The Connection between Communication and Culture

The Connection between Communication and Culture

Humans use words to communicate verbally and body movement and facial expression to
communicate nonverbally. On the other hand, culture is the way people live and is defined by a
geographical area, same language, use of similar nonverbal codes, and set of norms that govern
the way the people think and behave. Language is used during communication to agree, disagree,
make and decline request, or defuse tension and enforce politeness. Moreover, language shapes
people’s perceptions and interpretations in the cultural communities and without which it is hard
to make a cultural sense in the world.
Languages have distinct features like abstractness, creativity, meaning centeredness and
arbitraries. Besides, the languages have different pragmatic, sematic, syntactic, morphological,
and phonological patterns. The terms used in communication have connotative and denotative
meaning which depend on the context. Languages are important in the world because they allow
daily socialization and interaction between people, shape people’s cognitive behaviors, suggests
people’s identity through ethnics and nationality, and determine the social change depending on
peoples’ occupation.
The relationship between communication and culture is a reciprocal one because
communication is culture and culture is communication. People communicate in a manner that
dictates their culture and culture is manifested, specified, and developed through communication.
In the human evolution journey, cultural groups resulted in distinct verbal and nonverbal

Student’s Last Name 2
communication and languages which are understood within a certain group of people but
enigmatic to the people outside the cultural group. The way people communicate dictates peoples
behavior, values, and beliefs which are all centered on culture. In other words, communication
and culture are more or less the same because one suggests the other and people can be identified
through the way they communicate and their way of life.