Literature Review

1 Intercultural Communication.

1.1 Definition: Intercultural communication, called cross-cultural communication first, means the communication between people with different language and cultural background. The communication between people from different countries is a typical symbol. In English class, the foreign teachers and Chinese students are born with different cultural background and language. Therefore it is a special example of intercultural communication.

It can be dated back to the beginning of human#8217;s civilization such as the trade and battles between various tribes. In modern times, the silk road helps development of communication. The slave trade can be re an example of intercultural communication between Africa and North America. However, the research began in America in 1950s and become a course in university in 1960s. And the last twenty years of 20th century saw the popularity. Nowadays, the intercultural system has developed into various branches such as intercultural business administration, intercultural marketing management and intercultural psychology. In the study of intercultural psychology, scholars analyze the psychology movement and behavior in perspective of intercultural communication. They stick to studying the effect of inheritance and environment on the development of psychology but also concentrated more on the function of social culture.

1.3 Current Research:

In the intercultural communication field, systematic researches have come into being with the devotion of scholars. American cultural humanist Edward Hall is the beginner in this field for the book, The Silent Language(1959). he put forward the new word--cross-cultural communication. In 1960s, Kalervo Oberg mentioned a new word--cultural shock, which arrested much attention to the conflicts appeared in the cultural communication. 1970s, Molefi K. Asante published the book--Handbook of International Communication. Spitzberg and Cupach(1984) proposed the theory that three factors effects the intercultural communication, motivation, knowledge and skills, that is, the willing to communicate with others, the consciousness and comprehension, and the competence in the communication.

Byram constructed a new pattern of intercultural communication. The pattern includes the knowledge, skill, attitude, personality and action and the pattern constructed to the intercultural communicative competence with other elements, language competence, social language competence and discourse competence. Kim bang up a new pattern which consists of cognitive factors, affective factors and behavioral factors.

Byron 1995 put forward the pattern of ICC (intercultural communicative competence), which is a creative system in the intercultural communication field. Byram provide the opinion the ICC consists of four elements--knowledge, competence of action, attitude and competence of learning. And later in 1997 he added another element--the speculative judgment.(Coperias 2009:245). The discovery was accepted and published by the Common European Framewok of Reference for Languages.

Generous researches have been done by scholars in China.

About the purpose of intercultural communication, Liu Changjiang(2003) presented his opinion: learning foreign language is not for the foreign culture only but to realize the communication between mutual cultures. Professor Xiao Min pointed out the only purpose of learning language is to communicate. Chen Guiqin shared the same idea that the eternal aim of foreign language and cultural education is to develop talents who can intercommunicate. Zhuang Enping(2012) also raised that the education of intercultural communication will be a crucial direction in the future revolutionary.