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GRANT

journal

ISSN 1805-062X, 1805-0638 (online), ETTN 072-11-00002-09-4

EUROPEAN GRANT PROJECTS | RESULTS | RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT | SCIENCE

of interdisciplinarity, there is therefore an overlap of individual
disciplines, which examine this issue from several perspectives. In
the current European scientific environment, also based on the
recommendations of the European Parliament and the Council of
Europe

, the term intercultural communication is preferred to

multicultural communication

, which is more typical of the

American cultural community and relates to the needs and specifics
of a multicultural society. The meaningful content of the term
intercultural communication reflects the current political, economic
and social situation in Europe, especially in connection with the
ongoing migration crisis and the reactions of some leading European
politicians to the situation. The reluctance of some groups of
migrants to adapt to cultural, political and economic conditions in
the new country (the so-called intercultural barrier), together with
minimum language skills, results in the need to further explore
various aspects of intercultural communication in order to stabilize
the situation. For the purposes of our paper, we will be based on the
definition of intercultural communication by the Czech author J.

Průcha, who characterizes it as "denoting processes of interaction
and transmission, taking place in different types of situations in
which communicating partners are members of linguistically and /
or culturally different ethnicities, nations, racial or social
communities. This communication is determined by the specifics of
the languages, cultures, mentalities and value systems of the

communicating partners. " (Průcha, 2010, p.16) In the academic
literature, the term intercultural communication first appears in the
work of the American anthropologist E. T. Hall "The Silent
Language" from 1959. In the conditions of Slovak and Czech
scientific approaches, the term intercultural communication is
sometimes used, which, for example, Lehmanová defines as "a
reflection of the communication process between individual and
supra-individual subjects belonging to different cultural systems."
(Lehmanová, 1999, p. 21)

1.2

Culture

The term culture has a wide application in the social sciences. The
Merriam-Webster dictionary defines culture as the usual beliefs,
social forms and material characteristics of a racial, religious or
social group; also: characteristics of everyday existence (such as
diversity or way of life) shared by people on the spot or in time; or a
set of values, conventions, or social practices associated with a
particular area, activity, or social characteristic; or an integrated
pattern of human knowledge, belief and behaviour that depends on
the ability to learn and pass on knowledge to future generations

Opinions are included in the 2006 Recommendation of the European Parliament and

of the Council on key competences for lifelong learning, available online: https://eur-
lex.europa.eu/legal-content/SK/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:32006H0962&from=EN

. It

follows from the above definitions that culture is a complex
structure that manifests itself at all levels of society. In general, we
can consider culture as the social heritage of a community
(organized group or society). It is a pattern of reactions developed or
created during the development of such a community in solving
problems that have arisen in the interaction between its members
and between them and their environment. These reactions are
considered in the community to be the right way of perceiving,
feeling, thinking and acting and are passed on to new members
through observation and learning. Culture determines what is
acceptable or unacceptable to the community, important or
insignificant, right or wrong, feasible or unrealizable. It includes all
learned and shared information, beliefs, norms and values, as well as
attitudes, behaviour, clothing and language.

Multicultural communication represents the specifics and forms of communication in a

multicultural society in which members of different cultures occur, with a certain degree
of assimilation

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/culture

1.3

Cultural stereotypes

The term stereotype

is now used to refer to an easily accessible

image of a social group, which is usually based on rough
generalizations. Although stereotypes can be both positive and
negative, in everyday use they are most often understood as
irrational negative attitudes towards certain social groups and their
members. Stereotypes are called idiosyncratic if they are used only
by the individual, or they are social or collective if they are widely
shared by a group of people. The less a person knows about an
object or group, the more they use stereotypical generalizations to
reduce their uncertainty in a new situation. In an intercultural
environment, one of the goals of the communication participant is to
know the attitudes and personality of the communication partner,
while applying his previous beliefs about the members of this
cultural group, the so-called cultural stereotypes. Interestingly, most
people have positive ideas about their nation, while others are
critical. For example, most Slovaks believe that we are a hard-
working and hospitable nation, but Hungarians usually consider
themselves noisy, Scots as greedy, Italians as noisy. Stereotypes are
considered detrimental to intercultural communication and their
elimination is considered a prerequisite for any successful
intercultural exchange. The communicator tends to prefer
information that is in line with existing expectations and tends to
ignore or reject information that is not in line with stereotypes.
Stereotypical notions of the other party's communicants determine a
person's emotional reactions. Dealing with stereotypes in
intercultural education is problematic, but it is necessary to point
them out in the educational process. Educators need to respect a
large number of variables that allow different cultures to be
compared (see section 2).

1.4

Intercultural communication in diplomatic practice
and its relevance in relation to international diplomacy

As mentioned in previous sections, communication plays a key role
in diplomacy. The most important means of communication in the
process of communication (although not the only one) is language.
Prerequisite for successful communication is knowledge of language
means (their meaning) and grammatical rules, which we refer to as
language competence. The production and interpretation of language
units in a particular situation is called performance. For example, M.
Hirschová describes pragmatic competence as a competent way of
using competently formed sentences depending on the
communication situation. (Hirschová, 2006) However, the author
herself adds that any rule of language use will sooner or later be
reflected in its structure and therefore the exact boundary between
language and communication competence cannot be defined. We
can basically characterize communication as a certain way of
solving a problem (correct decoding of the meaning of words), in
which various factors, conditions and strategies are applied. The
condition for the active use of language (mother tongue and foreign)
are productive communication skills, which are used not only for
communication, but also for obtaining information and knowledge.
In the field of diplomacy, we can define several factors that belong
to the professional equipment of a person active in the diplomacy
environment. The diplomat should be able to adequately express and
argue, he should master politeness and social phrases and also
actively master the idiomatic side of the language, which reflects the
cultural and historical background of its development (see section
3). The basis for these skills will be acquired by the graduate of
diplomacy in the process of their educational training, but their
development depends primarily on its further practical use. The
main role of a diplomat is to represent his nation through

The term stereotype was first used by Walter Lippmann in 1922

Vol. 9, Issue 1