Can food be worth more than a thousand words? Nonverbal and intercultural communicative competence for tourism promotion

INTRODUCTION 
"Spurred by the globalization of human activities and the increasing interface of cul­
tural traditions, we are in the midst of a historically unprecedented scope and pace of 
change" (Kim 2012, p.229). The lives of billions of people are connected with the rest 
of the world in many ways: one may get up in a Swedish bed bought at Ikea, have break­
fast with American cookies, wear Italian clothes, drive a German car, text with a Korean 
mobile phone and arrange a meeting with a Chinese client for 1 Dam, being sure to be 
punctual because of a hand-made Swiss watch; this is the well-known effect of globaliza­
tion. This is the era of a global and constantly interconnected world, which makes peo­
ple able to travel for thousands of kilometers in just a few hours, to reach relatives, have 
relaxing vacations or negotiate to reach business agreements. 
This constant and increasing contact with "the Other" is also leading to its homoge­
nization: the beauty and typicality of an individual and its thoughts and beliefs are re­
duced to a flat and anonymous profile put in the World Wide Web. The Internet is the 
best representation of the pace of change brought by globalization; an individual can 
have access to almost evetything in a velY short period of time and distance is no more a 
concern for the human being. Globalization and the Internet are interconnected, they 
go along with one another making intercultural contact easier, but also preventing indi­
viduals from deeply knowing the "other's" culture. This lack of knowledge leads to mis­
understandings and miscomprehensions, prejudices and stereotypes with the only con­
sequence of corrupting relationships with people of other cultures. 
Here comes the paradox: in a world where people are increasingly interconnected to 
one another, even sharing different cultural backgrounds, the lack of knowledge about 
those backgrounds is increasing, too, and the natutal and logical consequence of all this 
lack of knowledge is misunderstanding, which is dictated by prejudice and ignorance. 
This leads to the will to impose one's own worldview: as a consequence, racism, stigma-
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tization and war occur. People do not want to stop thinking with a different perspective, 
the "Other's" perspective: this would lead to a better communication and to a better 
understanding of the Other's creed, thoughts, beliefs, attitudes and behavior. That is 
Culture. 
To move away from too "philosophical" and abstract subjects, this work will provide 
an overview over the notions of culture and cultural differences, intercultural communi­
cation, nonverbal communication and communicative competence to effectively deal 
with intercultural negotiations and businesses. Companies are increasingly connected 
with the rest of the world, and their success depends on relationships established with 
international interlocutors. Such a communicative competence comes from a deep 
knowledge of the counterpart's culture, which is not simply related to what does he or 
she has for lunch, but with the ways he or she communicates, transmits and shares his or 
her cultural values. Tourism, in particular, is becoming increasingly "cultural": tourists 
do not want to just visit a country to sunbathe or have a sauna in a five-star hotel, but 
they want to discover and taste the local culture. "Taste" is a very good word to refer to 
cultural tourism, because many geographical regions are famous for their food and wine 
products, which could and should be used for tourism promotion and regional devel­
opment. 
In the first chapter the notions of culture, cultural differences and intercultural com­
munication will be explained and widely discussed, by comparing different culture­
classification methods which have been used as a basis by many anthropologists, sociolo­
gists and psychologists ro conduct studies and experiments on cultural differences. One 
of the most famous among those classification methods is the Hofstede's dimensional 
paradigm, which will be taken as a basis in this work. However, those methods (and 
Hofstede's in particular) have been recently criticized as oversimplified, limiting and po­
tentially counterproductive for addressing the complex dimensionaliry and multifaceted 
identities that characterize intercultural interactions in the global context (Son'els 2012). 
In particular, the model has been criticized for its nation-state basis for culture identifi­
cation, its essentialism and its methodological flaws Qack and Phipps 2013). 
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The aim of this work is to provide the most neutral and prejudice-free explanation of 
what dealing and making businesses with different cultures means, and it is therefore 
necessary to state here that the above mentioned classification methods are just used to 
better understand cultural differences and values inherent to those cultures. fu it will be 
pointed out later, one of the main characteristics and skills that a good intercultural 
manager must have is openness: openness to the new, to the unconventional, to the un­
expected, to the "Other" and to the differences. Exploring a new culture should be com­
pared to the discovery of a new world, trying to understand details and shades through 
time and experiences. 
The aim of the second chapter is to analyze intercultural communication from the 
perspective of nonverbal behavior. Every culture has a different way of communication, 
and this implies the existence of differences in nonverbal communication, too. Moreo­
ver, it is important to note that individuals tend to focus more on nonverbal behavior 
than verbal communication (Le., words) when communicating: the latter represents only 
the 7% of the message (obviously considering a common face-to-face interaction be­
tween individuals) (Merhabian 1981). A profound knowledge of cultural differences in 
nonverbal behavior should be the foundation of an intercultural manager's communica­
tive competence, as many judgments during negotiations are based on nonverbal signs, 
e.g. clothing, posture, gestures, space relationships, ete. 
The third chapter will provide the foundation of intercultural communicative com­
petence and a description of the characteristics and skills that an intercultural manager 
should have to work and deal with intercultural interactions and negotiations. The chap­
ter will also provide an analysis of what intercultural training is, and how it should be 
conducted to provide managers with the best intercultural knowledge and experiences. 
The fourth chapter will focus more on tourism, promotion and marketing related to 
regional development and local food and wine products. The aim is to understand how 
the intercultural communicative competence described in the previous chapters could be 
applied to international projects to promote typical wine and food products of a geo­
graphical area internationally. The chapter will also provide a "field" perspective on how 
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companies which deal with tourism promotion orgarnze their marketing strategies to 
promote their "product" (i.e. a particular geographic region and its typical food and 
wine products) to international interlocutors. 
The fifth chapter will present the main research, describing methods, participants and 
the data analysis. The research is aimed at answering some questions about the im­
portance of intercultural communicative competences in international tourism promo­
tion and how some principles of intercultural training - described in Chapter 3 - are ap­
plied by tourism providers. 
AB Jack and Phipps (2013) point out, 
"[ ... J lack of research on naturally occurring intercultural communication in tour­
ist settings is lamentable, not simply because of the potential economic contribu­
tion to be gained from effectively orchestrated interactions, but also because these 
interactions take place in contexts of power and status differentials that reproduce 
symbolic (and economic) inequalities bc[Wccn intcrioclJ(ors in tourism sc(tings" 
(Jack and Phipps 201}, 537). 
In Italy, regional development related to food is an increasing phenomenon (Paolini 
2000) and is usually managed by small- and medium-sized companies which promote 
tourism abroad thanks to typical food and wine products related to a particular geo­
graphical area. International interlocutors are very interested in those products, and the 
"Made in Italy" brand should be used as an ace to raise attractiveness and develop inter­
cultural tourism. Conversely, lack of intercultural competences and communication be­
tween the main "actors" in regional development would lead to a great loss for the coun­
try, not only because of its touristic potential, but also because such a loss would increase 
that negative feeling towards the "Other", that would be relegated to a unknown figure 
to stay away from, just because it is different. 
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CHAPTER 1 
CULTURE AND COMMUNICATION 
We live in an era of frequent, simple and immediate contacts between cultures. Mass 
media (primarily Internet) provide real-time news from all over the world, and there is 
no need to leave the house or office to receive that news: everybody easily gets in contact 
with other cultures by buying an online flight ticket and catching the first flight to their 
favorite destination. This is globalization: in the last decades, this phenomenon has led 
to an increased economic, social and cultural integration. To talk about a global melting 
pot is untimely, maybe utopic: by getting in contact with another culture, it is easy to 
forget that its features, peculiarities, customs and traditions are often different, some­
times totally opposed to one's own culture. 
The first step ro overcome those differences is to establish a dialogue. As is presented 
in the current work, a dialogue is not just passing information from a sender ro a receiv­
er: it is a two-way process, which is conditioned by personal and environmental factors. 
Thus, it is easy ro understand that an ethnocentric approach is not the best way ro estab­
lish a communicative relationship between cultures, because adopting such an approach 
would lead to an own-culture-based judgment (based on the belief that one's own cul­
ture is better than others) towards other cultures. Therefore, the dialogic model is the 
best applied ro intercultural communication, as the receiver is put on the same level as 
the sender. To do that it is important ro acquire substantial intercultural knowledge and 
awareness, in order ro establish a fruitful relationship with another culture, especially 
during crises. 
Culture and communication concepts will be thoroughly analyzed in this chapter. 
Firstly, it is important to properly define the word "culture", which has challenged many 
sociologists (who have tried to give a theoretical definition of "culture") and anthropolo­
gists (who have worked on field research and adopt a more practical approach). Second-
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