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Chapter 2: The History of the Study of Intercultural Communication
Chapter 2
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.
Key Terms
• Afrocentricity
• Anxiety uncertainty management theory
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Chapter 2: The History of the Study of Intercultural Communication
• Hybrid identity
• Individualistic
• Intercultural competence
• Interdisciplinary
• Postcolonialism
• Processual
• Proxemics
• Qualitative methods
• Quantitative methods
• Translation equivalence
• Variable
• Worldview
Detailed Chapter Outline
I. The Early Development of the Discipline
stage.
o However, government and business personnel working overseas often found that
they were ill equipped to work among people from different cultures.
• The U.S. government in 1946 passed the Foreign Service Act and established the Foreign
Service Institute (FSI).
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Chapter 2: The History of the Study of Intercultural Communication
courses for overseas workers.
o Because intercultural training materials were scarce, they developed their own.
o In so doing, FSI theorists formed new ways of looking at culture and communication.
Thus, the field of intercultural communication was born (Martin, Nakayama, &
varies from culture to culture.
• Edward T. Hall pioneered this systematic study of culture and communication with The
Silent Language (1959) and The Hidden Dimension (1966), which influenced the new
discipline.
o In The Silent Language, for example, Hall introduced the notion of proxemics,
B. Application of Theory
• The staff at the FSI found that government workers were not interested in theories of
culture and communication; rather, they wanted specific guidelines for getting along in
the countries they were visiting.
• Hall’s initial strategy in developing materials for these predeparture training sessions
cultural training, which began with the FSI staff and was expanded in the 1960s to
include training for students and business personnel.
• More recently, it has come to include diversity training, which facilitates intercultural
communication among members of various gender, ethnic, and racial groups, mostly in
the corporate or government workplace (Landis, Bennett, Bennett, 2004).
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Chapter 2: The History of the Study of Intercultural Communication
• Early scholars and trainers in intercultural communication defined culture narrowly,
1960s and 1970s when the United States was fraught with civil unrest.
o One reason may be the early emphasis of the FSI on helping overseas personnel.
o Another reason may be that most scholars who studied intercultural
communication gained their intercultural experience in international contexts such
as the Peace Corps, the military, or the transnational corporation.
o Contributions from these fields of study blended to form an integrated approach
that remains useful to this day.
• Linguists help people in understanding the importance of language and its role in
intercultural interaction.
o They describe how languages vary in “surface” structure and are similar in “deep”
people’s intercultural competence by providing insights into other cultures and
expanding their communication repertoire.
• Anthropologists help in understanding the role that culture plays in people’s lives and
the importance of nonverbal communication.
• The so-called scientific study of other peoples is never entirely separate from the culture
and the ways in which prejudice functions in their lives and in intercultural interaction.
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Chapter 2: The History of the Study of Intercultural Communication
o Other psychologists, such as Richard Brislin (1999) and Dan Landis (Landis &
Wasilewski, 1999), reveal how variables like nationality, ethnicity, personality,
and gender influence one’s communication.
• Whereas the early study of intercultural communication was characterized as
struggle over power.
o So while intercultural communication is more firmly rooted in the communication
field, the definition of “culture” has expanded to make intercultural
communication more interdisciplinary.
II. Perception and Worldview of the Researcher
interpret new information.
• Some of the learning and perception is group related.
o That is, people see the world in particular ways because of the cultural groups (based
on ethnicity, age, gender, and so on) to which they belong.
o These group-related perceptions (worldviews or value orientations) are so
assumptions in their research projects.
o Asian scholars say that U.S. communication scholars often emphasize individuality
and rationality—two strong cultural beliefs held by many U.S. Americans—and
ignore human interdependence and feeling in human encounters, important beliefs
for many people around the world (Miike, 2007a, 2007b).
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Chapter 2: The History of the Study of Intercultural Communication
▪ For example, Galileo was excommunicated from the Catholic Church in the
17th century because he took issue with theologians’ belief that the earth was
the center of the universe.
• More recent examples of the relation between academic research and cultural behavior can
be seen in the social sciences.
o Some communication scholars believe there is an external reality that can be
measured and studied, whereas others believe that reality can be understood only as
lived and experienced by individuals (Casmir, 1994).
• Beliefs and assumptions about reality influence research methods and findings, and so also
influence what people currently know about intercultural communication.
• At present, one can identify three broad approaches, or worldviews, that characterize the
study of culture and communication (Gudykunst, 2005a; Hall, 1992).
o All three approaches involve a blend of disciplines and reflect different worldviews
and assumptions about reality, human behavior, and ways to study culture and
communication.
o How one thinks about “culture” influences how it is studied.
III. Three Approaches to Studying Intercultural Communication
• Three contemporary approaches to studying intercultural communication are: (1) the social
science (or functionalist) approach, (2) the interpretive approach, and (3) the critical
approach.
o These approaches are based on different fundamental assumptions about human
nature, human behavior, and the nature of knowledge.
o These approaches vary in their assumptions about human behavior, their research
goals, their conceptualization of culture and communication, and their preferred
methodologies.
1980s, is based on research in psychology and sociology.
• This approach assumes a describable external reality.
o It also assumes that human behavior is predictable and that the researcher’s goal is
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Chapter 2: The History of the Study of Intercultural Communication
• Social science researchers often use theories to predict human behavior.
o What predictions might be made about intercultural encounters between
immigrants and individuals from the host country?
o One approach might be to investigate how various communication technologies
the United States and their perceptions of America.
▪ Perhaps not surprising, they discovered that, over time, these immigrants
used Facebook mostly to interact with other Muslims and were also less
likely to culturally adapt to the U.S. culture, and more likely to have a
negative perception of the United States.
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.
▪ They also measured the immigrants’ face-to-face contacts with the same two
groups.
o Another group of social science researchers predicted that immigrants’ degree of
acculturation in the United States might influence their perceptions of racial dis-
crimination and their need for social support (Hanasono, Chen, & Wilson, 2014).
• Other contemporary research programs illustrate the social science approach.
o One such program was headed by the late William B. Gudykunst (2005b), a well-
how they motivate individuals to engage in successful interaction.
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Chapter 2: The History of the Study of Intercultural Communication
o A related social science program is Stella Ting-Toomey’s (1985, 2005) face
negotiation theory.
▪ Face is the sense of favorable self-worth, and in all cultures people are
concerned about saving face.
▪ It suggests five universal conversational constraints, or concerns: (1) clarity,
(2) minimizing imposition, (3) consideration for the other’s feelings, (4)
risking negative evaluation by the hearer, and (5) effectiveness.
o The communication accommodation theory is the result of another social
science program in which researchers attempted to identify how and when
o The diffusion of innovations theory, developed by communication scholar
Everett Rogers (2003), explains how cultural practices can be changed—largely
due to communication.
▪ This theory explains why some innovations, like computer technology or the
Internet, or certain behaviors, like “safe sex,” are accepted by some people
culture—often based on individualistic versus collectivistic values (Gudykunst, 1998).
• Many of these social science studies have been useful in identifying variations in
communication from group to group and specifying psychological and sociological
variables in the communication process. However, this approach is limited.
o Many scholars now realize that human communication is often more creative than
sensitive and that researchers may be too distant from the phenomena or people
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Chapter 2: The History of the Study of Intercultural Communication
they are researching (Kim, 2012).
• To overcome these kinds of problems, social scientists have developed strategies for
achieving equivalence of measures.
o A leading cross-cultural psychologist, Richard Brislin (1999), has written
linguistic terms and meanings across cultures).
o Machine translation can be enormously helpful for common phrases and rough
drafts, but these translations cannot yet do away with humans.
o Researchers can establish conceptual equivalence by ensuring that the notions
they are investigating are similar at various levels.
▪ Once this equivalence is established, researchers can identify culture-
specific ways in which problem solving is achieved.
B. The Interpretive Approach
• The interpretive approach gained prominence in the late 1980s among communication
scholars.
• One interpretive approach, rooted in sociolinguistics, is the ethnography of
communication (Hymes, 1974).
o Ethnographers of communication are devoted to descriptive studies of
communication patterns within specific cultural groups.
o Interpretive researchers assume not only that reality is external to humans, but
• Whereas the social scientist tends to see communication as influenced by culture, the
interpretivist sees culture as created and maintained through communication (Carbaugh,
1996).
o This type of research uses qualitative methods derived from anthropology and
linguistics such as field studies, observations, and participant observations.
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Chapter 2: The History of the Study of Intercultural Communication
o Another example of interpretive research is the rhetorical approach, also used by
critical researchers, perhaps the oldest communication scholarship, dating back to
the ancient Greeks.
▪ They found that these immigrant women expressed conflicting feelings
about their interactions with host country individuals and labeled these
feelings dialectics.
▪ They identified four dialectics: positive-negative; acceptance-rejection;
2008).
o A similar study also involved focus groups (Korem & Horenczyk, 2015).
▪ In this study, researchers asked young immigrants from Ethiopia living in
Israel about their experiences and specifically what communication
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Chapter 2: The History of the Study of Intercultural Communication
contradictory feelings in their adaptation experience—on the one hand,
recognizing and even embracing their own unique cultural background and values
and at the same time, trying out the new values and communication patterns.
• Some interpretive studies investigate the language patterns in many different groups.
o Most scholarly studies of communication are rooted in a European American
perspective, and this frame of references is not necessarily applicable to
communication of all cultural groups.
o For example, Molefi Asante (1987, 2001) developed the framework of
Afrocentricity to apply to studies about African or African American
▪ Traditional values of humaneness and harmony with nature
▪ A fundamentally African way of knowing and interpreting the world
▪ An orientation toward communalism
• Similarly, Asian scholars have developed Asiacentric frameworks to study
communication of people from Asian cultures.
▪ People remind themselves of the interdependence and interrelatedness of the
universe.
▪ People reduce their selfishness and egocentrism.
▪ People feel the joy and suffering of all beings.
▪ People receive and return their debts to all beings.
and labels.
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Chapter 2: The History of the Study of Intercultural Communication
• The utility of the interpretivist approach is that it provides an in-depth understanding of
communication patterns in particular communities because it emphasizes investigating
communication in context.
• The main limitation of this approach is that there are few interpretivist studies of
communication patterns of members of that community.
C. The Critical Approach
• A third approach to the study of intercultural communication includes many
assumptions of the interpretive approach.
o For instance, researchers who use the critical approach believe in subjective (as
o Critical scholars, unlike most social scientists and interpretivists, are interested in
the historical context of communication.
• Critical scholars are interested in the power relations in communication.
o For them, identifying cultural differences in communication is important only in
relation to power differentials.
cultural situations, they can help the average person learn how to resist forces of
power and oppression.
• Like interpretive scholars, critical scholars also use interviews, focus groups, and
rhetorical methods in analyzing encounters between immigrants and host groups.
o They also use textual analyses.
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Chapter 2: The History of the Study of Intercultural Communication
North Carolina.
o The Montagnards come from the Central Highlands of Vietnam and fought with
the United States against the Vietnam government in the 1960s.
o After the war ended, they were persecuted by the Vietnamese for helping the
Vietnam as home, had strong emotional attachment to the people there and their
indigenous land.
o Unlike social science scholars who usually focus on the immigrants’ experience
and initiative in adapting to the host culture, critical scholars like Kinefuchi focus
on the structural (societal) limitations that prevent the Montagnards from having
o They are paid extremely low wages, have very few legal protections and rights,
and are often exploited and even abused by their employees.
• Taken together, these various viewpoints emphasize how different migrant groups
experience cultural adaptation in a new country and their encounters with host members
there.
liberation from colonialist mentalité, or ways of thinking.
o Postcolonialism is not simply the study of colonialism but the study of how people
might deal with that past and its aftermath, which may include the ongoing use of
the colonial language, culture, and religion.
▪ For example, a study by Marwan Kraidy (2005) explores how youth in
comprised of both Western and Arabic elements.
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Chapter 2: The History of the Study of Intercultural Communication
o In his study of the use of Kiswahili as a regional language in East Africa,
linguistics professor Benson Oduor Ojwang (2008) points to the colonial past of
this part of Africa as a foundation for unification.
▪ Known as East African Cooperation, the former colonies have a colonial
o In her study, Moon analyzed interviews of white women from working-class
backgrounds.
o Subtle communication practices that reinforce social class differences are not so
invisible to women from working-class backgrounds.
o Moon shows how culture, social class, and communication work together to
• One limitation is that most critical studies do not focus on face-to-face intercultural
interaction.
o Also, this approach does not allow for much empirical data.
IV. A Dialectical Approach to Understanding Culture and Communication
A. Combining the Three Traditional Paradigms: The Dialectical Approach
• The dialectical approach emphasizes the processual, relational, and contradictory nature
of intercultural communication, which encompasses many different kinds of
intercultural knowledge.
o First, with regard to the processual nature of intercultural communication, it is
important to remember that cultures change, as do individuals.
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Chapter 2: The History of the Study of Intercultural Communication
ideas simultaneously.
• Research findings can make a difference in the everyday world.
o From the social science perspective, people can see how specific communication
and cultural differences might create differing worldviews, which can help them
or were not welcomed and how these power differentials influenced their
intercultural experience.
• Thinking dialectically forces people to move beyond their familiar categories and
introduces them to new possibilities for studying and understanding intercultural
communication.
B. Six Dialectics of Intercultural Communication
• The following are the six dialectics that have been identified to characterize
intercultural communication.
o Cultural–Individual Dialectic: Intercultural communication is both cultural and
individual, or idiosyncratic.
▪ That communication is cultural means people share communication patterns
with members of the groups to which they belong.
o Personal–Contextual Dialectic: This dialectic involves the role of context in
intercultural relationships and focuses simultaneously on the person and the
context.
▪ Emphasizing only differences can lead to stereotyping and prejudice
emphasizing only similarities can lead people to ignore the important
cultural variations that exist.
o Static–Dynamic Dialectic: This dialectic suggests that intercultural
communication tends to be at once static and dynamic.
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Chapter 2: The History of the Study of Intercultural Communication
simultaneously on the past and the present in understanding intercultural
communication.
o Privilege–Disadvantage Dialectic: This dialectical perspective recognizes that
people may be simultaneously privileged and disadvantaged, or privileged in
some contexts and disadvantaged in others.
C. Keeping a Dialectical Perspective
• The dialectical approach is not a specific theory to apply to all aspects of intercultural
communication.
context, and power.
o Culture and communication are the foreground, and context and power are the
backdrop against which people can understand intercultural communication.
Discussion Questions
1. How have the origins of the study of intercultural communication in the United States
affected its present focus?
2. How did business and political interests influence what early intercultural communication
researchers studied and learned?
3. How have the worldviews of researchers influenced how they studied intercultural
communication?
4. How have other fields contributed to the study of intercultural communication?
5. What are the advantages of a dialectical approach to intercultural communication?
6. How did Edward T. Hall’s work contribute to the origins of the field of intercultural
communication?
7. What are the strengths and limitations of using only the social science approach to study
intercultural communication?
8. What are the strengths and limitations of using only the interpretive approach to study
intercultural communication?
9. What are the strengths and limitations of using only the critical approach to study
intercultural communication?
10. Why do critical scholars see culture as a site of struggle?
11. What are some dialectics found that characterize intercultural communication?
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Chapter 2: The History of the Study of Intercultural Communication
1. Dialectical Approach Assignment: In this assignment, students should assume the position
of researcher and analyze their culture using the three different approaches described in the
2. Dialectical Approach Exercise: This variation of the “Dialectical Approach” assignment
presented here could be used as in-class preparation for writing the paper. Have students
pretend that they are researchers interested in culture and assume the perspectives
3. Mini Ethnography Exercise: Explain that one of the methods used by anthropologists to
learn about cultural variations in nonverbal communication is the observation and
recording of behaviors. Students are then assigned to go in pairs to a public place on
campus for 20 to 30 minutes where they can unobtrusively observe a specific nonverbal
4. Ethnography of Communication Assignment: Students are required to read Donal
Carbaugh’s Donahue study and complete a mini duplication of his study by using his
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Chapter 2: The History of the Study of Intercultural Communication
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manner. This document may not be copied, scanned, duplicated, forwarded, distributed, or posted on a website, in whole or part.
contradict Carbaugh’s rules. If they discover that Carbaugh’s rules do not fit the show they
have observed, they should identify other rules and provide a rationale for their
conclusions.
5. Fieldwork Assignment: Ask students to go to a setting they are not very familiar with (for
example, a bar for someone who does not go to bars or a bus stop for people who rarely
take the bus) and observe it for an hour on two different occasions. They should record
6. Dialectical Approaches in Research Assignment: This assignment will help students
become familiar with how researchers use each of the three approaches (social science
approach, interpretive approach, and critical approach) to study intercultural
communication. Ask students to locate one research article or chapter from a book that is
7. Perception Exercise: This exercise is designed to demonstrate how differing perceptions
can affect communication. Students should write (or tell) a partner about a situation they
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Chapter 2: The History of the Study of Intercultural Communication
describing the “facts” of the situation and then briefly describe their own perspective of the
situation. Then, ask students to try to switch perspectives and attempt to describe the
8. Dialectics and Current Events Activity: This exercise is designed to give students the
opportunity to practice using a dialectical approach to examine intercultural events. Prior to
9. Perception Process Activity: This activity is designed to help students review the steps of
the perception process. Prior to class, choose three sheets of colored paper. Each piece
should be a different color. On one of the pieces, write a brief message in a large size that
fills the page (For example, “Today we will have a treat in class” or “Today we will learn
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Chapter 2: The History of the Study of Intercultural Communication
process is interpretation. Then, lead a discussion that reviews the steps and how our
cultural backgrounds influence them. The following questions may help:
