Intercultural Communication Paper (and INCA Survey) Instructions

INCA THEORY – AN OVERVIEW

July 2004

A) Motivation B) Skill/Knowledge C) Behaviour i) Tolerance for ambiguity

Readiness to embrace and work with ambiguity

Ability to handle stress consequent on ambiguity

Managing ambiguous situations

ii) Behavioural flexibility

Readiness to apply and augment the full range of one’s existing repertoire of behaviour

Having a broad repertoire and the knowledge of one’s repertoire

Adapting one’s behaviour to the specific situation

iii) Communicativ e awareness

Willingness to modify existing communicative conventions

Ability to identify different communicative conventions, levels of foreign language competencies and their impact on intercultural communication

Negotiating appropriate communicative conventions for intercultural communication and coping with different foreign language skills

iv) Knowledge discovery

Curiosity about other cultures in themselves and in order to be able to interact better with people

Skills of ethnographic discovery of situation- relevant cultural knowledge (including technical knowledge) before, during and after intercultural encounters

Seeking information to discover culture- related knowledge

v) Respect for otherness

Willingness to respect the diversity and coherence of behaviour, value and belief systems

Critical knowledge of such systems (including one’s own when making judgements)

Treating equally different behaviour, value and convention systems experienced in intercultural encounters

INCA – Intercultural Competence Assessment – www.incaproject.org 2