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More on
Intercultural Communication
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I N T E R C
U L T U R A L C O M M U N I C A T I O N A N
D D I P L O M A C Y
Diplomacy has always involved communication with other nations. However, as Dr Kamel Abu
Jaber, president of the Jordan Institute of Diplomacy and former Jordanian Minister of Foreign
Affairs points, out, “the idea of a language of diplomacy…is that it should not be culture-bound
but an attempt at transcending such boundaries to create a quasi neutral vehicle of exchange”.
("Language and
Diplomacy," Language and Diplomacy, Malta: DiploProjects, 2001)
So why has intercultural communication become such an important issue in diplomacy in recent
years? Kishan Rana points out that for several reasons, differences between nations are now
more significant than in the past:
First,
the breadth of diversities is far greater than what confronted the
earlier generations of
professionals, in a global community of some
189 UN member-states. Second, we live in an
age when diversity is
celebrated, and burnished with pride more than ever earlier. Third,
within countries, there are sub-state diversities that have gained
new impetus around the world, and this adds to the cultural
management challenge. We see this in differences, between regions,
communities and religious and ethnic groups. For instance, the same
Europe that is witness to the world’s most intensive political
unification process via the EU, now enjoys greater diversity at
subsidiary levels. Fourth, the professional diplomat is less homogenous in background and training, and his/her values are no
longer cast in the same template as could be assumed even a few
decades in the past. Further, this diplomat has dealings with a far
wider range of government officials and those outside the
government, especially the civil society representatives, academia,
and other constituencies, at home and aboard. (Cross-Cultural
Sensitivity)
Paul Sharp agrees that cultural differences are increasingly significant for diplomacy due to globalisation, but expresses some doubt that that they did not play a role in diplomacy in the past:
…the separateness of cultures has been historically presented as a
raison d'être for diplomacy as a cosmopolitan caste of privileged professionals. They served their Princes and Peace, not only by pursuing interests, but also by keeping affairs of state properly insulated from passions, morals, and cultural peculiarities of those whom they were increasingly forced to represent, the peoples of their respective countries. A shared diplomatic culture distinguished by a common language and acquired by similar patterns of socialisation, it was argued by writers on diplomacy from de Callières and de Wiquefort to Satow and Nicolson, was the key to preserving this insulation.
However, the historical record of classical diplomacy provides grounds for treating these writers' confidence in this regard with scepticism. Either the diplomats of 1914 did not share a common understanding of what was happening, or they were unable to get their respective leaders to accept that understanding. Clearly, the professionals were not as good at finessing the culture problem as their defenders thought they were simply because they could not. As libraries of philological, philosophical, and sociological inquiry in the twentieth century made clear, a direct correspondence between language and the material reality it purported to describe could not be taken for granted. The
lingua franca of the day, be it Latin, French or English, was steeped in its own peculiarities of understanding and ways of seeing the world, and even professionals who acquired fluency in it did so with their habits of thought and understanding firmly structured by their own cultures mediated by their own languages.
If one adds to this the great irony of globalisation as far as diplomacy is concerned, namely that it is bringing together more and more people steeped in their own cultures and languages (politicians, business people, advocates and lobbyists for public transnational causes, and individuals), one begins to sense the scale of the contemporary problems posed to diplomacy by questions of language and culture.
…Nevertheless, faith (or so it must seem at times) leads them to believe that some shared understanding is, in principle, always attainable for if it were not, there would be no point in having diplomats trying to find what it was. ("Talking
to Americans: Problems of Language and Diplomacy," Language
and Diplomacy, Malta: DiploProjects, 2001)
Raymond Cohen discusses the effect of cultural differences on the language of negotiation, particularly in a Middle Eastern context:
By definition, negotiation is an exercise in language and communication, an attempt to create shared understanding where previously there have been contested understandings. When negotiation takes place across languages and cultures the scope for misunderstanding increases. So much of negotiation involves arguments about words and concepts that it cannot be assumed that language is secondary and all that "really" counts is the "objective" issues at stake. Can one ever speak of purely objective issues? When those issues include emotive, intangible concepts such as "honor", "standing", "national identity", "security", and "justice" can we really take it for granted that the parties understand each other perfectly? And if not, what can be done to overcome language barriers?
The case for the importance of language and culture rests on the view that semantic distinctions reflect different interpretations of reality and normative modes of behavior. Words and their translations are not just interchangeable labels denoting some given, immutable feature of the world but keys opening the door onto different configurations of the world. A stone is an object that speakers of all languages can recognize and respond to at a non-linguistic level. They can kick it, throw it in a pond, or use it to crack a nut. The moment language is used and the object is named, culture enters the picture. As opposed to the thing itself, the word "stone" or its equivalents is a cultural notion. As such it is steeped in the culturally-grounded meanings of the given language community in the light of its history, religion, customs, and environment. The word is therefore a shorthand symbol capable of evoking a unique range of specialized references, uses, and associations. Words are
polysemic, that is, they have multiple clusters of meaning and usage. Across languages these spreads of meaning occupy different
semantic fields, though they may well coincide and overlap in certain places. Speakers of Hebrew and English may talk of "peace", using the word in appropriate contexts, and referring to the same legal precedents. But what they mean by peace are subtly different phenomena. "Peace" refers in English to a relationship established by treaty between states concluding war, an ideal prophetic vision of harmony, and tranquility.
Shalom shares in the Biblical vision of universal accord but lacks the legal features that "peace" acquired in the European state system from centuries of diplomatic practice. Moreover, deriving from an ancient Semitic root referring to wholeness or completeness,
shalom importantly connotes "health, welfare, greetings, and safety". Hence the common Israeli army bulletin broadcast after a military operation: "All our planes returned
b'shalom to base." Here b'shalom means "safe and sound", not "in
peace".
("Language and
Negotiation: A Middle East Lexicon," Language and
Diplomacy, Malta: DiploProjects, 2001)
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