| Beijing,as the host city,along with its Olympic committee,has successfully held the 24th Winter Olympic Games from February 4 to February 20,2022.People worldwide gathered together and jointly celebrated this "simple,safe,and wonderful" ice and snow feast.Especially volunteers from China were instrumental in promoting this meaningful international event.Every major international sports event is a gathering of sports competitions and a cultural and communication event.More importantly,the 24th Beijing Winter Olympic Games and Winter Paralympic Games are also major landmark events in the development of China’s history.The year 2022 played a significant role when China was building a moderately prosperous society,achieving the first 100-year goal and moving towards the second 100-year goal,milestones for developing human society in China and the world.Admittedly,China’s volunteer service system has gradually developed and grown,holding major international sports events since the 11th Asian Games in 1990.It is an indisputable fact that the volunteer group’s ability to cross-cultural communication could have been more to be desired.The committee needed to have developed the volunteers’communication system to increase their intercultural competence and cultivation.For instance,they should complete pre-training on communications studies and add more fuel to academic research on developing volunteers’ intercultural communication systems.Volunteer refers to participants who volunteer to participate in activities of social welfare nature.The United Nations Volunteers Organization(UNV),founded in 1970,defines it as"an activist who voluntarily performs services in the public interest without obtaining any benefit,money,fame or fortune." In addition to voluntarianism,non-compensation,public welfare and altruism,the professional-oriented nature of cultural communication has endowed voluntary service subjects with more diversified service contents.The voluntary service has become an important force to adjust social structure as well as social relations.At its roots,volunteerism comes from the Latin VALO or VELLE,which translates as"hope,determination,or desire." Its essence is "services provided by anyone who voluntarily contributes his time and energy to promote human development,social progress,and social welfare undertakings without compensation."American scholars define volunteerism as a kind of "productive labor" from the perspective of sociology,claiming that volunteers do voluntary labor for free because of their benevolent behaviors such as "fraternity,generosity,compassion,and sense of justice."In general speaking,the nature of volunteer work is a kind of functional service communication.The staff carrying out voluntary services are responsible for uploading and transmitting the information and messages applied in the competition system,and coordinating with various departments to connect the venues inside and outside the venues,so as to ensure the operation of the whole competition.Around the world,the classification and cultivation of volunteers vary.In Japan,sports volunteers are divided into sports meeting volunteers and community volunteers,who provide services during major sports events and daily community sports team guidance services respectively.In the United States,the service learning theory,which emerged in the 1980s,dominated the volunteerism culture of American society at that time,aiming at improving the moral and ethical level of volunteers.In the following two decades,the new educational practice model combining volunteer service and academic research has become mainstream.Society tends to encourage students to "serve while learning" and enhance their self-cognition and social and cultural cognition in practical activities.In addition,volunteerism in the West has a close historical relationship with charity and public welfare religions such as poverty relief.Since the end of the 20th century,voluntary organizations in Britain have changed from an auxiliary sector of social welfare to a major component of social structure.Focusing on China,volunteer services for the Beijing Winter Olympics cover the work categories of early volunteers,test event volunteers,games volunteers,and city volunteers.Among them,the volunteers mainly provide services in more than 40 business fields,such as venue cooperation,transportation,technology,media operation,language service,sports competition,and award etiquette.Specifically speaking,the work practice of Winter Olympics volunteers is also a cross-cultural communication behavior.Edward T.Hall,an American anthropologist,once proposed that "culture is communication." He believes that communication and interaction are the core of the cultural field and the origin of all things.At the same time,communication is also the internal tension of culture.Specifically speaking,the work practice of Winter Olympics volunteers is also a cross-cultural communication behavior.Edward T.Hall,an American anthropologist,once proposed that "culture is communication." He believes that communication and interaction are the core of the cultural field and the origin of all things.At the same time,communication is also the internal tension of culture,which "is the process of creating,modifying and transforming a shared culture." The Beijing Winter Olympics has welcomed participants from 91 different countries and regions.The Voice of the Olympic Games not only comes from the passionate clash of more than 2,000 athletes on the field but also brings together political leaders,officials of major international organizations,and distinguished guests outside the field in the lounge,backstage and administrative places.In the public field of the Winter Olympics,different language symbols,different cultures,and civilizations are interwoven,and the communication subjects jointly construct a common meaning space with the Olympic spirit.The Winter Olympics volunteers witnessed and experienced the spread of culture and culture in the process of the games.Although they are not the protagonists of the sports competition attracting much attention,they are the practitioners of cross-cultural communication with diverse subjectivity in the feast of cross-cultural communication.This paper first expounds on the research background,purpose,and significance of this topic.It defines and summarizes the research object in detail,that is,the volunteer group of the Winter Olympics with the nature of service.In addition,through the literature review of the research status of this topic at home and abroad,it is found that there are very few relevant foreign studies,and domestic studies on the intercultural communication of volunteers for large-scale competitions are relatively loose and random.With the development of the global village,intercultural communication skills are increasingly essential in today’s society.Case by case,what kind of intercultural skills should service-oriented communication actors possess?Especially in the context of an international sports event like the Olympics.What should volunteers do in order to enhance communication?Are there any relevant research and practice models that can help construct such competencies to maximize the effectiveness of cross-cultural communication of the volunteer group?This paper holds that cross-cultural communication competence applies to the application of practical interaction scenarios such as interpersonal communication,focusing on the communication attributes and cultural identity of individual subjectivity,and intercultural communication competence is a broader skill based on this.It is more inclined to evaluate the communication ability of an organization member,and compare the mass communication practitioners and international communication communicators and other behavioral levels,which is a reasonable reorganization,organic integration and hybridization of cross-cultural communication ability.This ability is based on the cognitive-attitudinal behavior theory:(1)inter-cultural literacy,which is evaluated according to whether the inter-cultural knowledge system is complete,whether the media literacy is available,and the degree of inter-cultural information discrimination and application;(2)inter-cultural attitudes,as well as awareness of globalization and empathy;(3)Inter-cultural communication power,namely inter-cultural environment adaptability,inter-cultural context building power,cultural communication practice activity power.This paper explored the construction of intercultural competence for volunteer service groups in major international sports events.The author first combined qualitative and quantitative research methods such as textual analysis,survey,and case study methods to investigate,thereby collecting 15 interview cases.Those interviewers were from five universities in Beijing and Hebei,who were also from different volunteer departments.Besides,to improve the academic rationality of this study,this paper was also inspired by the author’s volunteering experience as an Olympic Family Assistant.Through the analysis of this assessment,it is found that volunteers have a shallow understanding of inter-cultural communication ability,and are unable to hold correct cognition towards specific cross-cultural conflicts encountered in volunteer service practice.This paper believes that the urgent task of this research is to track the root causes of cultural conflicts and distinguish the essence of civilization and culture,to avoid volunteers confusing civilization and culture.Misjudge an event that is essentially a cultural conflict into an argument about the elements of civilization on the surface,and eventually fall into an awkward cycle of irrelevant remarks.In conclusion,this paper finds that in international large-scale sports events in a multicultural context,service-oriented communication subjects,such as the whole volunteer group,should construct cross-cultural communication capabilities from the following dimensions.They are individual subject communication,event organization communication,mass communication,and international communication.More specifically,the volunteer group should first focus on cultivating intercultural communication skills.For example,volunteers should prepare relevant knowledge in advance and learn how to do organizational negotiation when coping with conflicts.They also need to increase their ability to intercultural communication.For management-level communication,they should follow the trajectory and rules of organizational communication and develop a practical and malleable intercultural communication policy system and training manual by starting from various forms of communication,such as downward transmission,upward transmission,and parallel transmission.Additionally,in today’s era of intelligent communication,new information communication technologies such as artificial intelligence,big data,cloud computing,and 5G communication,and new expressions of cultural symbols and other means of mass communication should be flexibly applied to help people correctly perceive cultural conflicts and break through the barriers of cultural barriers,to promote the mutual appreciation and cultural integration of civilizations inside and outside the sports arena.Besides,when it comes to international communication,it should be based on a theoretical analysis of the framework of the overarching policy agenda.It should be shaped into an inclusive image of the host country from the perspectives of the Chinese program’s concept of communication,image communication,and foreign propaganda. |
PDF Full Text Request