TRIVEDI HEZAL ASSIGNMENT ( BATCH 2015-17) : November 2016

Culture is the characteristics of a particular group of people, defined by a everything from language, religion, cuisine, social habits, music and art. Today, in the United States as in other countries populated largely by immigrants, the culture is influenced by the many group of people that now make up the country.

Types of cultural communication:

1) Cross cultural communication

2) International communication

3) Multicultural communication

4) Intercultural communication

Origins of the Intercultural communication :

Intercultural communication stretches back into antiquity. It all began when people from different cultures started to meet together and communicate with each other. First, it was promoted by missionaries, merchants or diplomats. As an academic field of study and research it has been popular since 1950s. The term “Intercultural communication” was first used when the American anthropologist Edward T. Hall, Ruth and John Useem began to explore how people from different cultures can successfully communicate. During the past decades the growth of globalization, immigration and international tourism has involved large number of people in Intercultural communication. This has led to an increased desire and need for knowledge regarding how people from different cultures, beliefs and religions come together to work and communication with each other.

What is Intercultural communication:

Intercultural communication occurs when people from two or more cultures interact. Intercultural communication refers to the effective communication between people / workers / client of different cultural background. Intercultural communication is a symbolic, interpretive, transactional and contextual process in which people from different culture create and shared meaning. It also includes managing thought patterns and non verbal communication. Intercultural communication transpires everyday and pretty much everywhere : like in work, school, and other places people may have to interact. Intercultural communication is no longer an option, but a necessity.

Example for cultural differences:

Arabic language is written from right to left and almost all other languages are written from left to right. And another example is that in America, people shake hands, and even hug each other. But in India we just join hands to say Namaskar.

Need for intercultural communication:

§ Success of any international business

§ Allows workers from different cultures to work together as a group.

§ Worldwide marketing campaign.

§ An increase in international business.

Two trends for Intercultural communication:

1) Globalization ( term)

2) Multicultural workforce ( phrase)

Firstly, The term “Globalization” is widely used in various sources of literature. Globalization refers to the reduction and removal of barriers between national borders in order to facilitate the flow of goods, capital, services and labour

Secondly, The phrase “Multicultural Workforse” refers to the changing age, gender, ethnicity, physical ability, and race of employees across all types and places of work.

Do’s of intercultural communication:

· Avoid assumptions, jokes which are misunderstood.

· Use symbols, diagrams and pictures.

· Avoid using slang and idioms, choosing words that will convey only the most specific denotative meaning.

· Investigate their culture’s perception, take cultural and local differences into account.

· Use understandable language and find out what cultural factors.

Don’ts of Intercultural communication:

· Using the same approach world – wide.

· Considering traditional knowledge and practices as ‘Backward’.

· Letting cultural differences become a source of conflict that hinder the process or work.

· Fail to ignore culturally – dependent enabling and counteracting forces.

· Fail to take language barriers into account.

Ex: North American view direct eye contact as a sign of honesty and the other side Asians view direct as a form of disrespect.

In America and most of Europe the thumbs up sign means that something is good, or that you approve. This sign is considered rude in many Asian and Islamic countries.

The importance of Intercultural communication:

The world today is characterized by an ever growing number of contacts resulting in communication between people with different linguistic and cultural backgrounds.

The theories developed by the researchers and academics can and have been applied to many field such as business, management, marketing, advertising and website design. Intercultural communication developing a positive attitude towards otherness and increased international, national, and local commerce. As business become more and more international, many companies need to know how best to structure their companies manage staff and communicate with customers. Intercultural communication gives them an insight into the areas they need to address or understand. Intercultural communication theories are now also used within the education, health care and other public services due to growing multicultural populations.

Effective intercultural communication helps to eliminate communication obstacles like language, barriers, and stereotypes from international business. Effective global communication can be achieved through learning about other cultures and implementing communication strategies such as reflective listening and being open – minded.

Intercultural communication competence:

Ability to interact with the people of different cultures to bring about successful outcome. A successful outcome is the result of intercultural interaction which is acceptable to all parties involved. Therefore, intercultural communication competence presupposes some linguistic competence, and intercultural awareness and sensitivity are its minimum prerequisites.

Skills required : - Cognitive – ability to recognize cultural differences.

Two types of communication:

1) Verbal : - refers to use of language

2) Non – verbal: - refers to the use of gestures, facial expressions, and the other body movements.

A language used as a medium of communication by people whose native languages are different. First, Verbal communication is direct communication and verbal communication is when the meaning of the message is communicated mainly via words.

Secondly, nonverbal communication is indirect communication and Non – verbal communication consists only of nonverbal language using the body, including paralanguage. And nonverbal communication varies so much and it carries so much meaning. So, it needs close attention to decode and get a message across effectively. Eye contact people from all cultures carry their cultural attitude toward eye contact with them.

EX: - United states v/s Japan

Culture and language :

Their is very close relationship between culture and language. Culture plays an immeasurable role in language use because it encompasses the way in language is structured and used. Cultures provide people with ways of thinking and interpreting thus, the same words can mean different things to people from different cultures. And there are 3 function of intercultural language is that,

1) Foreign language roles

2) Language for internal communication

3) Language for external communication

Language is a means of human communication, the language is basically made up of words or terminology and stank is. Whereas stank is a way to arrange the words / terms in the word to express the meaning or meaningful.

Foreign language usage inside the company is a form of internal communication that employees need to interact between themselves and with co – workers, and employers. It is important to use the correct grammar, syntax and spelling in order to promote understanding and to maintain the image of the organization.

Foreign language usage outside the company is a form of external communication (Grosse, 2004), such as, when the sales manager deals with the salespeople. They use foreign language as a means of communication for the products or services of the organization, to provide information and to persuade customers to purchase products or services.

Body language & Silent language:

Body language is a form of Non – verbal communication, which consist of body posture, gestures, facial expressions and eyes movement. Body language may provide clues to the attitude or state of mind of a person. Silent or indirect communication doesn’t always show disinterest, but could be a sign for respect.

Intercultural communication in terms of Business Action:

The term “Intercultural communication” is often used to refer to the wide range of communication issue that inevitably arise within an organization of individuals from a variety of religious, social, and educational backgrounds. Each of these individuals brings a unique set of experiences and value to the workplace, many of which can be traced to the culture in which they grew up and now operate. Business that able to facilitate effective communication – both written and verbal – between the members of these various cultured groups will be far better equipped to succeed than will those allow conflicts that arise from internal cultural differences to fester and harden. The failure to address and culturally based conflicts and tensions will inevitably show up in the form of diminished performance and decreased productivity.

High – context & Low – context:

“Communication varies according to its degree of field dependence, and that it can be classified into two general categories = High – context and Low – context”

- Le Baron, 2003

“High – context and Low – context communication refers to the degree to which speakers on factors other than explicit speech to convey their message”

- Hall, 1971

High - context: Primary purpose of communication is to form and develop relationship; contextual information is needed.

Low – context : Primary purpose of communication is the exchange of information, facts and opinions.

Hall’s framework:

High – context culture

1) Implicit manner

2) High commitment to long term relationship

3) Merge

4) Not kept separate

5) Relaxed about time

Low – context culture

1) Explicit manner

2) Focused on requirements

3) Avoid merging of issues

4) Precise

5) Punctuality

High – context cultures, verbal messages have little meaning without the surrounding context, which includes the overall relationship between all the people engaged in communication.

Low – context cultures exclude many of those stimuli and focus more intensely on the object communication event. The message itself means everything.

- McDowell, 2003

Cross – cultural communication & Marketing :

Cross - cultural communication means implies a comparison of and contrast between particular aspects of communication between cultures.

“ It’s no cultures that meet, but human individuals who are influenced by a complicated interplay of personal, situational and of course, cultural factors. Therefore a particular difficulty with cultural overlap situations resides in precisely the structural uncertainly as to what the factor “Culture” actually means. “ (2005 : 91 -92)”

Intercultural/ cross cultural communication sharing of information different levels of awareness control between people with different backgrounds, where different cultural backgrounds include both national cultural difference and differences which are connected with participation in the different activities that exist within a national unit.

Cross – cultural marketing can be seen as the strategic process of marketing among customers whose culture differs from that the marketers’ own culture. Consumption research is an essential precondition for appropriate product design. All market behaviours are culture – bound, so the marketers need to understand the culture and match marketing mix with consumer preferences, purchasing behaviour and product – used patterns in a potential market.

CONCLUSION:

Diversity is a challenge as well as an opportunity which can have positive as well as negative influence. Acknowledging, understanding, accepting, valuing and celebrating differences among people to create equal employment opportunities. To send the right message, to the person at the right time is the key of intercultural communication of marketing. Most of us are unaware that we are communicating in many different ways even when not speaking. So, culture plays an important part in communication in that it tells us how to manipulate time in order to communication different message. And communication shapes culture and culture shapes communication.

Works Cited:

1. http://www.slideshare.net

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intercultural_communication

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Black skin white mask : A general view

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Name: Trivedi Hezal K.

Roll No: 39

PG Reg. No. PG15101040

M.A. – English Regular, Semester-3

Year: 2016

Paper No. 11: The Post-Colonial Literature

Unit-1: Black Skin, White Mask: Frantz Fanon (1952)

Assignments Topic- Black Skin, White Mask: A general view

Submitted to: S.B. Gardi Department of English

Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University

(Gujarat – India)

Introduction of the writer:

“Colonialism is not satisfied merely holding a people in it’s grip and emptying the natives brains of all from and content. By a kind of perverted logic it turns to the past of the oppressed people and distorts disfigures and destroys it”

- Frantz Fanon

Frantz Omar Fanon was born in 20^th July, 1925 at Martinique (French colonial empire). He was Afro – Caribbean psychiatrist, philosopher, revolutionary and the French writer whose works are influential in the field of post – colonial studies and Marxism. Fanon is best known for the classic on decolonization. Although Fanon wrote Black Skin, White Mask while still in France, most of his work was written in North Africa.

HIS CONTRIBUTION IN LITERATURE AND CRITICISM ARE,-

1) Black skin white mask - 1952

2) A dying colonialism - 1959

3) Wretched of the earth - 1961

4) Towards the African revolution – 1964

INTRODUCTION OF “BLACK SKIN WHITE MASK”:-

The story “Black skin white mask” is from is from Frantz Fanon’s “Black skin white mask” Fanon analysis how the black person feel in a white world they lose the originality of their native culture and embrace imperial culture. Marechera’s story is about the controversy between two students who are caught between local and imperial cultures.

ABOUT THE BOOK BLACK SKIN WHITE MASK:

“Black Skin White Mask” is a book about the mindset of psychology of racism. The book is his doctoral thesis, Fanon wrote to get his degree in psychiatry. This book is worth reading since Fanon’s understanding of White French racism in early 1950 and it can also helps to understand White American racism in the 2010s.

Black skin white mask is a study of the psychology of racism and dehumanization inherent to colonial domination. Fanon describes that Black people experience in the white world. Fanon talks about, self – perception of the Black subject who was has lost his native cultural origin, and embraced the culture of the mother country. He also talks about the inferiority complex in the mind of the Black subject.

The book looks at what goes through the minds of blacks and whites under the condition of white rule and the strange effects of that in black people. The black man trapped in his blackness, the white man in his whiteness, both trapped into their mutual and aggressive narcissism.

“There are too many idiots in this world. And having said it, I have the burden of proving it”

- Fanon, Black skin, White masks.

PSYCHOLOGY OF RACISM:

Intended for French psychiatrists

Main points,

· Black woman look down on own race, wish to be white

· Black men wish to be white, or at least prove themselves equal to white men

· Always black, never human

· White people see black people as bodies, so they appear mindless, sexual human beings

· We’ll be talking about the cultural and family identity

POST- COLONIALISM IN BLACK SKIN, WHITE MASKS:

Black skin, white mask is a postcolonial theory. Postcolonial theory is a generalized term used to describe the variety of events that took place in the aftermath of decolonization through various nations. The book looks at what goes through the minds of blacks and whites under the condition of white rule and the strange effects that has, especially on black people. His book Black skin, white masks explore the effects upon colonialism.

Black skin white mask, Fanon argued that colonialism dehumanized the native. This process was through that the black man can see himself only as the black (mirror) image of the white man. The white man is the master, and represents an object that is to be feared and desired. The black therefore tries to be more like the white man / master. He puts on ‘White mask’.

Thus, the reflection of post colonialism is shown through the many points of racism. The white man portraits as superior class and have the power of rule over the other country and the society. On the other sides the black man or the people always live under the rule of white man. Even he doesn’t have any power to rule over the other people.

“ Not only must the black man be black in relation to the White man...the Blacks have had to deal with two systems of reference...their customs were abolished because they were in contradiction with a new system that imposed its own.” (90)

BLACK SKIN, WHITE MASK DIVIDED INTO 8 CHAPTER :

1. The Negro and Language ;-

In the first chapter, “The Black Man and language”, Fanon shows that how language can present colonialism, how it can show mindset of black and white people. He says,“The Negro will become whiter-become more human-as he masters the white man’s language”

He explains it with example that, in Martinique, where Fanon grew, people communicate with dialect Creole. But people saw French better than Creole. They started feeling shame with their dialect. It is not because of scholarly opinion but because of being under French rule. He noticed that people came back educated from France, they act as if they no longer knew Creole and speak perfect French. He noticed that, it is not because they want to be white (because French is white’s language) or they think that white people are better or something but to prove they are equal.

As Fanon believes that, ‘To speak a language is appropriate its world and culture’. As language is also part of culture, they (blacks), through learning of their language, try to become culturally whiter.

2. The Woman of Colour and the White Man :-

The effect of white people also touched to the society. Black Woman also wished the White Skin which White woman has. So they wanted to be as white as White woman Here one can find that how desire of “WHITENESS’ is more in the Black woman. Because of that many ‘FAIRNESS CREAM’ and their industries grow faster and faster. As reader can understand that how Whiteness is showed as something goodness and Blackness is showed something like a dark side. Because of getting White Skin the colonized women look down on their own. Race and deep down want to be white. Here, an individual can give an example from literary work that how Black women wished to have White Skin of Bluest Eye just like White people have.

“The Bluest Eye” by ‘Toni Morrison’ ‘we find a black girl Pecola Breedlove desires to have the blue eyes of white men and woman.

1. The Man of Colour and the White Woman :-

The third chapter “The man of colour and the White woman” is about black man’s psychology after being colonized by whites. Fanon argues that, the nature of the relationship is also rooted in the latent desire to become white.

Every black man and mulatto have only one thought to be like white to gratify their appetite for white woman, to marry white woman. They started denying their culture and woman and marry white girl, less for love than satisfying their ego and inferiority.

Fanon explains this desire with example of Jean Venuese, hero of a novel “Un home pareil aux autres” by Rene Maran. He is black, but like other Europeans, he falls in love with white woman. He wants to separate himself from his race and wants to marry white… Fanon, very effectively, presents hidden desire of black man to marry white woman.

“The history of the colonial negro is the history of this strife this longing to attain self – conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. He does not wish to Africanize America, for America or Europe has too much to teach the world and Africa. He wouldn’t bleach his negro blood in a flood of white Europeanism, for he knows that negro blood has a message for the world. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both Negro and an European without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of opportunity closed roughly in his face.”

2. The So-called Dependency Complex of the colonized peoples

Here, the writer argues against Fanon’s view that people of colour have a deep desire for white rule, that those who oppose it to do not have a secure sense of self that they have a chip on their shoulder. From this chapter I came to understand that the stereotypes of Happy Darkies, Uppity Negroes and White Saviours all come from the need of white people to feel that their power in society is good and not racist.

3. The fact of Blackness (Fanon: The Lived Experience of the Black Man)

“There is a fact: White men consider themselves superior to black men. There another fact that black men want to prove to white men, at all costs, the richness of their thought, the equal value of their intellect.”

Fanon proposes that “blackness" is not a self-created identity, but a construct that is placed upon black people by the white man. Therefore the black man has no true sense of himself or his true identity because he never had a chance to create one for himself. As black people, there is responsibility to carry on the traditions and cultures of the race, only for those identifiable characteristics to be ignored and replaced by the negative connotations like, tom – toms, cannibalism, racial defects, etc. created by the white man. Regardless of what the Black man or woman does in regards to the advancement of society as a WHOLE, “Black or Negro” will always be in the pretext. Despite the suffering of Jews although somewhat similar to the suffering of Blacks,

“The Jew can be unknown in his jewishness”

4. The Negro (The Black Man) and Psychopathology:

Here writer ask question to reader that, Why should people fear black? Question asked here. Part it has to do with white men’s repressed homosexuality and their strange hang-ups about black men’s penises. More generally, black men are viewed as a body, which makes them seem like mindless, violent sexual, animal beings. Add to that all the bad meanings that the word “black” had even before Europeans set foot in black Africa.

5. The Negro and Recognition:-

Fanon describes his last point in chapter seven “The black man and recognition”. In this chapter Fanon presents mentality of black people of putting their own people down to feel good.

He writes about his people of Martinique, with putting down others, they can feel better about themselves. The reason of their mentality is an inferiority complex. The fault is not of black people but it comes from white rule, which forces blacks to live in a world where their human worth is questioned. Blacks are not in a position to put down white people, so they prove their worth by putting down each other. Like mulatto girl does not want to marry with black or mulattoes feel superior and prove blacks inferior.

6. Way of conclusion:

The last chapter of this book “By way of conclusion” is, as the title suggests, a conclusion. In this chapter he talks about some solution which can try to remove this inequality and injustice between blacks and whites.

This final chapter discusses the escaping the prison of one’s past and one’s race

“The negro is not: Any more than the White Man”. In Fanon’s words, his writing

“Exposes an utterly naked declivity where an authentic upheaval can be born”

In these eight chapters, Fanon talks about psychology of white colonizers and black people’s desire to be like white men. He talks about issue of language, marriage between white and black and psychology behind it. White mindset of ruling, black’s inequality and struggle for human existence. He explains his all the arguments of psychology with real examples of his surroundings.

To sum up

“O my body makes of me always a man who questions”

- Frantz Fanon

In this book Fanon deal with social and political problems. Fanon argue that colonialism dehumanized the native. Fanon analyzes the black psyche in the midst of a white dominated culture. Fanon, in the whole book, tries to be analytical without attachment. He talks about black men’s desire to be white with psychological reasons. He never become insulting for blacks and also doesn’t present hatred for white people.

Works Cited:

1. http://hiteshparmar1234.blogspot.in/2014/10/paper-no-11-critique-on-black-skin.html

2. http://abagond.wordpress.com/2011/08/16/frantz-fanon-black-skin-white-masks/

3. http://weblog.liberatormagazine.com/2009/11/finger-on-page-frantz-fanons-black-skin.html#.VDv-D_nKtaA

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