The Culture, Intercultural and Cross-cultural Dimensions in Communication

Culture as the philosophy of life refers to the values, norms and rules, and actual behavior which is taken over by man from the past generations, and to leave it to next generation in a different form, separates individuals belonging to the culture from individuals belonging to other cultures. Each of these different attitudes describes the degree to which the culture values the past, the present, or the future. Cultures place emphasis on the events that have happened or will happen during the period that they view as important. In order to be able to describe and understand each of the involved cultures in a specific intercultural situation, three dimensions of culture are worked with: 'the horizontal cultural dimension'; 'the vertical cultural dimension' and 'the cultural dimension of time.