【正文】 ............. 5 Definition of Prejudice ........................................................ 5 Expressions of Prejudice...................................................... 6 Functions of Prejudice ......................................................... 7 Ⅲ Solutions of Improving Intercultural Communication .................. 9 Enough knowledge ....................................................................... 9 Skilled Actions ........................................................................... 10 Ⅳ Conclusion ...................................................................................... 10 Bibliography ......................................................................................... 12 江蘇科技大學外國語學院研究生課程論文 1 Barriers and Solutions A Closer Look at Intercultural Communication Ⅰ Introduction Since the adoption of the opening up and reform policy, China has increased its foreign exchanges. Nowadays, the developments of the economic globalization and information working advance this kind of exchanges. However, people find that misunderstandings and even conflicts often occur in this kind of cooperations and exchanges. In fact, most of them are caused by cultural differences. China and other countries have different social cultures, and as a consequence, people have different modes of thinking and behavioral patterns. Sociocultural differences in China and other countries are mainly in terms of geography, philosophy, religion, political system, economic system, methods of education, concepts of values, customs and life styles. These differences are an objective reality and are within the scope of crosscultural munication. Only through overing these differences can we achieve a successful intercultural munication. This paper intends to examine the barriers to intercultural munication and explore some solutions of improving intercultural munication and overing the barriers. Ⅱ Barriers to Intercultural Communication Whenever we municate with others, we all hope that the munication is a fulfilling and effective interaction. But, we often meet some obstacles unavoidably. So, we should know some barriers, which will impair our petence and effective munication. Here, 江蘇科技大學外國語學院研究生課程論文 2 this paper will focus on the thinking mode, value orientation, pragmatic transfer and munication norms. Mode People of different cultures have different cognitive models to the outside world which leads to the differences in thinking modes, especially between the east and west. The characteristics of western thinking mode are logic and analysis, while eastern mode is based on intuition. It is also the feature of the Chinese traditional cultural thinking mode. People, living in this kind of culture, pay special attention to the intuition, with an obvious generality and vagueness. With the lapse of time, the mindset is formed. Mindset can be interpreted as recognition and simplify the process of the classification of the external perception. Of course, some stereotype is correct, while others are wrong, which may directly affect intercultural munication, resulting in munication errors. In intercultural munication, people?s predictions of the behavior of the others in such a mindset are based on their own culture. This kind of mistake will not only happen on the average people, even famous people like leaders also cannot avoid. By the end of 1949, when MAO Zedong wanted to explain his different view on the issue of the modern Chinese revolution to Stalin during his visit to the Soviet Union, Stalin always changed the topic. Later, when Stalin?s men visited Mao, he lost his temper ad said some bad word, which made them feel puzzled. Actually, in China, people think the attitude of treating a subordinate officer is the attitude towards the officials. MAO zedong39。s cognition mode is very different. In their view, the reason that subordinates of a senior official are scorned is that they do poor work. If they tell their supervisor 江蘇科技大學外國語學院研究生課程論文 3 about that, they will be severely reprimanded. Because of the differences in mindsets, Mao?s efforts became meaningless. Value Orientation People learned munication skills in the process of socialization, and this kind of municative petence and values are inevitably associated together. Every culture has its unique value system. The system is to inform people what is good and what is evil。 what is to be mended and what should be suppressed. This value bees a cultural philosophy, moral standard and code of conduct for people. Every culture has different judgment standar