The course aims to throw light on the processes involved in communications between people of different cultures from a pragmatic and analytical angle, and to offer tools that are appropriate for such an analysis.
Content and teaching methods
The course consists of:
ex cathedra teaching designed to introduce a communications between cultures;
laboratory work in which students explore an inter or multi cultural situation in
groups, out in the field, and in great detail.
The ex cathedra part of the course will critically address and introduce some of the main
perspectives put forward on the issue of inter cultural communications (e.g. communication
and culture, shock and cultural conflict, cultures and sub cultures, figures of otherness and
difference, the issue of multi culturalism, and analytical perspectives) in their socio
historical framework. In particular, it will examine the effect of factors such as:
" the analogue or digital cultural dominant feature;
" cultural contexts (operating as communications codes);
" cultural perceptions of space (proxemy) and of time (polychrony and monochrony);
" theoretical and practical framework for understanding
" particular social rituals (e.g. greetings, and the formulation of demands).
Teaching methods
1. Ex cathedra learning: lectures, previous reading and class discussions;
2. laboratory: support for observational and analytical work on situations in the field carried out by students.
André Patsalidès
Semester
Once a year