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CHAPTER 2
THE HISTORY OF THE STUDY OF INTERCULTURAL
COMMUNICATION
MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTIONS
1. How did Edward T. Hall contribute to the origins of intercultural communication?
a. Hall developed a technology that increased our ability to communicate with people in other
cultures.
b. Hall explored the relationship between a person’s national identity and values orientations.
c. Hall helped describe the relationship between language learning and conflict.
d. Hall identified and wrote about cultural differences in nonverbal communication.
2. Which of the following is true of the development of the intercultural communication area of
study?
a. It originated with scholars looking for practical answers to help overseas workers.
b. This area of study is almost the same as the research done in the field of sociology.
c. It began as a result of people’s displeasure over the foreign relations concerning the Vietnam
conflict.
d. The primary goal of scholars was to develop theories that described intercultural
communication processes.
3. Researchers who use the _____ approach to studying intercultural communication are
interested not only in understanding human behavior but also in changing the lives of everyday
communicators.
a. rhetorical
b. interpretive
c. critical
d. functionalist
4. Which of the following approaches to studying intercultural communication assumes
that human behavior is predictable and that culture is a variable that can be measured?
a. the functionalist approach
b. the interpretive approach
c. the critical approach
d. None of the answers is correct.
5. Which of the following is primarily used in the critical approach to studying intercultural
communication?
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a. field studies and observations
b. questionnaires and observations
c. textual analysis of media
d. interviews and experiments
6. The social science approach to studying intercultural communication is also called the:
a. variable approach.
b. qualitative approach.
c. functionalist approach.
d. collectivist approach.
7. Researchers using a critical perspective attempt to explain:
a. how macrocontexts such as political structures influence communication.
b. how specific cultural differences might predict communication conflicts.
c. intercultural communication by providing in-depth descriptions of cultural patterns.
d. variations in communication strategies used by people from different cultures.
8. One limitation of the social science approach to studying intercultural communication is:
a. the potential to place too much focus on the historical and political contexts while ignoring the
relationships between the people being studied.
b. the lack of empirical measures for assessing communication strategies.
c. the possibility that the methods used in this approach are not culturally sensitive.
d. the inability to compare communication interactions between different cultural groups.
9. The goal of the _____ approach to studying intercultural communication is to predict
specifically how culture influences communication.
a. critical
b. interpretive
c. rhetorical
d. social science
10. The study of how people use personal space is called:
a. pathetics.
b. psychology.
c. linguistics.
d. proxemics.
11. Which dialectic of intercultural communication addresses the fact that some of our cultural
patterns are constant and some are shifting?
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a. history/past–present/future dialectic
b. differences–similarities dialectic
c. static–dynamic dialectic
d. privilege–disadvantage dialectic
12. Which of the following might explain why early intercultural researchers paid little attention
to intercultural communication in domestic contexts?
a. Most of the researchers had international intercultural experience.
b. They were disinterested in studying conflicts.
c. Most felt that this research would involve a violation of personal ethics.
d. There were no research instruments designed for use in domestic studies.
13. The privilege–disadvantage dialectic recognizes that:
a. all people are disadvantaged in most contexts.
b. all people are advantaged if they decide to be.
c. some people are disadvantaged in some contexts and neutral in others.
d. some people are disadvantaged in some contexts and privileged in other contexts.
14. _____ are underlying assumptions about the nature of reality and human behavior.
a. Proxemics
b. Dialectics
c. Worldviews
d. Macrocontexts
15. Gudykunst’s studies based on individualistic versus collectivist values that explain how
communication styles vary from culture to culture are an example of:
a. critical research.
b. rhetorical research.
c. interpretive research.
d. social science research.
16. Which of the following is an example of emic research?
a. researching the communication strategies people in India use to show respect
b. researching the differences in the management styles of Japanese and German managers
c. researching how emotions are understood cross-culturally
d. researching similarities in the child-rearing styles of Samoan and Tongan mothers
17. Which of the following is true of Asante’s notion of Afrocentricity?
CHAPTER 2 The History Of The Study Of Intercultural Communication
a. All scholarly studies in communication should be based on African instead of European
research perspectives.
b. People of African descent value nature over human beings.
c. People of African descent value communalism.
d. Descriptions of the communication rules of given people must be grounded in the beliefs and
values of that particular group.
18. Researchers who assume that their research can help people resist forces of power and
oppression represent the _____ approach to studying intercultural communication.
a. social science
b. interpretive approach
c. functionalist approach
d. critical approach
19. An intellectual, political, and cultural movement calling for the independence of colonized
states is:
a. accommodation.
b. postcolonialism.
c. paradigm.
d. processual.
20. If we attempted to study intercultural communication without considering the perspective of
the critical approach, we would miss:
a. understanding how specific cultural differences might predict communication outcomes.
b. the role of history in our present intercultural interactions.
c. the knowledge about specific behaviors in a culture that should be used to show respect.
d. an understanding of how the cultural patterns of a specific culture reflect cultural values.
21. The process of perpetuating cultural patterns is called:
a. processual.
b. social reproduction.
c. collectivist.
d. cross-cultural training.
22. Which of the following is NOT true about a dialectical perspective?
a. It emphasizes the processual character of understanding intercultural communication.
b. It involves holding contradictory ideas simultaneously.
c. It emphasizes the relational aspect of intercultural communication study.
d. It emphasizes the static and objective aspects of intercultural communication.
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23. Young Yun Kim and Kelly McKay-Semmler (2013) measured Asian and European
immigrants’ use of social media and e-mail to communicate with people from their own country
and also with Americans. Based on the integrative theory of adaptation, they predicted and found
that:
a. immigrants’ degree of acculturation in the United States did not influence their perceptions of
racial discrimination.
b. immigrants who directly and actively engaged with people in their own country were happier
and adapted easily to the new culture.
c. the more immigrants communicated with people in the United States, the better adapted they
were to the U.S. culture.
d. online connections replaced direct interpersonal communication with U.S. Americans.
24. The _____, developed by communication scholar Everett Rogers, explains how cultural
practices can be changed—largely due to communication.
a. diffusion of innovations theory
b. face negotiation theory
c. communication accommodation theory
d. conversational constraints theory
Ans: a
SHORT ANSWER QUESTIONS
For each discipline below, select the letter that identifies its contribution to the study of
intercultural communication.
a. information about stereotypes and prejudice and how they influence our communication
b. the meaning of culture, its role in our lives, and its influence on the perspectives of researchers
c. a conceptualization of the relationship between language and culture
25. anthropology
26. psychology
27. linguistics
28. The interpretive perspective assumes the existence of an external reality that can be described
by researchers.
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written consent of McGraw-Hill Education.
Ans: F
29. Hall suggests that different cultural groups have different rules for personal space and that
these affect intercultural communication.
30. The strength of the interpretive approach to studying intercultural communication is that it
provides an in-depth understanding of communication patterns in particular cultural
communities.
31. The training that is meant to facilitate intercultural communication among various gender,
ethnic, and racial groups in the United States is called cross-cultural training.
32. Early intercultural communication research was dictated by the needs of middle-class U.S.
professionals conducting business overseas.
33. Experiences of the U.S. government and business personnel working overseas after World
War II suggest that language training alone is a sufficient form of preparation for working in
foreign countries.
34. The social science, interpretive, and critical perspectives to studying intercultural
communication are contradictory and cannot be connected in ways that help us better understand
social reality.
35. The assumption that language shapes our ideas and guides our view of social reality is called
the Gudykunst hypothesis.
36. The dialectical perspective to intercultural communication research and practice suggests that
people are either privileged or disadvantaged depending on the culture to which they belong.
37. The goal of researchers who study human behavior from the interpretive perspective is to
explain and predict human behavior.
38. The ability to behave effectively and appropriately when interacting across cultures is called
intercultural competence.
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39. Interdisciplinary means integrating knowledge from different areas of study in conducting
research and constructing theory.
40. Researchers are able to prevent their own cultural biases from affecting their intercultural
research.
41. Worldviews have little influence on the approach researchers take to studying intercultural
communication.
42. One contribution of anthropologists to the study of intercultural communication is an
understanding of the role of culture in our lives.
43. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis suggests that cultures vary in the meanings they assign to
nonverbal behaviors.
44. Ethnography of communication is a quantitative method used to identify cultural patterns of
oppression.
45. The similarity of linguistic terms and meanings across cultures is called conceptual
equivalence.
46. Scholars’ cultural beliefs and experiences influence them to focus on particular areas of the
world and not others, resulting in academic “silent zones,” where there is little study of cultural
communication.
47. William B. Gudykunst proposed the face negotiation theory that attempts to explain how and
why people make particular conversational choices.
48. The critical approach to studying intercultural communication is a research method in which
scholars try to interpret the meanings or persuasion used in texts or oral discourses in the
contexts in which they occur.
Ans: F
ESSAY QUESTIONS
49. Describe the difference between etic and emic research perspectives.
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50. How has the practical focus, from which the field of intercultural communication originated,
51. Choose one of the three approaches to studying intercultural communication, and describe
the limitations of this approach.
52. Create an argument advocating the dialectical approach to studying intercultural
communication.
53. What is one of the challenges of using the dialectical approach to studying intercultural
communication?
54. What are some of the contributions to the study of intercultural communication made by
anthropologists?
55. Identify and explain two of the dialectics of intercultural communication.