ANT 200 - Intercultural Communication (Honors)

3 Credit Hours

Honors courses involve more in-depth study than non-honors courses and often involve exploratory learning, essay writing, collaborative activities, and individualized research. This course examines how human beings communicate, and often miscommunicate, interculturally. It considers the ways such communication occurs not only through speech but also through gestures, posture, dress, facial expressions, distancing, use of time, and spatial organization. It further concerns the nature of ethnography and the relationship between language and culture.

Prerequisite(s): COM 121 or COM 122, eligibility for the Honors Program

Semesters Offered: Every other Spring alternate with ANT 255 (Honors)

RATIONALE OF COURSE

The purpose for this course is to increase the students’ awareness of the wealth of cultural diversity in distant lands and near to home and to teach students how one learns to understand the world from the perspectives of people with different cultural backgrounds. In addition, it provides the capable honors students with an opportunity to conduct original research under the professor’s supervision.

COURSE COMPETENCIES

Discuss the limitations of “native realism” and “ethnocentrism.
Outline the fundamental aspects of “culture”.
Compare and contrast mainstream U.S. culture with other cultures.
Discuss the two levels of culture knowledge: explicit and tacit.
Delineate the key premise of symbolic interactionism.
Define “ethnography” and explain its purpose.
Discuss the ethical principles that should be considered in conducting ethnographic fieldwork.
Explain advantages of an ethnographic research cycle over a linear approach in science research.
Delineate the steps in doing participant observation reasearch.
Discuss the relationship among “language”, “thought”, and “perception”.
Explain the theory of proxemics and describe differences in perception of social and personal space cross-culturally.
Describe how face-to-face interaction in a particular community and cultural group affects a child’s language acquisition.