Page 35 - Reading Between the Sign Intercultural Communication for Sign Language Interpreters

20 Reading Between the Signs

that one can see corresponds to those elements that visitors to a
foreign country might readily notice: the different clothing, mu-
sic, food, and architecture. What visitors might fail to perceive,
however, is that a culture’s notions of beauty, modesty, friend-
ship, courtship, child raising, insanity, justice, and leadership may
be vastly different from their own.
Ignorance of the unrecognized differences between cultures,
like the unseen part of an iceberg, can have equally destructive
consequences. The study of cultural variations, however, may pro-
vide us with maps to navigate these treacherous yet fascinating
seas.

Culture and Communication

As sign language interpreters, we most often find ourselves un-
tangling those aspects of culture that are related to communica-
tion.
Culture and communication are inseparable because
culture not only dictates who talks to whom, about what,
and how the communication proceeds, but it also helps
determine how people encode messages, the meanings
they have for messages, and the conditions and circum-
stances under which various messages may or may not
be sent, noticed or interpreted. (Samovar and Porter
1982, 32)
The process of communication is often diagrammed as a
sender encoding a message, which is then relayed to a receiver
who must decode the message in order to understand the mean-
ing the sender has intended. We engage in this complex process
thousands of times a day, with relatively few glitches (e.g., “I’m
sorry, I didn’t quite get your point.” “That’s not what I meant!”
“Huh?”). The introduction of a difference in cultures between the
sender and receiver, however, greatly increases the likelihood that
the original intent of the sender will not get through to the re-
ceiver.
Our entire repertory of communicative behaviors is
dependent largely on the culture in which we have been
raised. Culture, consequently, is the foundation of com-
munication. And when cultures vary, communication
practices also vary. (32)

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