ABSTRACT

This study examined intercultural communication apprehension (ICA) of ‘Anzac’ who visited Gallipolli, Turkey. Personal Report of Intercultural Communication Apprehension Scale  (PRICA) of Neuliep and McCroskey was employed with additional open-ended questions as gender, age, marital status, residence, nationality, occupation and informational readiness about new cultures. In terms of total scores of the PRICA items, comparisons were made and differences were sought. One-way ANOVA and Correspondence Analysis were conducted. The impacts of occupation held, informational readiness and cultural context of Anzacs were tested. Australians and New Zealanders within Anzac concept do not differ in their CA level. CA level of Anzac living in their home country is lower than the Anzac living in a foreign country.

Key Words: Intercultural communication, Communication apprehension, Anzacs, uncertainty avoidance.

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First published by Journal of Administrative Sciences (Yonetim Bilimleri Dergisi), Vol. 3, No. 1, 2005, pp. pp. 179-193. Re-published by USAK with repmission of Canakkale Onsekiz Mart University YBD editors. 2007

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Introduction

 oday, all the societies and all the cultures are under huge external influences. As Dahl[1] underlines, cultures are open to influences from outsiders. Basically, new liberal world order, globalization of world, media cultures and internet are main foundations of these influences. Within this context, the number of people traveling all around the world is steadily raising[2] .

In order to learn, to know and to function in today’s society, communication is vital. However, individuals may consciously or unconsciously avoid situation where communication is required[3]. McCroskey first coined this avoidance as “communication apprehension” and he defined communication apprehension (CA) as an individual’s level of fear or anxiety associated with either real or anticipated communication with another person or persons[4]. Communication apprehension (CA) relates to communicative incompetence that stems from anxiety or fear[5] .  

The concept ‘anxiety’ is seen as a multifaceted response characterized as an unpleasant emotional state marked by subjective feelings of tension, apprehension and worry regarding a potentially negative outcome that an individual perceives as impending[6]. Anxiety has three domains or components. Cognitively, anxiety is the state of heightened self-awareness, perceived helplessness and expectation of negative outcomes. Affectively, anxiety is the manifestation of subjective feelings of distress, fear and discomfort. Behaviourally, a person having anxiety tends to be hesitant, inhibited and disrupted[7].

A person may be apprehensive in one situation but not in another situation. Buss (cited in Neuliep & McCroskey)[8] claims that certain types of communication environments may produce more or less anxiety than others. According to McCroskey and Richmond[9], four types of CA can be defined. Trait-like CA concerns oral communication and refers to a relatively stable and enduring predisposition of an individual towards experiencing fear or anxiety in various communication contexts. Another type of CA is a context-based CA that refers to a relatively enduring personality type CA in which an individual experiences in a specific context. Receiver-based CA, as another type, depends on the type of person/group involving in the communication. Lastly, situational CA depends on changes in the environment.

1. Intercultural Communication Apprehension

One type of communication situation containing novelty, unfamiliarity, dissimilarity and uncertainty is intercultural communication[10]. According to Gudykunst and Kim (in Neuliep & McCroskey)[11], individuals tend to view people from other cultures as strangers when they are confronted with cultural differences. In such a circumstance, not only the uncertainty but also the anxiety is high[12]. This type of communication anxiety is labelled as “intercultural communication apprehension” (ICA) referring to the fear or anxiety associated with either actual or anticipated interaction with people from different cultural or ethnic groups[13]. According to Gudykunst and Shapiro (as cited in, Toomey & Chung)[14] anxiety level experienced in inter-groups are higher than the anxiety experienced interpersonally. In terms of intercultural context, inter-group anxiety that stems from the contact between groups of different cultures can be major barrier against effective intercultural communication. Inter-group anxiety probably leads to avoidance of contact[15]. The level of inter-group anxiety can be lower in the cases if, inter-group relationship is favourable, if one group is knowledgeable and holds positive views about the others, and if the number or the status of the in-group is higher than the out-group[16]. According to the “Anxiety-Uncertainty Management Theory”, effective inter-group communication is the function of the amount of anxiety and uncertainty experienced while communicating with others[17]. Communication apprehension between cultures significantly differs[18]. For Hofstede, members of high uncertainty avoidance culture tend to see difference as dangerous while the members of low uncertainty avoidance culture see it as curious[19]. Based on the differences that exist cross-culturally and cross-ethnically, people in large sum are nervous or fearful of communicating with different cultural or ethnic groups. The anxiety may be the result of ethnocentrism, ignorance of other group or self-perceived incompetence[20]. Due to some studies[21], ethnocentrism is more predictive of individual’s contextual CA.

In organizational perspectives, communication apprehension reveals many success or failure outcomes. According to the findings of various studies[22], CA has effects on occupational choice, advancement, employment retention and job applicant screening. People with high CA tend to prefer (actual) or expect occupations that require lower communication. They also are not the candidates for promotion but they are potential people to leave the organization (turnover). High CA people are less competent, require more training, rarely offered an interview, less successful on the job, have relationship difficulties with co-workers and their job satisfaction level is lower.

Avoidance and withdrawal behaviour against engaging in oral communication are the usual characteristics of communication apprehensive individuals[23]. Thus, benefiting from a travel or a visit to a foreign culture will be lesser for a tourist. Engaging in oral communication will help a foreigner to experience and learn the bottom of cultural iceberg of a new culture.  Thus, cross-cultural sensitivity is a crucial variable in a variety of situations which call for interaction with people from cultures other than their own. For being successful in intercultural contexts, people must be interested in other cultures, be sensitive enough to notice cultural differences and then also be willing to modify their behaviour[24].

When two people come together and interact for the first time, uncertainty exists because of limited amount of information about each other and uncertainty leads to anxiety[25]. For this reason, information seeking and other readiness effort before interacting with people from different cultures can decrease the amount of uncertainty and anxiety. According to Hall, difficulties in intercultural communication stem from less knowledge about the way of communicating with people from other countries[26]. Knowledge about other cultures helps a person to avoid miscommunication behaviour and orientation. The degree of fear associated with interactions with people who are unfamiliar or out-group members is greater than the degree associated with interaction with people who are familiar or in-group members[27]. Minimizing the level of uncertainty provides higher intimacy and liking, however this requires interactants to engage in communication willingly. It is greatly accepted that nearly all the cultures tend to prefer talking with in-group members. In other word, in all cultures, willing to talk to a friend or to an acquaintance is higher than to talk to a stranger[28].

As it is widely mentioned, Uncertainty Avoidance focuses on the degree the society reinforces, or not, uncertainty and ambiguity within the society. A High Uncertainty Avoidance ranking indicates the country has a high level of uncertainty and ambiguity. A Low Uncertainty Avoidance ranking indicates the country has a low level of ambiguity and uncertainty. This is reflected in a society that more readily accepts change and takes more and greater risks[29].  People vary in terms of feeling anxiety about uncertain or unknown matters, and cultures vary too, in their avoidance of uncertainty and tolerance for ambiguity. What is different may be viewed as a threat in high uncertainty avoidance cultures. According to the popular work of Hofstede, uncertainty avoidance rank for Australia is 37, score 51; rank for New Zealand is 39/40, score 49. The indexes for the related countries within this study are rank 47/48 and score 35 for UK; rank 16/17 and score 85 for Turkey [30].

2. Research Hypotheses

Due to the literature given above, three questions will be answered in this study:

Hypothesis 1: CA level of Australians and New Zealanders differs.

Hypothesis 2: There is congruence with the findings of Hofstede in terms of uncertainty avoidance scores.

Hypothesis 3: There are differences between CA level of ANZAC people due to their professions, residence, nationality and their informational readiness level about a foreign culture before getting into it.

3. Method

3.a. Sample

The population focused within this study was Anzacs visited Gallipoli. The word “Anzac” is an acronym for “Australian and New Zealand Army Corp” [31]. The word was invented as a telegraphic code of Australian and New Zealand Corps, while troops were training in Egypt in 1915[32]. 

The concern of Anzac with Gallipoli is that Gallipoli has been a place of pilgrimage for Australians and New Zealanders for years and the numbers visiting continues to grow. The Anzac area has the status of a National Park and at each key point of the terrain here is a Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery[33]. Today, the word “Anzac” is widespreadly used by local people and by Turkish media for naming people coming to visit Anzac area each year. The number of Anzac visiting Gallipolli each year is about ten thousands average and it is expected that 100.000 Anzac people will visit Gallipolli in 2015 for the 100th. Anniversary.

Participants of the study were 213 Anzacs who came to Çanakkale, Turkey for the “Anzac Day” (remembrance day) Ceremony in 22-26 April 2003.  They completed the instrument on a volunteer basis. Questionnaire forms were delivered and were collected by the trained students from School of Tourism & Hotel Management, Çanakkale University.

Table 1:

Demographic Distribution of the Participants(n=213)

As it can be seen in table 1, majority of the participants were female with 53,5 percent. The dominant age category of the sample was 21-30 age group with 70.0 percent. It is clear that ages from 21-50 were 89.2 cumulative percent of the whole sample. This shows that the Anzac people were dominantly the younger and middle age groups. They were overwhelmingly single (75.1 %). In terms of Anzac Concept Australians (75.6%)were in great number. In terms of informational readiness before visiting a foreign culture, 47.4% of them were ready about foreign culture before their departure.

3.b .Instrument

This research is based on the instrument of Personal Report of Intercultural Communication Apprehension (PRICA) developed by Neuliep and McCroskey. Intercultural contacts can be considered as contexts for communication apprehension[34]. PRICA is a 16-item scale which was then decreased to 14-item scale, half of the statements are worded positively and the other half as negative.  The respondents indicated the frequency to which they experienced each of the items those describing feelings towards communication with a person from different culture. Items were rated on five points (1=never, 5=always) scale.

PRICA scale used to measure an individual’s apprehension when interacting with a person from different culture of his own. Along with PRICA items of Neuliep and McCroskey, demographic variables such as gender, age, marital status, nationality, residence, occupation and informational readiness level were asked as open-ended questions.

The primary concern of this research is to have a look at CA in intercultural perspective. The recommended contexts to use PRICA instrument are multicultural and intercultural environments[35]. The authors of this study preferred to explore Intercultural communication apprehension of a so-called homogeneous group “Anzac” while they were experiencing the real fear or avoidance of communication with foreigners in actual intercultural settings. Thus, the responses to the items were expected to be the real instead of imaginary.

3.c. Data Analysis

In analysing data obtained for this research was SPSS statistical package version 10.0 was used. In order to determine CA levels of Anzacs who visited Gallipolli in terms of their residence and nationality, correspondence analysis will be conducted. 

Correspondence Analysis as an interdependency technique enables dimensional reduction and conducts perceptual mapping. The categories of a question can be analysed to determine positions of the categories. Closely positioned categories together indicate high association and the possibility of combining the categories into a single category[36]. Correspondence Analysis is named or labelled differently in various countries. Some of the popular names instead of “correspondence analysis” are optimal scaling, optimal scoring, reciprocal averaging, appropriate scoring in USA, quantification method in Japan, Homogeneity Analysis (HOMALS) in Holland and etc.[37].

In order to analyse at least three categorical variables, multiple correspondence analysis was used in this study. Multiple Correspondence Analysis facilitates to analyse more than two categorical variables and displays communalities and relations between sub-categories of variables nested in cross-tabulation as r*c*m*….[38]. Correspondence Analysis is best suited for exploratory data analysis[39] .

4.Findings

Reliability of the PRICA scale used in this study is 0,8489 (Cronbach alpha) and it can be considered as highly reliable. Considering the nationality and residence, the difference or the similarity between Australians and New Zealanders were tested in One-way ANOVA. At his point, nationality and residence of the participants were compared and recoded together, and four contexts for communication were coded in order to analyse the data.  Total score of the PRICA was taken and compared between the groups. However, no difference was found. Mean score for aus-aus was 44.55 (s.d.7, 05), for aus-out was 46,51 (s.d.5, 87), for nz-nz was 44,48 (s.d.5,07) and for nz-out was 46,86 (s.d.5, 49). As it can be seen that, mean scores of Australians and New Zealanders living in their home country are closer to each other and the scores of Australians and New Zealanders living in a foreign country are also closer to each other.

Figure 1:

Positions of Categories and Communication Apprehension Level

Note: Abbreviations of the categories were used to obtain clearer maps. Full names can be checked in Table 2.

According to the HOMALS results, people who are New Zealander and live in New Zealand, who are married men more than 40 years of age, whose occupation is health and education who gather information about new cultures before visiting (readiness) have communication apprehension rarely or never. However, single women with an age between 21-30 who are New Zealander but live in a foreign country and who are managers and technical personnel those not gathering information about a new culture usually have anxiety. On the other hand, Australians living in a foreign country with an age 20 or below and who are employees sometimes have anxiety.

Table 2:

Dimensions of Categories and CA Level

Figure 2:

Position of Informational Readiness, Contexts and CA Level

In terms of context, New Zealanders and Australians living in a foreign country usually have anxiety. On the other hand, Australians living in Australia sometimes have fear in intercultural communication.

Table 3:

Dimensions of Informational Readiness, Contexts and CA Level

Figure 3:

Positions of Occupation and CA Level

In terms of occupation, managers, employees and technical personnel rarely or sometimes have fear of intercultural communication. People working in health industry never have fear of intercultural communication. People whose occupation is labelled as “other” usually have fear.

Table 4:

Dimensions of Occupation and CA Level

Figure 4:

Positions of Contexts and CA Level

When we have a look at the CA level in contextual base, Australians living in a foreign country usually have fear, but the CA level or the frequency of Australians living in Australia is lower (i.e. sometimes or never).  New Zealanders living in New Zealand rarely have fear, which is also lower than Australians.

Table 5:

Dimensions of Contexts and CA Level

Conclusion

As the results of this study, Australians and New Zealanders do not differ in their communication apprehension (CA) level. This finding supports the findings of Hofstede in terms of uncertainty avoidance. The rank of Australia and New Zealand were very closer (i.e.UA rank were 37 and 39/40 respectively). Australians who live in Australia is different than the Australians who live in a foreign country. This is also true for New Zealanders. On the other hand, the CA level of Anzac living in home country is lower than the ones living in a foreign country, namely United Kingdom. Indeed, this is not the finding to be expected since living in a foreign country should diminish anxiety or fear because of the intercultural experiences. In terms of occupations, level of intercultural communication apprehension for managers, employees and technical personnel is lower than health personnel. Educative personnel are expected to have lower level CA since they are teaching or learning in multicultural settings. This is very true for managers and employees. However, there was no question about the cultural diversity of the work setting. Meanwhile, the number of visits or living periods in a foreign culture should also have been asked for further evaluations. These last two limitations should be considered for future researches. The findings within this study is limited to Anzac people and cannot be generalised to other groups those would be included in a research for intercultural communication apprehension.