Universals and variables in cross-cultural communication

Abstract

Misunderstandings, difficulties, and theoretical issues naturally emerge from Hofstede's parametric model of cultural variation, currently promoted as a tool to assess problems of intercultural communication. I compare his approach to the commonly-accepted model that linguists use to describe how human languages vary widely, and yet are all thought to be based on a common set of human-language universals, generally understood to have been fixed by human DNA, the cumulative programming of human evolution. Hofstede's fixed set of cultural parameters likewise imply a set of cultural universals. By analogy with the linguistic parameters it becomes apparent that beneath all the highly visible differences between cultures, there would likewise be a set of a cultural universals, likewise probably shaped by human evolution and programmed by our common genetic code.