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Chapter 12: Striving for Engaged and Effective Intercultural Communication
Chapter 12
Striving for Engaged and Effective Intercultural
Communication
Learning Objectives
• Describe various ways one can enter into intercultural dialogue.
• Identify strategies for building coalitions across cultures.
• Understand the relationship between social justice and intercultural competence.
• Identify and describe specific strategies for working for social justice.
• Explain the role of forgiveness in intercultural communication.
• Conscious incompetence
• Cosmopolitan communication
• D.I.E. exercise
• Empathy
• Intercultural alliances
• Self-knowledge
• Tolerance for ambiguity
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Chapter 12: Striving for Engaged and Effective Intercultural Communication
• Transpection
• Unconscious competence
• Unconscious incompetence
Detailed Chapter Outline
issues in competence.
o Finally, people continue their dialectical perspective, combining individual and
contextual elements to offer specific suggestions for improving intercultural relations
by building alliances and coalitions across cultures.
I. The Components of Competence
contextualize these components and examine their usefulness in the contemporary
global world (Collier, 2005; Sorrells, 2014).
• Again, it is useful to remember the dialectical perspective.
o Intercultural communication competence may rely on individual competence, but
context is also important.
• Why might people not be motivated to engage in intercultural communication? One
reason is that members of large, powerful groups often think they don’t need to know
much about other cultures; there is simply no incentive.
o If people aren’t motivated to communicate with others, it probably doesn’t matter
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Chapter 12: Striving for Engaged and Effective Intercultural Communication
what other skills they possess.
o Sometimes people can become motivated to learn about other cultures and to
communicate interculturally.
• A second reason that people aren’t motivated is because intercultural communication
circumstances have resulted in communication breakdowns.
• It doesn’t matter how good a communicator one is if one is not motivated to use those
communication skills.
• Aside from reasons that motivation might be decreased, people should also think about
the ways that motivation might be increased.
o Other-knowledge, or knowledge about how other people think and behave, will
also help individuals be a more effective communicator.
o Linguistic knowledge is another important aspect of intercultural competence.
• Many attitudes contribute to intercultural communication competence, including
tolerance for ambiguity, empathy, and nonjudgmentalism.
o Empathy refers to the ability to know what it’s like to “walk in another person’s
shoes.”
o Magoroh Maruyama (1970), an anthropologist-philosopher, agrees that achieving
cross-cultural empathy and trying to see the world exactly as the other person sees
is very difficult.
o The D.I.E. exercise is helpful in developing a nonjudgmental attitude (Wendt,
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Chapter 12: Striving for Engaged and Effective Intercultural Communication
1984).
▪ It involves making a distinction between description (D), interpretation (I),
and evaluation (E) in the processing of information.
• Behaviors and skills are another component of intercultural competence.
• Some of these general behaviors seem applicable to many cultural groups and contexts.
o At the level of conscious incompetence, people realize that things may not be
going very well in the interaction, but they are not sure why.
o The authors’ instructions focus on analytic thinking and learning. This describes
the level of conscious competence. Reaching this level is a necessary part of the
process of becoming a competent communicator.
B. Interpretive Perspective: Competence in Contexts
• Intercultural communication happens in many contexts.
• An interpretive perspective reminds people that a good communicator is sensitive to
these contexts.
o In one research project the authors asked European American and Latino students
contexts (Rosenberg, Richard, Lussier, & Abdool, 2006).
• The authors have emphasized that many contexts can influence intercultural
communication.
o For instance, by focusing only on the historical context, one may overlook the
relational context; by emphasizing the cultural context, one may be ignoring the
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Chapter 12: Striving for Engaged and Effective Intercultural Communication
communities and contexts.
C. Critical Perspective: Competence for Whom?
• A critical perspective reminds people that individuals’ competence must be viewed
within larger political, economic, and historical forces.
U.S. researchers using data from white U.S. respondents and noted that
individuals of historically marginalized identities (women, ethnic/racial
minorities, gays)—no matter their demonstrating “competent” behaviors as
defined by traditional measures of competence—in some contexts are never
viewed as competent (Willis, 2011; Yep, 2000).
competence.
II. Applying Knowledge about Intercultural Communication
• A comprehensive approach to competence that does this is the notion of cosmopolitan
communication (CC) (Sobré-Denton, 2011; Sobré-Denton & Bardhan, 2013).
o CC emphasizes many of the elements that has already been described: empathy,
• To recognize and embrace one’s connectedness even to people who are different from
one, one has to engage in true dialogue.
• A central notion of dialogue is sharing and reciprocity.
o Communication scholars Starosta and Chen (2005) suggest that a focus on mutual
listening, instead of talking, forms the core of successful intercultural dialogue.
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Chapter 12: Striving for Engaged and Effective Intercultural Communication
o An Eastern model of listening is also useful here.
o Japanese scholar Ishii (1984) models intercultural communication as listening.
o In this model, the effective intercultural communicator, sensitive to the other,
thinks carefully before speaking and delivers a message that is never threatening
o This is discourse in which all voices “retain their individual integrity, yet combine
to form a whole discourse that is orderly and congruous” (Stewart, 1997, p. 119).
o Any conciliation between cultures must reclaim the notion of a voice for all
interactants.
o In intercultural contexts, there are two options for those who feel left out—exit or
relations.
o But people need a new way to think about multiculturalism and cultural
diversity—one that recognizes the complexities of communicating across cultures
and that addresses power issues.
o The chapter first identifies what intercultural alliances—bonds between
difference lead to power, and try to manage these power issues.
• A second component of intercultural alliances has to do with the impact of history:
Intercultural friends recognize that people from historically powerful groups view
history differently than do those who belong to less powerful groups.
• The third component of intercultural alliances has to do with orientations of affirmation.
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Chapter 12: Striving for Engaged and Effective Intercultural Communication
• Coalitions can arise from multiple identities. There are many good examples, such as
the Seeds of Peace project, which brings together Jewish and Palestinian young people
to work toward peace and harmony.
• Some contexts that arise in the future may cause one to rethink many of one’s identities.
peoples, to foster positive intercultural relationships for a better world.
• Coalitions, which are built of multiple identities, are never easy to build.
o In the process, one may find that some of one’s own identities feel neglected or
injured.
o Part of the process is the commitment to work through these emotional blows,
and set the rules for others (Allen, 2010; Sorrells, 2014).
• Starosta and Chen (2005) point out that intercultural listening should be followed by
application.
• Johnson (2017) gives the following very concrete suggestions for working toward social
justice and personal transformation:
▪ Make noise, be seen.
▪ Dare to make people feel uncomfortable, beginning with yourself.
▪ Actively promote change in how systems are organized around privilege.
▪ Don’t keep it to yourself.
• One important area where intercultural communication can be productively applied is
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Chapter 12: Striving for Engaged and Effective Intercultural Communication
E. Forgiveness
• Although limited and problematic, forgiveness is an option for promoting intercultural
understanding and reconciliation.
o Forgiveness is more than a simple rite of religious correctness; it requires a deep
in place? And what kind of society would one end up with?”
▪ His answer is strongly related to the contact hypothesis. That is, leaders
must construct conditions of contact among groups that lead to
decategorization and recategorization, opportunities to develop intimate
positive knowledge of each other, and provide superordinate goals that
durable friendships with people from the other side, appreciation and respect for
the concerns that keep the conflict going and firm conviction that a peaceful and
respectful coexistence is possible.”
o The goal is simple: by building up a reserve of new positive experiences, these
young leaders can use them as a sort of psychological buffer to help them undo
III. What the Future Holds
• One lives in a rapidly changing world. Although terrorist attacks are not new, they are
increasing and continue to hit more and more countries.
• The global economic situation continues to change.
• Rapidly falling oil prices have also increased instability in some parts of the world.
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Chapter 12: Striving for Engaged and Effective Intercultural Communication
and the United States would fall to second, there was wide agreement of the inevitability of
that happening.
• At the same time, people continue to work toward fixing injuries caused by cultural
1. In what ways is the notion of intercultural competence helpful? In what ways is it limiting?
2. How can you be an interpersonal ally? How do you know if you are being an ally?
3. How might you better assess your unconscious competence and unconscious
incompetence?
4. How might the European Union affect the United States?
5. How does your own social position (gender, class, age, and so on) influence your
6. What are the characteristics of a competent intercultural communicator?
7. Explain why you are or why you are not a motivated intercultural communicator.
8. Why should we think about intercultural communication in terms of dialectics?
9. How can the D.I.E. exercise help increase our intercultural communication competence?
10. What does it mean to be a competent intercultural communicator?
11. Why do you think some Americans believe that all members of a particular group (such as
12. How can forgiveness be promoted by your age group to make the world more peaceful?
13. How can you use your new knowledge about communication competence to work toward
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Chapter 12: Striving for Engaged and Effective Intercultural Communication
Classroom Exercises and Chapter Activities
1. Course Closure Exercise: This exercise is designed to be both a course summary and an
opportunity to articulate individual learning experiences in the course. Conduct this
2. D.I.E. Exercise: The focus of this exercise is to familiarize students with descriptive,
interpretive, and evaluative statements. For this exercise, you will need a blank overhead
3. Cultural Specific Competence Assignment: This assignment is designed to encourage
students to explore competent behaviors for a specific culture. Instruct students to choose a
4. Variations in Ethics Assignment: This assignment is designed to increase students’
awareness of some of the ethical variations that exist between cultures. Ask students to
select a national culture they are interested in and to identify a context within the culture
5. Plan of Action Assignment: The focus of this assignment is to encourage students to think
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Chapter 12: Striving for Engaged and Effective Intercultural Communication
class has ended. Introduce the assignment by suggesting to students that there will be fewer
reminders for them of the importance of intercultural communication and opportunities to
6. Cultural Competence Assignment: This last assignment will enable students to review what
they’ve learned in this class by asking them to write a two- to three-page self-analysis
7. Competence Skills Exercise: This exercise is designed to give students a chance to apply
competence skills and attitudes to a “real” intercultural issue. Show students the video In
Whose Honor? American Indian Mascots in Sports. Instruct each of them to take a few
minutes to answer the following questions on their own. (Note: You may want to make a
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Chapter 12: Striving for Engaged and Effective Intercultural Communication
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of intercultural competence. Finally, ask students to identify some of the barriers that make
it difficult to resolve this particular conflict.
Suggested Videos
1. Understanding Different Cultural Values and Styles (Distributed by Princeton, NJ: Films
for the Humanities and Sciences, 1991, 56 minutes)
2. Crosstalk (A BBC-TV Production distributed by New York, NY: Films Inc., 1979, 25
3. In Whose Honor? American Indian Mascots in Sports (Distributed by Champaign, IL:
Rosenstien Productions, 1996, 46 minutes)
