vastly different than us and some are less significantly different than us in terms of culture, but just about everybody has a different culture, cultural makeup than us in some way. So now that we know what intercultural communication is, let's talk about what we call the imperatives for intercultural communication or ICC intercultural communication. These imperatives are just things that the people generally point to as why this is important. Why do we study intercultural communication? Why is it important? It's important for these six things that we're going to talk about, these six imperatives. The first is the imperative for peace. I think mostly across the world people are generally interested in living in peace with other people and to a certain extent co-existing with other people and living their own lives as peacefully as they can, and the best way that we can do that and one of the best ways that we can help to ensure that peace or encourage that kind of peace is to know people because the more you know about someone else and about their culture then the less likely you are to really see them as bad or even remember culture is not about bad or wrong or right or wrong or good or bad or anything like that, it's just about difference. So the more we know about them, then the less foreign that they will seem and the less different than they will seem to us and those differences will seem smaller. The more we get to know somebody, the more we can personalize that and bring some humanity to that situation. It's not that different than when I used to go to my grandparents farm as a kid or growing up in a farm and community, but we go to my grandparents farm and I remember talking to the people, my grandpa and my aunts and uncles, so what's that cow's name? They raised cows and I said what's that cow's name and my grandpa would say that's number 96 or that's number 42 and I said no, what's their name, they don't have a name. It's just a number. That's how we keep track of what cows we have and who's healthy and what not. They don't really have names though and I said well why don't they have names and he said well honestly it makes it harder when they get older to do what we need to do which is to either sell them off for beef or when they're no longer productive then we don't really keep them around. So if they had names that would be harder to do. So when we start to think of cows as these cute, godly creatures with personalities it makes it more difficult to kill this type of animal or to eat this type of animal. Fortunately it's not difficult for me because first of all they're delicious and secondly that's not how I grew up, the culture that I grew up in, but you can understand that the more we know about a person or a creature then the harder that would be. So the same applies to people though really. The more we know about these people the less different they seem and the less foreign they seem they become people if we can understand them and we can learn more about their culture we communicate with them effectively in an intercultural way then we can help establish peace in general with the people around us. Another imperative for intercultural communication is what we call demographic, the demographic imperative. So we can look at people as a makeup of different statistics or different areas, different ages, different genders, different generations, different things and so the more we understand about the differences in the demographics then the more we will again sort of be at peace with them and the more we will understand them and we live in an increasingly shrinking world where we're exposed to people from different cultures more and more often now. But even here in the United States it's always been sort of known as the melting pot right the United States is the melting pot and there are some people who say well that's not necessarily the best analogy possible maybe it's not such a melting pot because we don't all merge right we see different cultures still exist within the United States so it's more like a tossed salad the American tossed salad maybe where you have all these different ingredients and they all bring their own flavor and things and then you have the sprinkling of of Americanisms and that where they kind of blend together in a pleasant way but they're not melting together in terms of everybody giving up their own identity and their own culture and things but so we understand the demographics of a population and the background and their history and the unique and vibrant things that their culture brings then we can have a better understanding of how to communicate with them and how to live again in peace together and coexist more effectively so when we understand the demographics that's another imperative for why we should be concerned with intercultural communication so that we can truly appreciate those demographics and understand their importance in effective communication there's also an economic imperative quite frankly just to you know if we want a bottom line things was an economic imperative for intercultural communication again the world is a shrinking place we see this massive growth in globalization of economy right that that companies are no longer you know you think about the time of of John DeRocco fellow for example where they had to have a special dispensation to do business in a different state he had you know the part of the challenge that standard oil faced under Rockefeller was that they were only legally really allowed to operate in one state so they had to find ways around that while now you can throw that out the window right I mean at this different states is crossing state lines is no longer an issue that's I mean that's a done deal now we're talking about crossing global lines and and the globalization of an economy so if we're going to be part of a global economy on which we certainly are in the midst of then we ought to increase our intercultural communication skills so that we can effectively communicate and you know to leverage that that economic status to the best of our ability so just to you know and again if you just want to pure bottom line reason for studying intercultural communication there's an economic component here an economic imperative to it that can't be overlooked there's also a technological imperative I can I keep coming back but we live in an increasingly shrinking world right we live in what McLuhan called Marshall McLuhan called a global village right and the technology that exists now has has caused our world to really shrink in terms of communication we're communicating across the world much more frequently and much more easily than we ever did before which has sort of created this global village in a sense in in the sense of an interconnectedness because of this technology that did not exist necessarily before and certainly become enhanced and in recent years this the technology has it can cause the world to shrink to a certain extent in terms of the amount of exposure we have to people from different cultures it's also on the flip side of that created this sort of digital divide what we call a digital divide though right the kind of the haves and have nots of technology used to be that you know that the big technology divide was did you have a computer or not or did you have a smartphone or not and that still exists to a certain extent now it's really what kind of internet speed do you have if you're one of the fortunate in the world that has a high capacity internet speed then you are certainly better off than folks who do not because so much of the world relies on technology and if you're missing that then you're really at a disadvantage right so we have this digital divide between the technological haves and have nots as well but I'm so increasing intercultural communication can help us not only shrink that divide but certainly understand it a little better and understand the impact and the importance of that and how we relate to others there's also an imperative related to self-awareness this is again shrinking world right we're in a shrinking world we're coming across other cultures more and more all the time or more exposed to them we're engaging with people from different cultures in big ways and small ways on a daily basis right so there is a danger of things like ethnocentrism and different things but we need to be more self-aware we need to have an understanding of ourselves so we need to be cautious first of all of things like ethnocentrism which is this belief that your culture is inherently superior to another when we talk about culture it's not about better or worse it's not about good or bad or right or wrong it's about different cultures are just different and they just are it's not a matter of but ethnocentrism says well my culture is inherently better than you right so so I'm better than yours we need to avoid that we need to watch that so increasing intercultural competence will help with our self-awareness and help us to divert from and avoid ethnocentrism to a certain extent but also just it helps us engage in self-reflexivity self-reflexivity meaning understanding of oneself and one's place in society in terms of how we fit in where we fit in you know what's our what's our place what's our role what's our contribution and just in self-awareness and understanding an increased understanding of intercultural communication will help us fill in that picture a little more will provide more depth to that picture of ourselves even and then finally we really just have an ethical imperative there's an ethical imperative for intercultural communication this this ethical imperative and in intercultural communication really is the sense of a moral compass whether something is you know again culture is not about good or bad it's not about right or wrong but but there is certainly a sense of of being aware of privilege for example related to a culture we're welcoming to a new understanding of what that means and whether it's racial privilege or economic privilege or whatever privilege we are experiencing we're not experiencing there's certainly that's a part of this as well and we have an ethical obligation to understand like in our place and our the privilege that exists and and and how our culture and our perspective impact all that then there's also this idea of a relativist versus universalist philosophies the idea that for example in culture when we talk about relativist views of culture we talk about the idea that all perspectives are unique and valid as opposed to a universalist philosophy of culture which is that there are fundamental absolutes regardless of where you're from and what your beliefs are there are certain things that are absolute and the truth is really probably somewhere in the middle I mean there are certain there's certainly validity to every cultural perspective and there's certainly room to consider those different things now are there are there things that are probably fundamentally you know absolute sure you know I think most cultures would agree that murder is bad for example and that we ought to take care for children and that we you know things like that but but these can be taken to extremes as we have an ethical understanding from an intercultural sense to understand where our culture lies in that and where other cultures lie in that and how then we can best relate in those situations and understanding that there are you know there are different perspectives on different things or just are and so people may see the world differently it doesn't mean again doesn't mean they're right or wrong or good or bad it just means that they are different and that our culture does impact our ethical perspective and view of the world and then we just you know intercultural communications is important because we are all connected more and more on a daily basis we are connected to people all around the world we're connected to people in our community that we may not have been exposed to before we're just connected to people who are so different from us in many ways and yet so similar to us in many ways that intercultural communication really is the the cornerstone for coming to a renewed understanding of one another for all of those reasons because of increasing peace and a demographic knowledge and ethical understanding and all those different things so intercultural communication really is just a responsibility that each of us has if you have questions about anything related to intercultural communication including why we study intercultural communication or why it might be important questions comments things i'd welcome those please feel free to email me and be happy to chat with you about those in the meantime i hope you will really commit yourself to understanding not only your own culture but that of others and the way that those things interact and engage in the process of intercultural communication