【正文】 t our isolated minds and unique experiences keep us apart. Cultural, as well as individual differences keep us apart. Our resolutions for each issue have their roots deep in culture. A successful intercultural municator appreciates similarities and accepts differences.? Communication is contextual: message change always takes place in a specific location, not a vacuum.? Understanding characteristics of munication with another human being. We can only infer what another is experiencing, and we do this by using the symbols that we and other people have produced.? Communication is also a way we define our world. We give meaning to events and people, for example, so that we can function in various groups and be members of our society.? Communication is reflective: we can watch ourselves and evaluate how we are municating while we are doing it.? The brain is an open system: we can learn from each encounter in which we find ourselves.? Our municative behavior has consequences.?People are alike and different. We all face many of the same frustration resulting from our physical isolation from each other. Culture? We define culture as the deposit of knowledge, experience, beliefs, values, actions, attitudes, meanings, hierarchies(等級), religion, notions of time ,roles, spatial relations, concepts of the universe, and artifacts acquired by a group of people in the course of generations through individual and group striving.Culture is learned ,acted out ,transmitted , and preserved through munication. The issue of intentionality and unintentionality (one of the reason difficult to locate a single definition of munication).? Culture is everything and everywhere. Culture governs and defines the conditions and circumstances under which various messages may or may not be sent ,noticed or interpreted.All those who share a mon culture can be expected to behave correctly, automatically, and predictably. Hence, culture shields people from the unknown by offering them a blueprint for all of life’s activities. ? The world is a confusing place until we can make some sense of it, so the basic function of culture is to explain the world to each new member of the culture. By telling us what to expect, culture reduces confusion and helps us predict the future. ? Seven characteristics of culture that most directly affect munication are that it is (1) learned, (2) transmitted from generation to generation, (3) based on symbols, (4) dynamic, (5) integrated, (6) ethnocentric, and (7)adaptive. Intercultural munication? Intercultural munication is a munication between people whose cultural perceptions and symbol system are distinct enough to alter the munication event.? Interracial munication occurs when source and receiver are from different races.? Interethnic munication refers situations in the parties are of the same race but of different ethnic origins.? Intracultural munication is a munication between members of the same culture, including racial, ethnic, and other cocultures.Elements of Intercultural munication? One element of Intercultural munication is perception, “the process by which an individual selects, evaluates, and organizes stimuli from the external world.”Cultural perceptions are based on beliefs, values, and attitude systems.? Another intercultural element is verbal processes: how we talk to each other and think.? Nonverbal verbal processes, the third element, involve the use of actions to municate. The meanings of these actions shift from culture to culture.? The context of the munication events is influenced by culture.ActivitiesIn small groups, find out as much as you can about the history of Chinese culture. Try to isolate examples of how our cultural values have been determined by historical events.DiscussionGive additional examples, from recent history, of cultures that have changed as a result of invention, diffusion, and calamity.教學時數(shù)：2學時 Part Two The Influence of CultureChapter Three: Cultural Diversity in Perception: Alternative Views of Reality教學要點：Understanding perception? Although the physical process of perception is almost the same in everyone, culture influences the final step of interpretation and evaluation.Culture and perception? Culturally determined beliefs are the main influence on how we behave and relate to our environment.? Beliefs are our convictions in the truth of something—with or without proof.? Values are enduring attitudes about the preferability of one belief over another.? Dominant American cultural patterns include individualism, equality, materialism, science and technology, progress and change, work and leisure, and petition.? Cultures difer in their attitudes towards (1) individualism and collectivism, (2) uncertainty avoidance, (3) power distance, (4) masculinity and femininity, (5) human nature, (6) the perception of nature, (7) time, (8) activity, (9) relationships, (10) context, (11) formality and informality, and (12) assertiveness and interpersonal harmony.ActivitiesAsk your foreign teachers or foreign friends for English translations of sayings and proverbs from his or her culture that reflect important values in that culture. Alternative, you show the sayings and proverbs in this chapter to them and see if he or she has corresponding sayings. Discusion ideasDoes cultural perceptions of color have particular associations in American culture? 教學時數(shù)：2學時Chapter Four The Deep Structure of Culture: Roots of reality教學要點：? World view is a culture’s orientation toward God, humanity, nature, the universe, life, death, sickness, and other philosophical issues concerning existence. Although world view is municated in a variety of ways, religion is the predominant element of culture that gives us our world view.? The family, because it is the child’s first introduction to culture, influences both perception and munication.?History, by