Culture is men’s medium; there is n

Culture is men’s medium; there is not one aspectof human life that is not touched and altered by culture. This means personality, how people express themselves (including shows of emotion), the way they think, how they move, how problems are solved, how their cities are palnned and laid out, how transporatation system function and are organized, as well as how economic and goverment systems are put together and function. However.. it is frequently the most obvious and taken for granted and therefore the least studied aspects of culture that influence behavior in the deepest and most subtle ways.
Communication is far more complex and much more important to us than we may thus far suspect. With rare exception, our daily lives almost constantly are acts af communication. As was brought out in chapter 1, we cannot communicate, and “the way people communicate isthe way they live.”
When we begin to talk about the way people live we are thrust immediatelyinto the arena of culture because culture is the form or pattern for living. People learn to think, feel believe, and strive for what their culture considers proper. Language habits, friendships, eating habits, communication practices, social acts, economic and political activities, and technology all follow the patterns of culture. If people speak Tagalog, avoid members of another race, eat snakes, avoid wine, live in communal housing, bury their dead, talk on the telephone, or rocket to the moon, it is because they have been born into or at least reared in a culture that contains these elements. What people do, how they act, and how they live and communicate is both a response to and afunction of their culture.
Culture and communication are inseparable because culture not only dictates who talks with whom, about what, and how the communication proceeds, it also helps to determine how people encode messages, the meanings they have for messages, and the conditions sent, noticed, or interpreted. In fact, our entire repertory of communicative behaviors is dependent largery on the culture in which we have been raised. Culture, consequently, is the foundation of communication. And, when cultures vary, communication practices also vary.
Culture and communication are so inextricably bound to one another that some cultural anthropologists have argued persuasively that the terms culture and communication are essentially synonymous. This insepreable relationship between culture and communication is the key factor in our fullyunderstanding communication. Our ability to fathom the complexities of intercultural communication must begin with a sound grasp of cultural influences on the way people communicate. Cultural variance in how people encode and decode messages is the foremost problem in intercultural communication . to help us develop an approprate perspective for the study of intercultural commnuication, we are going to survey the nation of culture, describe and define intercultural communication, and then consider in detail some socio-cultural elements that affect intercultural communication most directly.