Brigham Young University Hawaii Communication 110

Fall Semester 2005 (21) Chad Compton

Phone: 293-3627 Email: Comptonc@BYUH.Edu

Office Hours

9-10 MWF

9-10 T,Th

Readings

Readings will come from three sources.

1. Online articles (Blackboard)

2. Articles handed out in class

Course Web Location

The web location for Communication 110 can be found at blackboard.byu.edu. Your ID is your Net ID and your password is the same that you use to register for classes. Once you are in, click on the course tab toward the top of the page and you should see all the courses you have at BYUH that are using the web. Become familiar with the Comm 110 site by clicking all of the links on the left side of the page. Of particular note you will find the readings in the “Documents” section and a copy of the syllabus in the “Course Information” section.

Course Description

This course is an introduction to opportunities, problems and issues of intercultural communication. At BYUH and throughout the world, human communication is enriched and challenging as people from different cultures encounter each other with greater frequency and duration. Because of advances in computer technology, transportation, and communication, people as never before are becoming aware of "others" and developing and sustaining intercultural relationships.

On this campus intercultural communication plays a central role in our spiritual, social, academic lives. Intercultural interactions are an integral part of life as a member of the Laie community. Our primary emphasis in this course is the process of communication when people of two or more cultures interact. Barnlund pinpoints a key issue when commenting that "What seems most critical [to intercultural communication] is to find ways of gaining entrance into the assumptive world of another culture, to identify the norms that govern face-to-face relations...without this kind of insight people are condemned to remain outsiders no matter how long they live in [an unfamiliar culture]. Its institutions and its customs will be interpreted inevitably from the premises and through the medium of their own culture" (Samovar and Porter, 1994, p. 24). In our journey, we will also discover that it is critical to find ways of gaining entrance into our own assumptive worlds, that most of what constitutes us as cultural persons is invisible to us. In this class we seek to become conscious of our cultural unconsciousness through self-reflexivity. Thus, our class is as much about improving our understanding of ourselves as cultural as it is in understanding those who are culturally different from us.

The objectives of this course are as follows: 1) become aware of the ways in which each of us are walking and talking cultural artifacts, socially constructed and historically situated 2) become aware of "others" as cultural artifacts of a different kind than ourselves, and 3) discover ways in which we can situate ourselves positively to cultural differences and experiment with communication skills that can assist us in navigating the complexities of intercultural relations.

Course Requirements

Exam One 75

Exam Two 75

Essay 2 30 Myself as a Cultural Artifact

Essay 2 30 Reflections on Ethnocentrism

Final Exam 100

Quizzes 50

Group Project 100

460

*Exams are a combination of true/false, short answer and essay questions.

Late Assignments

Assignments turned in late are penalized 10% and an additional 5% for each day thereafter. An assignment is late if it is not turned at the beginning of class on the day that it is due.

Special Needs

Brigham Young University-Hawai'i is committed to providing a working and learning atmosphere, which reasonably accommodates qualified persons with disabilities. If you have any disability that may impair your ability to complete this course successfully, please contact the universities Special Need Coordinator, Leilani A'una at 293-3518. Reasonable academic accommodations are reviewed for all students who have qualified documented disabilities. If you need assistance or if you feel you have been unlawfully discriminated against on the basis of disability, you may seek resolution through established grievance policy and procedures. You should contact the Human Resource Services at 780-8875.

Sexual Harassment

Title IX of the education amendments of 1972 prohibits sex discrimination against any participant in an educational program or activity that receives federal funds, including Federal loans and grants. Title IX also covers student-to-student sexual harassment. If you encounter unlawful sexual harassment or gender-based discrimination, please contact the Human Resource Services at 780-8875 (24 hours).

Final Examination

All students should be aware of the BYUH policy that there are no early final exams. An exception to this policy is the case of a school sponsored activity which takes an individual or team away from the University at the time an examination is scheduled to take place. Faculty and administration who are responsible for scheduling official university activities attempt in every way to avoid scheduling activities in conflict with the scheduled examinations. Students must plan travel, family visits, etc., in a way that will not interfere with their final exams. Emergency situations should be presented in writing as soon as possible to the Dean of the college or school of the student’s major.

Blind Grading

All exams and papers should be identified only with your student number. Do not put your names anywhere on your tests or papers.

Learning

The Dead Sea is “mostly” dead. Why? It has a source of fresh water that is vibrant with life so why is it “mostly” dead? The reason is that it has no outlet which causes the mineral content to be too high. All living systems we know of share three elements: some form of input, throughput, and output. If any one of these three are missing or fail to function properly, life will be diminished.

Learning is like the Dead Sea; to be a vibrant and life giving force, learning too must have quality input, throughput, and output. We might think of input as the reception and understanding of information through reading, watching, or listening to new information. The quality of our education is directly and causally correlated with improving our abilities to organize and comprehend an authors intent. Quality input is not enough to ensure a robust learning, by its nature learning also requires throughput. Think of throughput as the application, synthesis, integration, or critical analysis of new information. In input we seek to understand what others are saying, in throughput we seek to make sense of it, to interpret it, to pull it in closer to us, to make it our own. And still there is one final critical element in learning, output. Output occurs when we explain to others what we have come to understand and what sense we have made of it. Output usually takes the form of the written or spoken word. At its best output is gift giving in the sense that it is an opportunity for each of us to enrich our community with our thoughts and ideas.

My wife and I have had two children. Each time my wife, Cynthia, has desperately wanted and feared giving birth. After nine months of being pregnant, the fear seems to be overridden by the need and desire to deliver the baby. Reading, hearing, or watching something interesting and thinking about it is like becoming pregnant—pregnant with ideas and thoughts as they incubate in our minds and hearts. In essence, we become pregnant with a meaningful idea. Once the thought and meaning have had sufficient time to incubate inside of us, the natural course is for us to give birth to our thoughts by some form of communication with others (that form varies significantly from culture to culture and individual to individual). We develop a need to tell others and others need to hear what we are thinking.

I would like to take this analogy one step further. A baby’s birth can be a difficult, messy, and generally a painful business, but it is also one of life’s sweetest moments. Articulating a complex idea through the spoken or written word can also be difficult, messy, and even painful. How often have we overcome our apprehensiveness and tried to express what was on our minds, only to have it come out as disconnected and disjointed idea poorly expressed. It can be embarrassing and humiliating. But what we persist in doing we become more skilled at. I hope you will chose to overcome your fear apprehensiveness for your sake and for the good of your classes and the university. These three--input, throughput, and output--are the dialogue or conversation that constitutes our learning and indeed our university. If our conversation is weak then we as individuals and the university fail to achieve the kind of vibrant and active learning we value. Output/dialogue is where we learn the art of articulating complex ideas well and sustaining our views when in conversation with informed people who disagree with us.

Reading Schedule

Fall 2004

Date	Chapter/Material	Location
8/31	Course Orientations and Introductions
9/2	Communication in a Global Village by Barnlund The Ophelia Syndrome	Blackboard: Folder:Basic Concepts Blackboard: Folder:Basic Concepts
9/5	Labor Day Holiday
9/7	Principles of Empathic Communication by Steven Covey	Blackboard: Folder:Basic Concepts
9/9	Voicing Identities Somewhere in the Midst of Two Worlds by Chao, I Li, et al. Poem: I am a Door	Blackboard: Folder: Identity Blackboard:Folder: Identity
9/12	The Allegory of the Cave by Plato, VTV #3026 The Power of Hidden Differences by Edward Hall	Library Blackboard: Folder:Basic Concepts
9/14	Science and Linguistics by B. L. Whorf	Blackboard: Folder:Basic Concepts
9/16	A Cross Cultural Comparison of Communication Apprehension by Compton and Cheung	Blackboard:File:Shock and Adaptation
9/19	Monochronic and Polychronic Time by Edward Hall	Blackboard:File:Basic Concepts
9/21	Guest Lecture: Time Management	Dr. Eric Orr
9/23	Group Project and Study For First Exam
9/26	Exam One
9/28	Towards Ethnorelativism By Milton Bennett, pages 1-15	Blackboard:File:Shock and Adaptation
9/30	Cont., pages 15-30	“
10/3	Cont., pages 30-45	“
10/5	Cont., pages 45-55	“
10/7	Cont.	“
10/10	Cont.	“
10/12
10/14	Reflections on Harmony Amidst Diversity at Brigham Young University	Blackboard:File:Power
10/17	Ola By Albert Wendt Red Green Game	Blackboard:File:Power In-Class
10/19	Babaqiueria, VTV # 4731 Strivings of the Negro People by Du Bois What It Feels Like To Be Colored Me	Library Blackboard:File:Racism Blackboard:File:Racism
10/21	Jubilee Celebration—No Classes
10/24	Group Work Day and Review For Exam 2
10/26	Exam 2
10/28	Protecting The Sacred Ipu By William Wallace	Blackboard:File:Pacific Islands
10/31	Cultural Assumptions and Values by Stewart and Foster	Text, pp. 257-172
11/2	Interactions Between North Americans and Japanese by Shelia J. Ramsey	Text pp. 111-130
11/4	The Impact of Confuciansim on Interpersonal Relationships and Communication Patterns of East Asia	Blackboard:File:Eastern and Western Considerations
11/9	Silence and Silences in Cross-Cultural Perspective: Japan and the United States	Blackboard:File:Eastern and Western Cosniderations
11/11	Group Work Day
11/14	Myself in India The Story of a Chinese Man And An American Woman	Blackboard:File:Dating, Marriage, and Family Blackboard:File: Dating, Marriage, and Family
11/16	Swaying Poms Engagement	Blackboard:File: Dating, Marriage, and Family Blackboard:File: Dating, Marriage, and Family
11/18	Universality of the Gospel by Dehoyos and Dehoyos	Blackboard:File:Religion
11/21	Bridging Cultural Differences by Eric Shumway Edler Oaks: Repentance and Change. General Conference Talk, Oct. 2003, Saturday Afternoon Session	Blackboard:File:Religion LDS.Org
11/23	Beyond Cultural Identity by Peter S. Adler	Text, pp.225-246
11/25	Thanksgiving Holiday
11/28	Guest Lecture	Dr. Eric Orr
11/30	Group Presentation
12/2	Group Presentation
11/5	Group Presentation
11/7	Group Presentation
12/9	So What and Review
12/16 Friday	Final Exam, 11-2