Intercultural miscommunication and misattributions often underline intercultural conflict. Individuals coming from two distinctively different cultural backgrounds have unlike value assumptions, expectations, and verbal and nonverbal communication habits. Intercultural conflict is the supposed or actual incompatibility of values, norms, processes, or goals between two different cultures over content, identity, relational, and procedural issues. While everyday intercultural conflicts are often based on cultural ignorance or misunderstanding, it is obvious that not all intercultural conflicts are based on miscommunication or the lack of understanding. Some intercultural conflicts are based on deep-rooted hatred, and century old rivalry. However, a majority of everyday conflicts that we encounter can be traced to cultural miscommunication or ignorance.
There are many factors that affect intercultural miscommunication, some of which are: different communication norms, and different communication styles. Through this we can see that what is considered acceptable behavior in one culture is not always true of another. We are under the assumption that because we speak the English language, all cultures that share our mother tongue will understand and behave like we do this is far removed from the truth, and in many cases travelers to foreign countries fall into the miscommunication trap. One just needs to travel to a country like Australia to see this first hand. Australia is an English speaking country but over the years Australians have developed a verbal dialect that in some cases sounds Chinese to non-Australians. This is also true for non-verbal communication and a good example of this is "the hand" in Greece. In most country holding out your hand with your fingers spread means "stop" but in Greece it is seen as extremely rude.
To explore the issue of intercultural miscommunication, we can use different value-based dimension such as individualism-collectivism and power-distance.
