LING90026 : Transcultural Communication At Work

The transcultural communication is defined as communication with other people using second or third language that belong to different cultural and linguistic background. In this globalization environment, the use of transcultural communication has been increased because it entails interaction with the people belong to different cultural background and speak different language. The transcultural communication is a shared language that needs strong intercultural awareness and skills to understand the messages of others and know the new cultural traditions and beliefs (Friginal & Leymarie, 2020). In this report, a critical understanding of transcultural communication at work will be discussed in order to know its importance in the current business world.

Critical Understanding of Transcultural Communication at Work:

Almost all multinational organizations in the world prefer to select candidates that belong to different cultural background because of contemporary social spaces in international working environment. A diverse working culture in the global organizations is connected with different communities in which highly multilingual and multicultural employees can be determined because of internationally linked nature of workplaces (Martinez & Cortez, 2012). In this scenario, the understanding of transcultural communication skills at work is important in both the private and public sectors. In transcultural communication, the communicators use a second or third language to share information and understand each other at the workplace.

According to the Franzenburg (2020), transcultural communication is integrated with diverse perspectives of communication between cultures in which creative and inclusive approaches can be seen in communicating with different cultural background people. In transcultural communication, the dialogue across the culture needs communication development and language skills to understand the language of other background people at the workplace (Franzenburg, 2020). In the words of Hein et al. (2021), without strong intercultural awareness and skills in transcultural communication, a shared language cannot be possible that creates a negative environment at work and employees face difficulties to understand others language.

Transcultural communication needs verbal skills in which it is important to understand how and when to use speech and silence. At the same time, a non-verbal skill is also important like verbal skills as how to gaze and use gesture while speaking with other cultural background people. It is also stated by Martinez & Cortez (2012), transcultural communication at work is a tool to achieve a successful transcultural encounters effectively. In professional settings of the international organizations, the transcultural communication is mandatory to implement in order to adopt the nature of foreign culture and make the working environment of the company progressive and productive.

In the thought of Friginal & Leymarie (2020), transcultural communication is the need of time in diverse workplace of an organization in which different activities and conversations are conducted. In most of the situations, staff of different background culture and language does not understand the work culture in a foreign country. At this stage, it is the responsibility of the organizations to encourage staff to learn transcultural language and use at the workplace for better understanding and efficiency in working activities between them (Friginal & Leymarie, 2020). The international organizations are now focusing to develop transcultural communication working environment to understand the nature and working style of the employees and improving their productivity.

Furthermore, transcultural communication at work is effective to make better conversation with employees at any time and mutual adaptation to each other’s behaviors appropriately and flexibly (Friginal & Leymarie, 2020). At this stage, people with diversified cultural backgrounds within an organization adapt each other’s behavior in a culture-sensitive manner and convey a respect towards each other’s cultural frame on the priority basis. Therefore, the goals of a transcultural communication within an organization stimulate communications effectively among its participants instead of their various cultural backgrounds of the employees (Hein et al., 2021). In transcultural communication environment of the organization, employees have opportunity to participate in decision making and feel free to express opinions and ideas for effective results or outcomes in this process.

The transcultural communication at work needs to consider some basic elements because of cross cultural condition of working environment. Employees during work can overcome hurdles of cross cultural language and other factors through awareness, preparation and understanding of language. This is the easiest way at the workplace to send and receives information related to the job because of overcoming hurdles and avoiding misunderstandings in cross-cultural communication (Franzenburg, 2020). The humor and openness of employees are also necessary to understand the transcultural communication at work and respect the differences with avoiding ambiguity.

Moreover, a shared sense of the conversation culture between employees at work is beneficial to the international organizations where diversity is the part of working environment both internal and external business activities. At this stage, a wide range of nationalities and cultures, as well as age groups of the people within an organization are accomplished with the help of transcultural communication effectively (Franzenburg, 2020). There is important value of the cross culture working conditions and nationalities for a multinational company to expand the business and growth in the competitive marketplace. Therefore, the use of transcultural communication at work is also required to help the different cultural and nationalities’ background people in the company.

In the virtual working environment of a company, there are challenges to manage people or participants. However, the use of technology to translate the languages is beneficial to understand the views of different background people. However, in virtual meeting and the use of technology to understand the language of the other participants is not easy and misunderstanding is possible (Hein et al., 2021). This situation is well managed by the multinational organizations through adopting transcltuaral communication by adopting a suitable language and providing proper training to increasing learning of the employees.

There are effective strategies to the multinational organizations to adopt and increase the value of transcultural communication in conversation between employees and management as well as customers of the organization (Baker, 2021). The transcultural communication skill improvement of the employees is possible in the current business world by using the Internet and computer-assisted language learning (CALL) tools. The organizations can provide an environment of learning through cross-cultural discourse analysis on the priority basis (Martinez & Cortez, 2012). In order to learn and understand the transcultural communication, the employees can use digital recording, qualitative research software in everyday language used in multilingual communities.

At this stage, increasing importance of transcultural communication at work for a multinational organization, the valuable contributions of digital technologies can help to overcome the complexity and diversity of contemporary social spaces of the world (Baker, 2021). Apart from this, the multilingual and multicultural settings at the workplace in different countries can be possible through appropriate identification of transcultural communication and its practices on the regular basis during work.

Conclusion:

After critical analysis of the transcultural communication at work, it can be stated that is a shared language that needs strong intercultural awareness and skills to understand the messages of others and know the new cultural traditions and beliefs. A diverse working culture of the multinational organizations is connected with different communities in which highly multilingual and multicultural employees can use transcultural communication to manage their work effectively and efficiently. Therefore, transcultural communication at work is effective to make better conversation with employees at any time and mutual adaptation to each other’s behaviors appropriately and flexibly. At the same time, transcultural communication is the easiest way at the workplace to send and receives information related to the job because of overcoming hurdles and avoiding misunderstandings in cross-cultural communication.

References

Baker, W. (2021). Transcultural Communication: what it is and why we are all doing it. retrieved from: https://www.routledge.com/blog/article/transcultural-communication-what-it-is-and-why-we-are-all-doing-it

Franzenburg, G. (2020). Transforming Paradigms of Sustainable Transcultural Adult Education. Discourse and Communication for Sustainable Education, 11(1), 16-25.

Friginal, E. & Leymarie, C.D. (2020). Cross-cultural communication. USA: Routledge.

Hein, R., Steinbock, J., ………….., Wienrich, C. (2021). Development of the InteractionSuitcase in virtual reality to support inter- and transcultural learning processes in English as Foreign Language education. retrieved from: https://dl.gi.de/bitstream/handle/20.500.12116/36994/DELFI_2021_91-96.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

Martinez & Cortez, D. (2012). Expanding Linguistic Repertoires: An Ethnography of Black and Latina/o Youth Transcultural Communication In Urban English Language Arts Classrooms. Retrieved from: https://escholarship.org/content/qt1cr370ps/qt1cr370ps.pdf