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Often personalities are described in terms of emotional attitudes
such as warm, cold, generous, stubborn, dominant, shy, aggressive,
easy-going, etc., traits that are often assumed to have fairly direct
communicative consequences, so that a warm person shows warmth
in communication, while a dominant person attempts to dominate.
Theories of personality vary (Hall and Lindzey, 1957) in how
permanent or malleable personality features are assumed to be.
Some theories see them as always present, based on a genetic
disposition or early child development, while others see them as
highly fluctuating, based on the type of interaction developed in a
particular communicative situation.
9.3 Cultural influence
We have seen above that national-ethnic culture is among the influences
on communication. Perhaps this is especially interesting, when two or
more persons with different cultural backgrounds communicate and
we have what is often called “intercultural communication”.
Reflecting on intercultural communication raises the question of
what culture is (Kroeber and Kluckhohn, 1952; Geertz, 1973; Allwood,
1985). We can define the culture of a community as their shared
patterns of thoughts, behavior, artifacts and traces in the environment,
based on, but not determined by, Nature. Thus, the ability to breathe
or to walk, although shared in all human communities, is not cultural,
since it is directly given by Nature. Culture is based on Nature, but
requires humans to create regularities not directly given by Nature.
Since such created regularities can differ between communities, they
are in many cases relevant for communication. They affect both
behavior, activities and the assumptions communicators have about
what they can take for granted as shared. Such assumptions are often
automatic and can, if not made aware, lead to misperceptions and
misunderstandings between interlocutors.
Cultural traits and differences can influence all aspects of
communication, that is, production, interpretation, interaction and
assumptions about context, for example, assumptions about the proper,
or polite, way to carry out various social activities, like greeting, e.g.
thanking, introducing yourself, getting to know someone, negotiating,
etc.
Our awareness of cultural traits, as well as of cultural differences,
often takes the form of more or less stereotypical generalizations
concerning what is common or normal on a group level. If seen
this way, cultural traits become not deterministic causes valid for
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