Communication Among Cultures and Genders

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Communication among Cultures and Genders Communication is a tool with which we exercise our influence on others, bring out changes in our and others’ attitudes, motivate the people around us and establish and maintain relationships with them. Communication makes a major part of our active life and is a social activity. This social activity is pursued verbally through speech, reading and writing or non-verbally through body language. Communication skill is not language specific. It is not as though speakers of a particular language have refined communication skills whereas; the speakers of some other language have unrefined communication skills. But communication skill is related to the culture of the group to which the individual belongs. All messages that we send or receive are processed by a mental-filter. This mental-filter or the mindset is forged by our family, friends, neighborhood, the school and society. In India, even caste and community contribute to the making of this mental-filter. This mental-filter or mindset makes us understand each other better or even leads to misunderstanding. Unless, we understand the attitude, the mindset and background of the person with whom we interact, our communication skill would be imperfect and ineffective. General Objectives of Communication Why do we communicate at all? In general terms they are as follows: 1. We communicate to persuade: It means that we want someone to do something and this desire of ours is communicated. The mother patting the child to stop crying, the advertiser displaying a model in a new T-Shirt and the politician haranguing (urging) his audience to vote for him are all having the same objective of persuading, while communicating it differently. 2. We communicate in order to give or provide information: The science teacher demonstrating an experiment, the bank announcing a reduction

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