THE HISTORY OF THE
STUDY OF INTERCULTURAL
COMMUNICATION
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER OBJECTIVES
• After reading this chapter, you should be able to:
1. Identify four early foci in the development of
intercultural communication.
2. Describe three approaches to the study of intercultural
communication.
3. Identify the methods used within each of the three
approaches.
4. Explain the strengths and weaknesses of each
approach.
5. Identify three characteristics of the dialectical
approach.
6. Explain the strengths of a dialectical approach.
7. Identify six intercultural communication dialectics.
CONTENTS
1. THE EARLY DEVELOPMENT OF THE DISCIPLINE
Nonverbal Communication
Application of Theory
An Emphasis on International Settings
An Interdisciplinary Focus
2. PERCEPTION AND WORLDVIEW OF THE RESEARCHER
3. THREE APPROACHES TO STUDYING INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION
The Social Science Approach
The Interpretive Approach
The Critical Approach
4. A DIALECTICAL APPROACH TO UNDERSTANDING CULTURE AND
COMMUNICATION
Combining the Three Traditional Paradigms:
The Dialectical Approach
Six Dialectics of Intercultural Communication
Keeping a Dialectical Perspective
Why should you study how the field of intercultural
communication got started?
=> To understand the contemporary approaches to
this discipline, it’s important to examine its historical
and philosophical foundations
1. THE EARLY DEVELOPMENT OF THE
DISCIPLINE
The roots of the study of intercultural communication
can be traced to the post–World War II era, when the
United States increasingly came to dominate the
world stage.
1.1 NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION
Nonverbal communication varies from culture to
culture
The importance of nonverbal communication and
applied linguistic frameworks to investigate nonverbal
aspects of communication.
EXAMPLE
• Proxemics: how people use personal space to
communicate
• Distance zones: intimate, personal, social, and
public
1.2 APPLICATION OF THEORY
Cross-cultural training: Guide people about variations
in cultural behavior.
Diversity training: among members of various gender,
ethnic, and racial group.
1.3 AN EMPHASIS ON INTERNATIONAL
SETTINGS
• Originally the culture was defined in terms of
“nationality.”
• scholars mistakenly compared middle-class U.S.
citizens with all residents of other nations
• focus on helping middle-class professionals
become successful overseas.
1.4 AN INTERDISCIPLINARY FOCUS
• Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: The assumption that
language shapes our ideas and guides our view of
social reality.
• Intercultural competence: The ability to behave
effectively and appropriately in interacting across
cultures. intercultural competence The ability to
behave effectively and appropriately in
2. PERCEPTION AND WORLDVIEW OF
THE RESEARCHER
• Paradigm: A framework that serves as the
worldview of researchers. Different paradigms
assume different interpretations of reality, human
behavior, culture, and communication.
• Perception: The process by which individuals select,
organize, and interpret external and internal stimuli
to create their view of the world.
3. THREE APPROACHES TO STUDYING
INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION
• (1) the social science (or functionalist) approach,
• (2) the interpretive approach,
• (3) the critical approach
3. 1 THE SOCIAL SCIENCE APPROACH
• = Functionalist approach
Based on the assumptions that:
(1) there is a describable, external reality,
(2) human behaviors are predictable
(3) culture is a variable that can be measured.
• The approach aims: To identify and explain
cultural variations in communication and to
predict future communication.
• Quantitative methods: Research methods that use
numerical indicators to capture and ascertain the
relationships among variables. These methods use
survey and observation.
• Variable: A concept that varies by existing in
different types or different amounts and that can
be operationalized and measured. variable A
concept that varies by existing in different types or
different amounts and that can be
operationalized and measured.
Some approaches
• Individualistic The tendency to emphasize
individual identities, beliefs, needs, goals,
and views rather than those of the group.
• Collectivistic: The tendency to focus on the
goals, needs, and views of the in group
rather than individuals’ own goals, needs,
and views.
• Anxiety uncertainty management theory:
The view that the reduction of anxiety and
uncertainty plays an important role in
successful intercultural communication,
particularly when experiencing new cultures.
• Face negotiation theory: The view that
cultural groups vary in preferences for
conflict styles and face-saving strategies.
• Conversational constraints theory: The
view that cultural groups vary in their
fundamental concerns regarding how
conversational messages should be
constructed.
• Diffusion of innovations theory: The view
that communication and relationships
play important roles in how new ideas are
adopted (or not) by individuals and
groups.
Applications
It may be difficult to understand the
various meanings of the aftermath of
Hurricane Katrina.
In this photo, people are trying to make
their way to safety while the National
Guard comes into New Orleans. How
would you study the meanings of
Katrina? What kinds of questions can
you ask from each paradigm? What
kinds of questions can’t be asked from
each paradigm?
STRENGTHS AND LIMITATIONS
Limitations Strengths
• human communication • useful in identifying
is often more creative variations in
than predictable and communication from
that reality is not just group to group and
external but also specifying
internally constructed psychological and
• some methods: not sociological variables
culturally sensitive
TO OVERCOME THESE KINDS OF
PROBLEMS
• Translation • Conceptual
equivalence: The equivalence: The
linguistic sameness similarity of linguistic
that is gained after terms and meanings
translating and across cultures.
back-translating
research materials
several times using
different translators.
3.2 THE INTERPRETIVE APPROACH
• Aims: to understand and describe human behavior
based on the assumptions that:
(1) human experience is subjective
(2) human behavior is creative rather than
determined or easily predicted
(3) culture is created and maintained through
communication
Some approaches
• Qualitative methods: Research methods that
attempt to capture people’s own meanings
for their everyday behavior in specific
contexts. These methods use participant
observation and field studies.
• Participant observation: A research method
where investigators interact extensively with
the cultural group being studied.
• Rhetorical approach: A research method, dating
back to ancient Greece, in which scholars try to
interpret the meanings or persuasion used in texts or
oral discourses in the contexts in which they occur.
• Etic: A term stemming from phonetic. The etic
inquiry searches for universal generalizations across
cultures from a distance.
• Emic: A term stemming from phonemic. The emic
way of inquiry focuses on understanding
communication patterns from inside a particular
cultural community or context.
Applications
STRENGTHS AND LIMITATIONS
Strengths Limitations
• Provides an in-depth • There are few interpretivist
studies of intercultural
understanding of communication
communication • Not studied what happens
patterns when two groups come in
contact with each other
• it emphasizes
• the researchers often are
investigating outsiders to the
communication in communities under
context investigation - may not
represent accurately the
communication patterns of
members of that
community
3.3 THE CRITICAL APPROACH
A metatheoretical approach that includes
many assumptions of the interpretive
approach but that focuses more on
macrocontexts, such as the political and
social structures that infuence
communication.
FOCUS ON:
• Macrocontexts: The
political, social, and
historical situations,
backgrounds, and
environments that
influence
communication
• Textual analysis:
Examination of cultural
texts such as
media—television,
movies, journalistic
essays, and so on.
• Postcolonialism: An • Hybrid identity: An
intellectual, political, identity that is
and cultural movement consciously a mixture of
that calls for the different cultural
independence of identities and cultural
colonialized states and traditions.
also liberation from • Social reproduction:
colonialist ways of The process of
thinking. perpetuating cultural
patterns
STRENGTHS AND LIMITATIONS
Strengths Limitations
• Emphasizes the power • most critical studies do not
relations focus on face-to-face
intercultural interaction
• the importance of
social and historical • not allow for much
contexts empirical data
4. A DIALECTICAL APPROACH TO UNDERSTANDING
CULTURE AND COMMUNICATION
An approach to intercultural communication that
integrates three approaches-functionalist (or social
science), interpretive, and critical-in understanding
culture and communication. It recognizes and
accepts that the three approaches are
interconnected and sometimes contradictory.
COMBINING THE THREE TRADITIONAL
PARADIGMS:
1. The Dialectical Approach
2. Six Dialectics of Intercultural Communication
3. Keeping a Dialectical Perspective
4.1 THE DIALECTICAL APPROACH
• The social science, interpretive, and critical approaches
operate in interconnected and sometimes
contradictory ways
Processual: Refers to how interaction happens rather than
to the outcome.
Dialectic:
(1) A method of logic based on the principle that an idea
generates its opposite, leading to a reconciliation of
the opposites;
(2) the complex and paradoxical relationship between
two opposite qualities or entities, each of which may
also be referred to as a dialectic.
4.2 SIX DIALECTICS OF INTERCULTURAL
COMMUNICATION
1. Cultural–Individual Dialectic
2. Personal–Contextual Dialectic
3. Differences–Similarities Dialectic
4. Static–Dynamic Dialectic
5. History/Past–Present/Future Dialectic
6. Privilege–Disadvantage Dialectic
4.3 KEEPING A DIALECTICAL
PERSPECTIVE
• Combines the three traditional approaches:
- social science
- Interpretive
- critical
=> to consider in understanding intercultural
communication: culture, communication, context,
and power
PRACTICE
• Analyzing Cultural Patterns. Find a text or speech that
discusses some intercultural or cultural issues, and
analyze the cultural patterns present in the text.
Consider, for example, the “I Have a Dream” speech by
Martin Luther King, Jr. (Andrews & Zarefsky, 1992), or
Chief Seattle’s 1854 speech (Low, 1995).
• Analyzing a Video. View a feature lm or video (e.g.,
Crash or Brokeback Mountain) and assume the
position of a researcher. Analyze the cultural meanings
in the lm from each of the three perspectives: social
science, interpretive, and critical. What cultural patterns
(related to nationality, ethnicity, gender, and class) do
you see? What does each perspective reveal? What
does each one fail to reveal?