第四期1/5

Good morning, today's lecture on communicating with strangers is the first of the series of lectures under the general topic- intercultural communication. Every day, we communicate the way we do because we are raised in a particular culture and learn its language, rules, and norms. Different cultures and subcultures may have different rules and norms. Therefore, understanding the other's culture facilitates cross-cultural communication. All communication occurs between people who have varying degrees of familiarity with each other. The key factor in understanding intercultural communication is the concept of the stranger and the definition of strangeness .

First, strangeness and familiarity make up a continuum. We used the term "stranger" to refer to those people at the most unfamiliar end of the continuum. Thus anyone could be considered a stranger, given a sufficiently foreign context. A stranger has limited knowledge of their new environment- of its norms and values. And in turn, the locals have little knowledge of the stranger- of his or her beliefs, interests and habits. Generally speaking, communication with another involves predicting or anticipating their responses. When communicating with someone familiar we are usually confident in our anticipation, and may not even notice that we are making such predictions. In contrast , when we communicate with strangers we are more aware of the range of their possible responses, and of the uncertainty of our predictions.