Using Ubuntu: A New Research Trend for Developing Effective Communication across Cultural Barriers

Research in language and communication provides great challenges in this culturally intermingled world. Communicating effectively across cultural and geographic boundaries carries inherent and often subtle barriers. Enhancing communication requires an individual or group to understand the basic underlying concepts upon which the language and communication practices depend; these concepts also serve as the basic elements for developing various social structures. Utilizing the complex interconnections between language and communication and these various related sub-fields relies on recognizing the world view concepts that underlie these connections. This paper explores what knowledge or understanding is required for effective communication across cultural differences. Using a research synthesis, this paper presents one specific world view construct, Ubuntu, which exists across broad societies in Africa, and which undergirds the interconnections that relate language and communication to the social structure in the societies. Analysis of Ubuntu illustrates the significance of cultural world view to the establishment of individual and group identity and to the practice of communicating cultural and natural boundaries