Communication Problems of Intercultural Relationship

Individuals learn the norms and rules of appropriate and inappropriate interpersonal communication and behaviour within their culture. Our entire repertory of communicative behaviors is dependent largely on the culture in which we have been raised. As Ballard-Reisch and Weigel state, couples negotiate the roles, power, and climate within their marriages through communication (Ballard-Reisch 2003:262). Their research has shown that constructive, positive communication, empathy and mutual understanding is associated with marital satisfaction and marital commitment.

The most obvious difficulty in communication between partners of different cultures is that they speak different native languages and the common language between them is limited or even nonexistent. The specific language a person speaks is cultural to a great deal. In some ways, the language itself is a part of the culture. The language issues of the Russian and the English languages in comparison are found mainly on the syntactic level, but they are also in the field of word formation, the vocabulary and semantics. Linguistic misunderstandings make for marital misunderstandings. The spouse with better linguistic skills has more control over the couple’s conversations and their relations with the outside world. It is important that a partner feels responsible for speaking a language correctly. In addition to limitations in verbal communication, another barrier of different cultures involves non-verbal communication. Communication experts estimate that 90 per cent or more of all communication is conveyed by means other than language, in culture’s nonverbal messages (Hall 1985:xiv). Matsumoto defines non-verbal behaviour as all that what occurs during communication other than words (Matsumoto 1996:303). Commonly non-verbal behaviour can be separated into vocal and non-vocal aspects of behaviour. According to Dickson, vocal communication incorporates all of the components of speech: not only the actual words used (verbal communication) but features of their delivery (the vocal element of non-verbal communication). These features encompass, for example, speech rate, volume, voice quality. Non-vocal communication relates to those methods of giving information which do not depend on vocal apparatus and includes, for example, facial expressions, posture, gestures and other body movements (Dickson 2000:161).