Republic of the Philippines

Commission on Higher Education

Region III

LYCEUM OF WESTERN LUZON ZAMBALES, INC.

Batonlapoc, Botolan, Zambales
 

PURPOSIVE
COMMUNICATION
Module 2: Communication and Globalization

MARIE AILEEN M. SANTOS

Instructor

JOSSETTE Y. PEREZ-DAES
School President
Purposive Communication

Lesson 2. COMMUNICATION AND GLOBALIZATION

Globalization takes us to an understanding of

transformation, advancement, and
interdependence. We are living in a globalized
society where a great change and transformation
are evident in a variety of economic, cultural, and
social changes that have shaped the world over the
years. The advancement of technology and
numerous technology revolutions have been
globalizing the world into a closely interconnected
society. People should acquire knowledge and
skills that account for “global communication
competence” because it is only through global communication competence can people from
different cultures communicate effectively and productively in the globalizing society.

Communication Competence
Swain (1980) and Canale (1983) termed this as communicative competence (CC)
which they defined as the synthesis of an underlying system of knowledge and skill needed for
communication. in their concept of communication, competence refers to the knowledge of an
individual about language and about other aspects of language use.
Moreover, Cooley and Roach (1984) defined communication competence as the knowledge of
effective and appropriate communication patterns and the ability to use and adapt that knowledge
in various context. Their definition can be unpacked into three parts: knowledge, ability to use,
and adapt to various contexts.
1. It deals with knowledge. The cognitive elements of competence include knowing how to
do something and understanding why things are done the way they are (Hargie, 2011).
2. The ability to use. Individual factors affect our ability to do anything. This definition
accounts differences on intellectual ability. At the individual level, a person’s
physiological and psychological characteristics affect competence.
3. The ability to adapt to various contexts. What is competent or not varies based on social
and cultural contexts, which makes it impossible to have only one standard for what
counts as communication competence (Cooley and Roach, 1984).

Communication competence has been the primary undergraduate learning goal along with other
key skills like writing, critical thinking, and problem solving. The National Communication
Association (NCA) has identified what students should be able to in terms of speaking and
listening competencies by the time they graduate from college.

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Expected Skills for College Graduates

1. State ideas clearly.

2. Communicate ethically.
3. Recognize when it is appropriate to communicate.
4. Identify their communication goals.
5. Select the most appropriate and effective medium for communicating.
6. Demonstrate credibility.
7. Identify and manage misunderstandings.
8. Manage conflict.
9. Be open-minded about another’s point of view.
10. Listen attentively.

Global Communication Competence

Competence is the ability of individuals that relates effectively to self and others in
daily life. It is an integration of various components based on the individual’s cognitive,
affective, and behavioral abilities.
Chen (2005) defines communication competence as an innate individual trait that is
not related to personal intellect or education. Weinstein (1969) supports that communication
competence is an internal ability that is naturally enhanced and luminated through the promotion
of empathy in the process of socialization. In the global communication context, competence
further requires individuals to be equipped with the ability to acknowledge, respect, tolerate, and
integrate cultural differences in order to be qualified for enlightened global citizenship (Chen and
Starosta, 1997, 2003).
According to Chen (2005), there are four dimensions for global communication
competence: global mindset, unfolding the self, mapping the culture, and aligning the interaction.
These components are summarized as follows:
1. Global Mindset. It enables individual to regulate the complexity, ambiguity,
contradiction, and conflict embedded in the turbulent change of the globalization process.
2. Unfolding the self. It refers to the ability to look for shared communication symbols and
project the self into another person’s mind by thinking the same thoughts and feelings
and same emotions as the person (Chen and Starosta, 1997, 2000). Unfolding the self
comprises the following components:

a. Ceaseless purifying. The self must be ceaselessly edified, constantly liberated,

and perpetually purified in order to play the most important and fundamental role
in achieving the productive living of globalizing society.
b. Continuous learning. The continuous improvements create superior individuals
who possess a refined and elegant character and a balance of mind.

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c. Cultivate sensitivity. Refinement and cultivation transform the superior individual

into an excellent one whose actions are in harmony with the high standard of
values and whose utterance of truth sets a good standard to the global citizens
without disgracing his/her integrity.
d. Develop creativity. The ability of unfolding the self is an important way to
promote creativity, learning, and innovation in the process of globalization.
e. Foster empathy. Great empathy formulates the ideal of fellow-feeling by
expanding the self-consciousness of one’s fellow persons.

3. Mapping the culture. The ability of mapping a culture requires us to contrast cultural
differences that may motivate us to prefer alternative styles of cultural expressions and
engender in us desire to retool so that we can better function with the demands of global
environment and cope with changing environment rapidly.
4. Aligning the Interaction. To act or align interactions effectively in the process of
intercultural or global communication enables individuals to get the task done and attain
communication goals for being a successful global citizen.

Globalization
The process of globalization is an unavoidable feature of modernity and development.
It promotes the development and prevalence of digital technologies that make the
communication faster and information more easily accessible. Globalization was prophesied by
Heidegger in 1950 commenting that “new communication and information technologies would
spawn novel possibilities for dramatically extending the scope of virtual reality: distant sites of
the most ancient cultures are shown on film. The peak of this abolition of every possibility of
remoteness is reached by television, which will soon pervade and dominate the whole machinery
of communication.”
Heidegger’s prophesy is held true and extends beyond boundaries of virtual reality.

Major Trends in Globalization

Chen (2005) accounted two major trends of globalization in human society.

1. Technology development has made globalization inevitable and
irreversible (Eichengreen, 1999; Harasim, 1993). The human society has
fundamentally transformed a rapid development of communication
technologies and linked every part of the world into an interconnected
network. The most recent advancement of the technology is the development
of electronic mail systems such as email, computer conferencing, web pages;
the use of mobile phones; and the innovation of transportation technologies.
Among these communication technologies, the internet is the most significant
contribution to the global interconnectivity. It has blurred the line between

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mass and interpersonal communication and enables both personal and public
message to flow across national boundaries faster and more easily (Larson,
2000; Ma, 2000).

2. Economic transformation has led to a new landscape of economic world.

The economic shifts to globalization inevitably change the contours of the
world of work and bring in new consumers, new corporations, new
knowledge, and new jobs (O’Hara – Devereaux & Johansen, 1994). A global
company demands the ability of transnational dynamics to understand the
potential client’s needs all over the world. It then quickly transforms these
worldwide needs into products and services and delivers them to the clients in
a culturally appropriate and acceptable fashion. Various businesses, industries,
or entities began to make these systematic efforts towards globalization. New
strategies, ideas, and processes will increasingly be transformed into a
multiple cultural norm.

The Impact of Globalization

Globalization requires the development of a person’s language ability. The ability to
use language accurately and appropriately is a requirement of a globalizing society. In a social
interaction, a person demonstrates the ability to respond appropriately to the formality level of
the situation, can use a variety of sentence structures, and can handle expanded inventory of
concrete, idiomatic and conceptual language. Hence, the creativity to use the English language is
a determinant of a person’s communication skills. According to Ingram (2009), communication
skills development has always been an important factor of success. Today, people need to
understand the dynamics of long-distance collaboration, the impact of culture on manners of
speaking and body language, and how to use technology to communicate with people on the
other side of the globe.
Globalizations Impact on Communication Skills Development:
1. Virtual interactions. Globalization has introduced virtual communication and
collaboration as a major part of workplace dynamics. Modern entrepreneurs need to
understand the strengths and limitations of different media communications, and how to
use each medium to maximum effect.
2. Cultural awareness in speech. The need for cultural awareness is a major impact of
globalization on the required skill set of effective communicators. Modern entrepreneurs
and employees need the ability to catch the subtle nuances of people’s manner of speech
when communicating across cultures. Even when two people are speaking the same
language, cultural differences can affect vocabulary, colloquial expressions, voice tone,
etc.
3. Cultural awareness in body language. Awareness of cultural differences in body
language can be just as important as the nuance speech. Students should understand
acceptable speaking distances, conflict styles, eye contact, and posture in different

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cultures, accepting that the physical expressions of their own culture are not universally
accepted.
4. Time differences. The advent of global collaboration introduces another new dynamic to
communication skills – the need to communicate and share information with people
across several time zones. When people collaborate on the other side of the globe, their
counterparts are usually at home asleep, while themselves are at work.

The Role of Media in the Globalization Process

Communication media play
a significant role in
constructing and
representing the
phenomenon of
globalization and
subsequently sociologists
and medialogists
underscored their
significance in the
globalization process. Cornali and Tirocchi (2012) presented the role of media in the
globalization process:
1. It enables communication to take place in real time over great distances. The new
forms of communication especially the electronic media, had shrunk the globe into a
much smaller physical space where information passes instantaneously from one part
of the world to another.
2. It advances the 21st century into what we speak as the globalization of
communication.
3. The emergence of the electronic media and the digital media has brought about a
radical change on how we see education, forcing people to relocate it in the new
economic and social scene and to redefine educational roles, content, and styles.

Cornali and Tirocchi (2012) pointed out two stages that are involved in the role of
media in the globalization process:

Stage 1 characterized by the advent of television and the electronic media

Stage 2 the birth of the telematic networks and the internet

Language and Globalization

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Language continues to evolve. It keeps on developing as people are becoming

more literate in the global world. There are several words and terminologies that have been
introduced in the 21st century; hence, the 21st century language has become the language that
exists in the global world. Some examples of these are shown in the chart that follows.

Terminologies in the Globalizing Society

chat room An internet feature that allows people to
communicate in real time with strangers.
computer literacy Emerging form of literacy in the globalizing
society. It also termed as Internet Literacy.
cyberspace A general term for World Wide Web, the
Internet, electronic mailing lists, discussion
groups and forums, chat rooms, interactive
multi-player games, and even email (Turkle,
1995).
digital citizenship The 21st century concept of citizenship,
oriented towards the creation of conscious,
critical forms of integration in the globalizing
society.
digital competence It involves the confidence and critical use of
Information Society Technology (IST) for
work, leisure, and communication.
digital immigrants The adults who learn to adapt to their
environment at the same time they always
retain, to some degree, their language.
digital natives The young people who are regarded as the
native speaker of the digital language of
computers. It also termed as net generation or
new millennium learners.
digital skills It refers to the ability to evaluate a variety of
technological solutions, more than just
knowing how to use a specific technology
well.
emoji It pertains to the creation of a new alphabet
(the alpha BIT): Letters + numbers +
(emoticons) diacritical marks + emoji (picture
words)
ethnoscape It describes the global culture which extends
to the landscape of persons who form the
shifting world where we live, that is, tourist,
immigrants, refugees, or any moving groups
and individuals of fundamental feature of the

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world and appear to affect the politics of

nations to a hitherto unprecedented degree.
hyperpersonal communication It refers to computer-mediated
communication that is more socially desirable
than face-to-face communication.
ideoscape It is the movement of ideologies. It is usually
composed of ideas, terms, and images
including “freedom, welfare, rights,
sovereignty, representation, and democracy.”
mediascape It pertains to the electronic and print media in
“global cultural flows.”
mediamorphosis The transformation of communication media
that is usually brought by the complex
interplay of perceived needs, competitive and
political pressures, and social and
technological innovations (Fidler, 1997).
omg One of the first texting expressions (Oh my
God!), another is BFF as in Best Friend
Forever. First sign that the internet would
change language.
selfie An ego manical madness that gripped the
world where a greater focus is given on the
individual.
streaming multimedia It refers to a live audio and video available
through a website.
technoscape It refers to the movement of technology
(mechanical and informational) and the ability
to move such technology at rapid speeds.
telematic network It refers broadly to the convergence of
telecommunications and information
processing. It includes the internet, mobile
communications and services, cloud
computing, intelligent transport system, over-
the-top content and machine-to-machine
applications.
virtual community It is a community that exists in the world of
electronic communication rather than in the
physical world.
virtual reality The use of a computer to simulate an
experience in a way that is obscure from
reality.

ACTIVITY #2

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Name: __________________________________________________Score:_________________
Course, Year&Section: _____________________________________Date: _________________

Organize yourself for your planning activity in order to facilitate the task easily. Follow
the following instructions:
1. Develop a glossary of terminologies of the 21 st century that has become the language
that exists in the global world.
2. Your glossary entry should follow this format: term, definition, synonym (if there is
any).

For example:
Term definition

selfie: an image that includes oneself and as taken by oneself using a digital camera
especially for posting on social networks.

3. Research for at least 20 terminologies.

4. Write it on the back of this answer sheet or on another sheet of paper.

ENHANCEMENT:

On the space below, create a slogan illustrating the impact of globalization on

communication.