7.2 Introduction

Nowadays, in any given encounter between two people or within a group or team at work, it is highly likely that differences in areas such as collective belonging, experiences, identities, value sets, expectations and action chains will become relevant. Intercultural case scenarios from the past decades have made this clear. We have realised, for example, that speakers of Hindi and British English as one of their mother tongues are likely to have different assumptions regarding procedures at work. Because of the dynamic quality of culture and the fact that we belong to many collectives (multi-collectivity), at the end of the day, however, we can never be sure to have grasped all the reasons why a misunderstanding came about.

Previous units of this module, especially the units 2, 3 and 6, have introduced you to the various sources of misunderstanding in intercultural interaction such as differing stocks of knowledge, different allocation of meaning and disparate communication styles, which stem from culturally divergent perspectives and practices. Adding to these insights, culture reflexivity is an approach that helps to reflect not only on misunderstandings but also on other influential collective factors that might hinder smooth interaction. Some approaches to intercultural communication indicate that it is also power structures and privileges that have a considerable impact on interactions and should therefore not be included.