KEY TERMS FOR CHAPTER 1

Agreement: When each participant not only understands the other but also holds a view that is
similar.
Communication: A symbolic, interpretive, transactional, contextual process in which people
create shared meanings.
Context: The setting or situation within which communication takes place.
Emblems: Nonverbal behaviors that have a direct verbal counterpart.
Global village: A term used to describe the consequences of the media’s ability to bring events
from the far reaches of the globe into people’s personal lives, thus shrinking the world.
Feedback: Ongoing responses about how messages are received.
Globalization: The integration of capital, technology, and information across national borders,
which is creating a worldwide marketplace.
Global village: A term used to describe the consequences of the media’s ability to bring events
from the far reaches of the globe into people’s personal lives, thus shrinking the world.
Interpretive: Assigning significance to others’ behaviors to create a meaningful account of their
actions.
Interpersonal communication: A form of communication that involves a small number of
individuals who are interacting exclusively with one another and who therefore have the ability
both to adapt their messages specifically for those others and to obtain immediate interpretations
from them.
Meaning: A perception, thought, or feeling that a person experiences and might want to
communicate to others.
Message: The “package” of symbols used to create shared meanings.
Process: A sequence of many distinct but interrelated steps.
Shared: Ideas or objects that are commonly held by a set of individuals.
Symbol: A word, action, or object that stands for or represents a unit of meaning.
Transactional: A view of communication that emphasizes the construction or creation of shared
messages and meanings.
Understanding: Imposing similar or shared interpretations about what messages actually mean.
KEY TERMS FOR CHAPTER 2
Behaviors: What people say and do as they “perform” their culture with others.
Beliefs: The basic understanding of a group of people about what the world is like or what is true
or false.
Biology: The inherited characteristics that cultural members share.
Co-culture: A term to be avoided, which refers to racial and ethnic minority groups that share
both a common nation-state with other cultures and some aspects of the larger culture.
Communication: A symbolic, interpretive, transactional, contextual process in which people
create shared meanings.
Cross-cultural communication: The comparative study of a particular idea or concept within
many cultures.
Culture: A learned set of shared interpretations about beliefs, values, norms, and social practices
that affects the behaviors of a relatively large group of people.
Ecology: The external environment in which the culture lives.
Ethnicity: A term used to indicate a wide variety of groups who might share a language,
historical origins, religion, nation-state, or cultural system.
History: The unique experiences that have become part of a culture’s collective wisdom.
Institutional networks: The formal organizations in societies that organize activities for large
numbers of people.
Intercultural communication: A symbolic, interpretive, transactional, contextual process in
which people from different cultures create shared meanings.
Interethnic: Communication differences between members of ethnic groups who are all
members of the same nation-state.
International communication: The study of interactions among people from different nations.
Interpersonal communication patterns: The face-to-face verbal and nonverbal coding systems
that cultures develop to convey meanings and intentions.
Interracial communication: Communication differences between members of racial groups
who are all members of the same nation-state.
Intracultural: Literally “within a culture.” Individuals who are culturally similar on important
attributes.
Nation: A political term referring to a government and a set of formal and legal mechanisms that
regulate the political behavior of its people.
Norms: Rules for appropriate behavior, which provide the expectations people have of one
another and of themselves.
Race: A term representing certain physical similarities, such as skin color or eye shape, that are
shared by a group of people and are used to mark or separate them from others
Social practices: The predictable behavior patterns that members of a culture typically follow.
Subculture: A derogatory term for racial and ethnic minority groups that share both a common
nation-state with other cultures and some aspects of the larger culture.
Technology: The inventions that a culture has created or borrowed.
Values: What a group of people defines as good and bad or what it regards as important.

KEY TERMS FOR CHAPTER 3

appropriate: Behaviors that are regarded as proper and suitable.
behaviors: What people say and do as they “perform” their culture with others.
culture-general information: Insights into the intercultural communication process that are
abstract and applicable to a variety of cultures.
culture-specific information: Insights into the intercultural communication process that are
unique and distinctive to a particular culture.
dominant culture: The cultural group that has primary access to institutional and economic
power.
effective: Behaviors that lead to the achievement of desired outcomes.
empathy: The capacity to behave as though one understands the world as others do.
feelings: The emotional or affective states that one experiences when communicating with
someone from a different culture.
intentions: The goals, plans, objectives, and desires that guide choices that direct behaviors.
interaction management: Skill in regulating conversations and taking turns.
interaction posture: The ability to respond to others in descriptive, nonevaluative, and
nonjudgmental ways.
intercultural communication: A symbolic, interpretive, transactional, contextual process in
which people from different cultures create shared meanings.
interpretations: How relationship messages are understood by communicators and the meanings
that specific behaviors are assumed to reveal.
knowledge: The cognitive information one has about a specific culture.
metaphor: A comparison or summary image that condenses an idea into a few key words or
phrases.
motivation: People’s overall set of emotional associations as they anticipate and actually
communicate interculturally.
orientation to knowledge: The recognition that individual experiences shape what a person
knows.
relational role behaviors: Behaviors associated with interpersonal harmony and mediation.
respect: The ability to show positive regard for other people and their cultures.
skill: The actual performance of behaviors that are regarded as appropriate and effective.
standpoint theory: The unique set of perspectives, experiences, and identities that a person
brings to an intercultural event.
task-role behaviors: Behaviors that involve the initiation of ideas related to group problem-
solving activities.
tolerance for ambiguity: The ability to react to new and ambiguous situations with little visible
discomfort.

KEY TERMS FOR CHAPTER 4

activity orientation: A cultural dimension that describes how the people of a culture view
human actions and the expression of self through actions or activities.
beliefs: The basic understanding of a group of people about what the world is like or what is true
or false.
central beliefs: The culture’s fundamental teachings about what reality is and expectations about
how the world works.
cultural patterns: Shared beliefs, values, norms, and social practices that are stable over time
and that lead to roughly similar behaviors across similar situations.
culture: A learned set of shared interpretations about beliefs, values, norms, and social practices
that affects the behaviors of a relatively large group of people.
intensity: The strength or importance of a cultural value, or the degree to which the culture
identifies the cultural value as significant.
interpersonal communication: A form of communication that involves a small number of
individuals who are interacting exclusively with one another and who therefore have the ability
both to adapt their messages specifically for those others and to obtain immediate interpretations
from them.
interpersonal communication patterns: The face-to-face verbal and nonverbal coding systems
that cultures develop to convey meanings and intentions.
motivation: People’s overall set of emotional associations as they anticipate and actually
communicate interculturally.
norms: Rules for appropriate behavior, which provide the expectations people have of one
another and of themselves.
peripheral beliefs: Matters of personal taste.
self-orientation: A cultural dimension that describes how people’s identities are formed,
whether the culture views the self as changeable, what motivates individual actions, and the
kinds of people who are valued and respected.
shared interpretations: Subtle differences within a culture that become apparent only after
extensive exposure to the culture.
social practices: The predictable behavior patterns that members of a culture typically follow.

social relations orientation: A cultural dimension that describes how the people in a culture
organize themselves and relate to one another.

time orientation: A cultural dimension that describes how people conceptualize the passage of
time and the value they place on time.

valence: A term that refers to whether a value is seen as positive or negative.

values: What a group of people defines as good and bad or what it regards as important.
world orientation: A cultural dimension that describes how people locate themselves in relation
to the spiritual world, nature, and other living things.