Venturing Into A New Culture – Main Challenges

Cultural exchanges have been around since the dawn of humankind; every new millennium and every new century have enriched them with new layers of meaning and complexity. In the past century, intercultural interactions have taken up speed due to an intricate blend of economic,industrial, social and technological factors. Nevertheless, precisely due to their complexity, these relationships have also been defined by a series of challenges that need to be overcome for efficient and mutually beneficial exchanges to be possible. This paper aims to investigate a series of such communication barriers, as well as the mechanisms through which they operate as threats to smooth intercultural communication in the absence of adequate and valid strategies to fight misunderstandings, ambiguity and confusion when two or more cultures come into contact