Glossary of Cross-Cultural Communication Terminology | Part Three

Glossary of Cross-Cultural Communication Terminology | Part Three

  • Language — verbal, systematic, and symbolic communication
  • Laws — rules and regulations that are enforced by the state
  • Levirate marriage — an arrangement by which if a man dies childless, his brother marries the widow
  • Mana — supernatural nonpersonalized forces in animistic religions
  • Marriage — a pattern of norms and customs that define and control the relationship between a man and a woman, designating them as legitimate sex partners
  • Matrilineal descent — descent traced through the mother’s line
  • Matrilocal residence — a living arrangement in which a couple live with the wife’s family
  • Mechanism — arrangements of media designed to transmit or modify the application of power, force, or motion
  • Media — tools used to transmit matter or energy through space while preserving their essential qualities
  • Medical anthropology — the application of cultural criteria to the practice of medicine and response to medical, clinical, and educational practices
  • Moiety — the division of a tribe into two groups, based on birth
  • Monogamy — a marriage arrangement in which each individual has only one mate
  • Mores — social norms of a moral nature
  • Mutually exclusive — groups in which membership in one group precludes membership in the other group
  • Neolocal residence — an arrangement by which a couple lives apart from both partners’ families and sets up a new household
  • Noninclusive groups — groups in which joint membership is neither precluded nor requisite
  • Nonverbal communication — the process by which a message is sent and received through any one or more of the sense channels, without the use of spoken language
  • Norms — regular and accepted patterns of behavior
  • Nuclear family — a husband and wife and their immature children
  • Overlapping groups — groups in which membership in one group does not preclude membership in the other group or groups
  • Parallel cousin — the child of one’s parent’s same-sex sibling
  • Participant observation — systematic observation while participating in a society
  • Patrilineal descent — descent traced through the father’s line
  • Patrilocal residence — a living arrangement in which a couple live with the husband’s family
  • Peasant economies — subsocieties of a larger stratified society that is either preindustrial or semiindustrial
  • Phratry — a group of two or more clans held together either by kinship or mutual interest
  • Polyandry — a marriage arrangement in which a female has more than one husband
  • Polygamy — a marriage arrangement in which a person has multiple mates
  • Polygyny — a marriage arrangement in which a male has more than one wife
  • Primary group — a small, intimate, and informal group
  • Primogeniture — a system of inheritance in which the family’s wealth and position is passed on to the first-born son
  • Proximic communication — transmission of messages that utilizes space
  • Quasi-experimental design — a methodology similar to that of using an experimental design but in which the researcher cannot control all the factors
  • Rationalization — a psychological defense process by which an individual recasts a difficult situation into one that is acceptable
  • Religion — the shared beliefs and belief practices of a people. These may or may not be supernatural in character

Leave a Reply