Budaya
Beberapa alasan mengapa orang mengalami kesulitan ketika berkomunikasi dengan orang dari budaya lain terlihat dalam definisi budaya:
"Budaya adalah suatu perangkat rumit nilai-nilai yang dipolarisasikan oleh suatu citra yang mengandung pandangan atas keistimewaannya sendiri."Citra yang memaksa" itu mengambil bentuk-bentuk berbeda dalam berbagai budaya seperti "individualisme kasar" di Amerika, "keselarasan individu dengan alam" di Jepang dan "kepatuhan kolektif" di Tiongkok.
Antropologi budaya
American "cultural anthropologists" focused on the ways people expressed their view of themselves and their world, especially in [[symbol]]ic forms, such as [[art]] and [[Mythology|myths]]. These two approaches frequently converged and generally complemented one another. For example, [[kinship]] and [[leadership]] function both as symbolic systems and as social institutions. Today almost all socio-cultural anthropologists refer to the work of both sets of predecessors, and have an equal interest in what people do and in what people say.