Intercultural Communication in the Global Village: How to Understand “The Other”

Intercultural communication scholarship is poised to be a powerful force in the communication field as well as social sciences in general. In this paper, we focus on four main areas which we hope will spur creative academic inquiry in the future. More productive efforts will move beyond the ethnocentrism that permeates current communication research and will entail a thorough redefinition of personhood. Future work will move beyond discussions of how cultures assimilate to include how other cultures interact in a host culture to sustain multiple cultural identities. Additionally, research will move beyond examining linguistic and cultural differences, to also recognize the social-action nature of communication. Finally, future endeavors will move beyond the study of culture-typed identities and question the very notion of cultural boundaries. We predict that the inevitable challenges posed by multiculturalism will allow intercultural communication studies to play a more central role as an interdisciplinary “clearing-house” within the social sciences.

[1]  R. D'amico.  Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison , 1978, Telos.

[2]  J. Berry.  Social psychology: Comparative, societal and universal. , 1978 .

[3]  M. Segall.  Cross-Cultural Psychology: Human Behavior in Global Perspective , 1979 .

[4]  Malcolm R. Parks.  Ideology in Interpersonal Communication: Off the Couch and into the World , 1981 .

[5]  J. Dyal,et al.  Acculturation, stress and coping: Some implications for research and education , 1981 .

[6]  William B. Gudykunst,et al.  Communicating With Strangers: An Approach to Intercultural Communication , 1984 .

[7]  A. Kellerman,et al.  The Constitution of Society : Outline of the Theory of Structuration , 2015 .

[8]  E. Sampson.  The debate on individualism: Indigenous psychologies of the individual and their role in personal and societal functioning. , 1988 .

[9]  J. Phinney.  Ethnic identity in adolescents and adults: review of research. , 1990, Psychological bulletin.

[10]  H. Markus,et al.  Culture and the self: Implications for cognition, emotion, and motivation. , 1991 .

[11]  Karl Erik Rosengren,et al.  From Field to Frog Ponds , 1993 .

[12]  A. Klein.  Meeting the Great Bliss Queen: Buddhists, Feminists, and the Art of the Self , 1994 .

[13]  W J Brown,et al.  Culture, self, and collectivist communication: linking culture to individual behavior. , 1995, Human communication research.

[14]  R. Young.  Intercultural communication : pragmatics, genealogy, deconstruction , 1996 .

[15]  William B. Gudykunst,et al.  The Influence of Cultural Individualism-Collectivism, Self Construals, and Individual Values on Communication Styles Across Cultures , 1996 .

[16]  M. Brewer,et al.  Who is this "We"? Levels of collective identity and self representations. , 1996 .

[17]  J. Hunter,et al.  Individual‐vs. culture‐level dimensions of individualism and collectivism: Effects on preferred conversational styles , 1996 .

[18]  C. Fox.  The authenticity of intercultural communication , 1997 .

[19]  INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION: SELECTED EPISTEMOLOGICAL TRAITS THROUGH SOME OF ITS THEORIES, CONCEPTS, DIMENSIONS AND METHODOLOGY 1 , 1997 .

[20]  J. Berry,et al.  Cross-cultural psychology as a scholarly discipline: On the flowering of culture in behavioral research. , 1998 .

[21]  A. Lillard,et al.  Ethnopsychologies: cultural variations in theories of mind. , 1998, Psychological bulletin.

[22]  R. Diaz-loving,et al.  The Indigenisation of Psychology: Birth of a New Science or Rekindling of an Old One? , 1999 .

[23]  B R Hasselkus,et al.  Habits of the heart. , 2000, The American journal of occupational therapy : official publication of the American Occupational Therapy Association.

[24]  C. Coon.  Culture Wars and the Global Village : A Diplomat's Perspective , 2000 .

[25]  John W. Wilson,et al.  Will and Power: Towards Radical Intercultural Communication Research and Pedagogy1 , 2001 .

[26]  R. Bhagat.  Culture's Consequences: Comparing Values, Behaviors, Institutions, and Organizations Across Nations , 2002 .

[27]  Min-Sun Kim,et al.  Non-Western Perspectives on Human Communication: Implications for Theory and Practice , 2002 .

[28]  M. Fougère,et al.  Development and Modernity in Hofstede's Culture's Consequences , 2006 .

[29]  Min-Sun Kim.  Our Culture, Their Culture and Beyond: Further Thoughts on Ethnocentrism in Hofstede's Discourse , 2007 .

[30]  M. Fougère,et al.  The Construction of the Modern West and the Backward Rest: Studying the Discourse of Hofstede's Culture's Consequences , 2007 .

[31]  Robert T. Craig.  Issue Forum Introduction: Cultural Bias in Communication Theory , 2007 .

[32]  The Four Cultures of Cultural Research , 2007 .