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Communicating successfully with someone from a different culture or different countries which is very difficult to human requires a degree of communication competence. At the same time, with the rapid growth of the modern society, the benefits of intercultural communication are even greater. Thus, it is necessary to understand the relationship between culture and communication. On the one hand, a culture is created, shaped, transmitted, and learned through communication. On the other hand, communication practices are largely created, shaped, and transmitted by the culture.
Culture and communication are so closely bound that most cultural anthropologists believe that the two terms are virtually identical. The link between culture and communication is definitely the key factor to the understanding of intercultural communication, for it is through the influence of culture that people learn to communicate.
2.2 Intercultural Communication
As is known to all, now people in all fields have more opportunities to encounter people from all over the world. Thus intercultural communication is getting common. As Samovar (2000:48) notes, “In its most general sense, intercultural communication occurs when a member of one culture and a member of another culture are at odds. More precisely, intercultural communication involves interaction between people whose cultural consciousness and symbol systems are distinct enough to alter the communication event”. According to Professor Jia Yuxin (1997), people tend to vary in all the aspects from cultural and social background, life style, education, belief, age, and political and economical conditions to interests and dispositions. Thus any communication behavior between two single human beings can be regarded as intercultural communication. And in order to achieve successful communication among people who have totally different cultures, it is essential to know what kind of topics or events can be talked and what kind of questions should be avoided, such as privacy.
2.3 Privacy Attitudes and Culture
Human beings, regardless of culture, have natural ability to communicate with other human beings. At the same time, however, human beings cannot tolerate extended physical contact with other humans and need privacy. Privacy is one of the few fundamental values for human beings (Burgoon, 1978: 124).
Although all human beings feel the need for privacy, privacy is culture-specific and is considered a learned response to particular social situations. Irwin Altman (1977) argues that privacy is a “boundary control” process in which people sometimes make themselves accessible to others and sometimes close themselves off from others.
Lacking of knowledge of privacy culture will cause great misunderstanding in the process of communication.
2.4 Study on Privacy in China and America
Privacy is valued in all cultures, but the concept and the contents of privacy can be different in different cultures, and it is more highly respected and esteemed in American culture than in Chinese culture.
At first, Tong (1990: 487), one of China’s leading civil law scholars, wrote: “the right to privacy, also called the right to private life, is a right of personality under which any interference by others with citizens’ secrets and liberty of personal life is prohibited”. Later in 1994, another established civil law scholar, Wang (1994: 487) analyzed the existing definition of privacy and concluded: “privacy is a right of personality, enjoyed by a natural person, under which he can dispose of all personal information, private activities and private areas which belong only to the person and have no relation to public interest” . A few years later a book edited by Wang and Yang (1997: 147) explained the concept of privacy again. This concluded that: “privacy is enjoyed by natural person, under which the person is free from publicity and any interference by others with personal matters only related to the person and personal information such as affairs in the area of personal life” . All these concepts show that, in Chinese people’s idea, privacy is related to personal information, personal affairs, and personal areas which is totally far away from the public and have no business of other people. In famous scholars, Deng and Liu’s (1989) opinion, privacy is related to private business, private affairs and private concerns. There is no privacy notion in traditional Chinese culture, so Chinese are neither sensitive to nor scrupulous in privacy (Yuan, 2004). For the view on privacy, there is an explanation that “China has been an agricultural country for several hundred years. Traditionally, most of the Chinese lived in countryside, besides, many families crowded in a big yard, in which people frequently met and cared about others, and they even could talk about everything” (Fu & Wen, 2002: 84).