User:Tema4

Metaphor of the Culture Iceberg
Culture provides moral underlying norms and cognitive underlying grounds to the world-view and behaviour of its members. In this sense, culture contributes to its member's individual identity, as well as to the entire community's group identity: it gives people a feeling of belonging to a group, a sense of who they are, and implicit norms about how they should and should not behave.

Besides, individuals can be composited by multiple cultures, belonging to several cultural entities (e.g. country, school, company) at a single point in time or over the course of a life time. These multiple cultural influences may create tension or conflict within single individuals or negatively impact their sense of authenticity because people may expose contradictory values in different situations or say one thing but do something very different.

A visual metaphor to illustrate this concept of culture is the Cultural Iceberg.Cultural iceberg

The major part of the Iceberg “is below the waterline” and corresponds to the invisible assumptions on which culture is based (such as how the world works, the role of individuals etc.) Those deep cultural assumptions shape the norms and values tacitly shared by the members of a culture. Only a small part of culture is visible (“above the waterline”), it includes behaviours, rituals, symbols, material artefacts, written rules etc., all of which are a visible expression of the invisible cultural assumptions, norms and values.

In other words, the waterline is seen as a metaphor for the individual's level of awareness or consciousness. And the Iceberg metaphor highlights the tendency of individuals to not be directly aware of their deep cultural assumptions, norms and values that constitute the major part of their culture and identity.

The notion of Cultural Iceberg can be applied to any type of group with relatively stable membership over time (e.g.: nations, ethnic groups, professions, organizations, religions...).

Groups with different cultures hold different basic fundamental values and assumptions, which can lead them to interpret, evaluate and act the same event differently. These inter-cultural differences can lead to misunderstandings and conflict, as people interpret and judge what they see "above the waterline" but according to their own implicit norms, values and assumptions (and ignoring the other's culture deep assumptions, values and norms). This explains why sometimes people's behaviours seem illogical or strange to us.

Cultural misunderstandings can occur when difference is observed and misinterpreted, and also when surface similarities (as language, dress and etiquette) mask significant differences at the deeper, submerged levels.

Because it accounts for the origins of inter-cultural misunderstanding and conflict, the Culture Iceberg metaphor can be very insightful to manage inter-cultural interactions. It inspired the development of Management theories that aimed to improve and understand Inter-personal communication (Krauthammer Private Professional Services (1971): multicultural management training; "Negotiating Reality" model....)[|Krauthammer's Culture Iceberg]

The Culture Iceberg metaphor enables to understand and manage identity conflicts and defensiveness reactions that block successful and effective communication. The “Negotiating Reality” model, for example, suggests to the speakers involved in an interaction to actively explore each other's “cultural iceberg” (author) in order to maximise inter-cultural communication. The active exploration of one's own and of the other(s) speaker(s) culture iceberg involves bringing to awareness the deep cultural values, assumptions and norms “below the waterline”.

The communication models based on the Culture Iceberg metaphor contrast with the old-fashion Practical Cultural Guides often used by corporations' managers to superficially prepare them to face inter-cultural interaction. Although those guides might facilitate inter-cultural interactions, they limit the individual's focus of attention “above the waterline” (food, greeting habits etc.) and do not encourage him to explore neither the deep cultural norms, values and assumption of his interlocutor's culture, neither the ones of his own culture.