The course content addresses the following topics:
- The challenges of intercultural communication
- Principles of communication
- Basic functions of culture
- Language use in multilingual contexts
- Language variation and dialects; dealing with different sociolects
- Using figurative language in specific contexts
- Language and culture: co-cultures and language use
- Cultural diversity in perception
- Cultural patterns, beliefs, and values: the politeness principle
- Value dimensions and value orientations
- Collective vs individual cultures; the importance of in-groups
- Cross-cultural ideas about power differentials
- Patterns of thought: verbal processes
- Non-verbal communication: The cultural implications of action, space, time, and silence
- Functions: complementing/substituting/regulating verbal communication
- Organisational communication
- The concept of organisational culture; institutional interaction
- Leadership and organisational communication
- Mediating between cultures
- Defining intercultural competence: ethics and the validity of difference
- Potential problems (stereotyping, ethnocentricism, uncertainty reduction)
- Managing intercultural conflict
- Cultural translation: methods and strategies
- Identifying cultural problems and strategies for solving cultural problems (at word level, at sentence/utterance level)