Interkulturelle Kommunikation

Abstract

Intercultural Communications: Globalisation – that has to be viewed critically as an ambivalent phenomenon with all its positive and negative features – is both a cause and a context of interculturality and transculturality. The effects of globalisation are, however, always elaborated at local levels: the encounter of the global and the local is often referred to as ‘glocalisation’. This term is also indicative of the need for a new, more differentiated view of culture. In the era of cultural plurality, it is interculturality and the permanent change of various societal and cultural identities that can be regarded as normal phenomena; a process in which cultural diversity entails mutual interdependence. Accordingly, intercultural communication, in the sense of communicational conciliation along societal interpretations, is conditional upon the perception, acceptance and recognition of cultural differences, and the possible avoidance of cultural attributions and typifications. Therefore, in the light of globalisation, migration, pluralisation of styles of living, identity diffusion and risk society, intercultural competence is a key competence that implies both social and communicational competences, such as the acceptance of the perspective of others and migration-specific knowledge.