The Social Structures - Successful Cross-Cultural Communication
Ways of Interacting: The Social Structures
Every message is “encoded” and “decoded” around seven main areas of human experience. Let’s look at “The Social Structures” which are the ways that people interact socially.
People function with rules which govern who talks to whom, when, and how.
This element is compounded by the issues of primitive, transitional, or urban settings and how each of these affect the cultural cohesion of a given society.
For example, in Malaysia two candidates for a political office ran very different campaigns: one was Western in his approach and “took the message to the people.” The other candidate did little public campaigning and focused on influencing the cultural leaders or opinion makers. The latter candidate won.
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