Editing Cross-cultural communication (section)

== Interdisciplinary orientation ==
Cross-cultural communication endeavors to bring together the relatively unrelated fields of [[cultural anthropology]] with established areas of communication. At its core, cross-cultural communication involves understanding the ways in which culturally distinct individuals communicate with each other. Its charge is to also produce some guidelines with which people from different cultures can better communicate with each other.

Cross-cultural communication requires an interdisciplinary approach. It involves literacy in fields such as [[anthropology]], [[cultural studies]], [[psychology]] and communication. The field has also moved both toward the treatment of interethnic relations, and toward the study of communication strategies used by [[co-cultural populations]], i.e., communication strategies used to deal with majority or mainstream populations.

The study of languages other than one's own can serve not only to help one understand what we as humans have in common, but also to assist in the understanding of the diversity which underlines our languages' methods of constructing and organizing knowledge. Such understanding has profound implications with respect to developing a critical awareness of social relationships. Understanding social relationships and the way other cultures work is the groundwork of successful globalization business affairs.

Language socialization can be broadly defined as "an investigation of how language both presupposes and creates anew, social relations in cultural context".<ref name="Rymes">Rymes, (2008). Language Socialization and the Linguistic Anthropology of Education. Encyclopedia of Language and Education, 2(8, Springer)</ref> It is imperative that the speaker understands the grammar and [[Teaching Prosody|prosody]] of a language, as well as how elements of language are socially situated in order to reach communicative competence. Human experience is culturally relevant, so elements of language are also culturally relevant.<ref name="Rymes" />{{rp|3}}  One must carefully consider semiotics and the evaluation of sign systems to compare cross-cultural norms of communication.<ref name="Rymes" />{{rp|4}} There are several potential problems that come with language socialization, however. Sometimes people can overgeneralize or label cultures with stereotypical and subjective characterizations. Another primary concern with documenting alternative cultural norms revolves around the fact that no social actor uses language in ways that perfectly match normative characterizations.<ref name="Rymes" />{{rp|8}} A methodology for investigating how an individual uses language and other semiotic activity to create and use new models of conduct and how this varies from the cultural norm should be incorporated into the study of language socialization.<ref name="Rymes" />{{rp|11,12}}