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 • useful in identifying
communication is variations in
often more creative communication from
than predictable and group to group and
that reality is not just specifying
external but also psychological and
internally constructed sociological variables
• some methods: not
culturally sensitive
TO OVERCOME THESE KINDS OF
PROBLEMS
• Translation • Conceptual
equivalence: The equivalence: The
linguistic sameness similarity of
that is gained after linguistic terms
translating and and meanings
back-translating across cultures.
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 communities
communication in under investigation - may not
context 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 consciously a mixture
movement that calls of different cultural
for the independence identities and cultural
of colonialized states traditions.
and also liberation • Social reproduction:
from colonialist ways The process of
of thinking. perpetuating cultural
patterns
STRENGTHS AND LIMITATIONS
Strengths Limitations
• Emphasizes the • most critical studies do
power relations not focus on face-to-
face intercultural
• the importance of interaction
social and historical
contexts • not allow for much
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 film or video (e.g., Crash
or Brokeback Mountain) and assume the position of a
researcher. Analyze the cultural meanings in the film 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?