Here we are again, and we're going to be talking this time about perception. Perception is key when we're talking about intercultural communication because how we perceive the world is heavily influenced by the culture that's coming from us and we've grown up in. Now, in this particular case, we're going to start by looking at the concept of frames. This frame analysis was heavily investigated by Erik Kaufman. What is it? The frame is how we perceive the world. In this particular case, we don't just perceive the world as it is because we don't take it everything around us, we don't take all of the multi-levels of meaning that exist out there. It's that we give meaning on it through that frame. This concept of frame analysis, very important, especially when we're talking about social frameworks and especially when we're talking about culture because culture is a frame through which we perceive the world. Linked to this concept of frames is this idea of mental maps. Mental maps is how we perceive the world outside in our heads. We don't necessarily have a map of, for example, if we were walking the city of Madrid, we don't have every single detail of the city. We have an idea that this skyscraper is here, this palace is here, this museum is here in our head. We have things situated in different parts. It's the same thing as when we're talking about other people. We also have an idea of where people fit in our relationships, how they relate to us. What people they are exactly what are images of them are. Therefore, this idea of a mental map is key also when it comes to culture because the same person can be in different places in a mental map depending on how we perceive them through different cultural lights and our relationship to them in that map. Maybe a stronger or weaker, depending again on the definitions of what is a friend or what is not a friend or what is a hierarchy, or what is the authority in that particular culture. Therefore, these first two ideas, we've got the frame analysis, how do we perceive the world? Second, we've got this idea of mental maps. How we have people in our heads and where we've been situated in our relationships, and how we perceive the world in our head. The third point is this concept of the looking-glass self, introduced over 100 years ago by Cooley, and this concept of the looking-glass self is that we also look at ourselves and perceive ourselves based on how we believe other people perceive us. So for example, I might look at myself, hello, how are you? I would judge myself based on how I perceive that society is looking at us. So again, in one society and in one culture, they may perceive who I am in x, y, or z matter. If I go to another culture, that society and that culture will perceive me in a, b, and c matter. Therefore, who we are very often depends on how we perceive other people, perceive us. Maybe you're considered very confident in one culture and the same characteristics is perceived as arrogant in another culture and therefore if that's how we perceive that people perceive us. This will influence our labels and our internal perception of ourselves. We've got these three concepts now we've got framing, how we perceive the world is through a frame. We're not seeing reality as it is. Second, how we perceive the world in our own head when we're imagining it, we've got these mental maps. Third, that very often the way we perceive ourselves depends on how other or we believe other people view us in society, the looking-glass self and then the fourth related idea here is the concept of socialization. Socialization is the process of starting a childhood where we acquired the attitudes and beliefs and the ideas of the society which we're living in. That socialization process happens from the moment we're born, It really takes off in our childhood years, also then continues to happen in our lessons. But it's a combination therefore of how society perceives us, how we believe society perceives us, and then how we perceive the norms, the attitudes, and beliefs of that society, again, thinking about the frame, thinking about the mental map. All of these influence how we perceive the world around us and even how we perceive ourselves. This is how culture, which is one of those frames, which is one of those mental maps, which is one of the parents of the process of socialization, can influence our perception of the world and of ourselves. In later videos, we're going to go into more detail on some of the theories and some of the applications specifically of intercultural communication as one of those frames through which we perceive the world.
