The 1980's: A Cultural Analysis

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Since the 1980’s, the environment of most countries has changed in economic, social, technological and political structure to give a rise to mobility and migratory spaces. Study abroad is often referred to an intercultural experience by which mobile students encounter another ‘culture’; they try and experience the ‘cultural shock’ from another place. People draw boundaries between countries and characterise their own ‘culture’ in opposition to another one and researchers tend to see students as unconsciously governed by the representation of their ‘culture’ of origin. Jack (2009) states that: “epistemologically, I believe that a ‘dimensional’ approach to culture, which allows us to plot or map representatives of national cultures onto some kind of continuum, presents students with unhelpfully fixed categories of analysis that essentialise culture and divert it of its key of procession and political contingencies.”
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Communication is not only transferring the message from one to another but the speakers are constantly using the target language to create and maintain social relationships with the participants. Language is fundamental in creating the social context and constructs the ways in which participants understand the social activity in which they are engaged (Liddicoat, 1997, pp. 38-41). Although two different countries may share the same language as first language, the differences of ‘culture’ and social dimension between two participants may lead to misinterpretation about the message. Therefore, the relation of culture, language and communication needs to be considered to develop better understanding; “When speakers share different cultural assumptions, the possibilities of communication breakdown or rather the misinterpretation of utterances in context are greatly increased” (Scollon & Scollon,

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