Intercultural Communication

Ling Chen

• Publisher: De Gruyter Mouton
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781501500114
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Communication Studies
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This handbook takes a multi-disciplinary approach to offer a current state-of-art survey of intercultural communication (IC) studies. The chapters aim for conceptual comprehension, theoretical clarity and empirical understanding with good practical implications. Attention is mostly on face to face communication and networked communication facilitated by digital technologies, much less on technically reproduced mass communication. Contributions cover both cross cultural communication (implicit or explicit comparative works on communication practices across cultures) and intercultural communication (works on communication involving parties of diverse cultural backgrounds). Topics include generally histories of IC research, theoretical perspectives, non-western theories, and cultural communication; specifically communication styles, emotions, interpersonal relationships, ethnocentrism, stereotypes, cultural learning, cross cultural adaptation, and cross border messages;and particular context of conflicts, social change, aging, business, health, and new media. Although the book is prepared for graduate students and academicians, intercultural communication practitioners will also find something useful here.

Part I. History, perspectives and theories

John Baldwin

2Murky waters: Histories of intercultural communication research

Abstract: Rather than presenting a simple or linear history of the field of intercultural communication, this essay suggests the idea of competing histories that both blend and oppose each other. It begins with coverage of the traditional trajectory of history from (and before) E. T. Hall and the Foreign Service institute through the growth of (largely social scientific) research and theory in the discipline. Then it introduces competing histories, developing at the same time but gaining prominence in the area of intercultural communication from the late 1980s to the present – including interpretive theories and approaches (such as ethnography of communication) and critical approaches (including postmodernism, postcolonialism, and Whiteness studies), as well as approaches that suggest any Western approach to communication might not explain Asian or African realities well (Asia- and Afrocentrism).

Keywords: Intercultural Communication, history, paradigms, theory, critical theory, postcolonialism, Critical Race Theory, Whiteness, Asiacentricity, Afrocentrism

1Introduction

In a “creative date,” I took my girlfriend (now wife) in a canoe trip through the backwaters of the “Amazon,” outside of Manaus, Brazil, where I lived. Our guide would canoe us in and out of swamps and little rivulets, and we saw that some had brown water and some black water. That is because Manaus sits between two rivers – the Rio Negro, bringing black, plant-sediment filled water from the northern rain forests, and the Rio Solimões, brining sandy brown water downhill from the Andes mountains far to the west. Outside of Manaus, at a phenomenon called the “Meeting of the Waters,” the two rivers meet in the same river bed, but do not fully join for several kilometers, as one river is warmer and slower than the other. If we try to find out where the “Amazon” river starts, someone might say at this point – but others might trace it much further up the mountains into Peru.

Determining the beginnings of the field of intercultural communication research is just as problematic. Many consider Edward T. Hall to be the founder of the modern study of intercultural communication; there were no departments with specialization in intercultural communication before his day. But this claim requires three caveats: 1. The history of research in communication and culture precedes Hall; 2. There are domains of research outside of the mainstream of “intercultural communication” that at times have forcefully entered the discipline; and 3. most histories of the study of intercultural communication consider primarily what has occurred within or in relation to the United States or English-speaking countries. In this essay, we will consider the background and main trajectory of the study of intercultural communication, some newer “histories” of research that have challenged that main trajectory, and issues that these approaches present to the field. Through a glimpse here at different histories we will see that the fields of inquiry, authors, and histories upon which one draws have major implications for what one considers to be culture, how one approaches the study of culture and communication, and the interaction of that research with issues of ethics and civic engagement.

2Competing histories of intercultural communication research and theory

Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz (1990) nests the emergence of the field of intercultural communication with the work of E. T. Hall and others within the Foreign Service Institute of the United States during the 1940s and 1950s. This marks an important point in one history of intercultural communication research, as it framed an approach to research that continues to the present day; however, before we consider this specific influence, we must consider the roots prior to this time, and then look ahead to the intellectual progeny of a movement that Hall and his colleagues began.

2.1The prehistory of the modern study of intercultural communication

Everett Rogers and William Hart (2002), outlining the histories of international, development, and intercultural communication, note the common focus in communication between peoples who have characteristic group differences, based on different group-held values and beliefs. They contend that, although development and international communication have been informed by macro-level concerns (e.g., sociology, national or group-based agendas), interpersonal communication theory and research have been the primary drivers of intercultural communication. Framing their discussion in terms of Thomas Kuhn’s (1970) work on the evolution of scientific paradigms, they argue that, while the work of the Foreign Service Institute solidly establishes a “paradigm” for intercultural research, there is – as Kuhn suggests there always will be – “pre-paradigmatic” work in which scholars debate issues and ways of seeing things until one perspective becomes dominant.

Specifically, they summarize authors, beginning in the European anthropology (Boas, Sapir) and psychology (Freud). Sociologist Charles Darwin had both a direct influence, through his study of ethology (the study of animal behavior) and nonverbal behavior, and indirectly through the social evolutionary theories of Karl Marx and Herbert Spencer, who impacted other authors. Darwin’s ethology related to E. T. Hall’s work, for example, as he compared human use of space to that of birds, and Marx’s view impacted future authors who looked at the evolution of cultures.

Fig. 2.1: Roots of intercultural communication (based on Rogers & Hart, 2002).

An early anthropologist, Franz Boas, critiqued the ethnocentrism in the work of Tylor and others, promoting, instead, a view of cultural relativism – the idea that the cultural standards of one culture cannot be used to judge other cultures (Rogers & Hart 2002). Some of Boas’ students (Edward Sapir, Ruth Benedict, Margaret Mead) were influenced by Freud’s notions of the subconscious, which ultimately influenced the idea later used by E. T. Hall (1959) that people follow unconsciously learned patterns of culture. Figure 2.1 visualizes these cross-cutting influences. Rogers and Hart continue to describe how these and other authors began early research on standard topics of intercultural research, such as cross-cultural differences, nonverbal communication, ethnocentrism, cultural adjustment, competence, prejudice, and the notion of the stranger. Content analysis of top intercultural journals demonstrates that these topics continue to hold importance among scholars today (Arasaratnam 2015).

While focusing on things such as the mind, social evolution, sociology, or anthropology, these authors touched upon topics that are communicative in nature. Many of the early anthropological ethnographies include at least some component of communication. Steven Kulich (2012), who later takes a biographical approach to the roots of the study to intercultural communication, wonders whether an early article by Francis J. Brown (1939) may be one of the first journal articles focusing specifically on culture and communication (personal communication, April 28, 2015). In this article Brown contrasts ethnocentrism to cultural pluralism, which he defines as “the perpetuation of the folk culture of the many racial and national group” (1939: 133), with implications for intercultural education.

2.2The Foreign Service Institute and E. T. Hall

Many contemporary intercultural authors consider E. T. Hall and the work of the Foreign Service Institute to be central to the history (at least this history) of inter-cultural research – a hinge to which previous work looks forward and later work looks back. Hall and other scholars, under the impetus of U.S. President Truman, began a training program for U.S. diplomats that “conceptualized the new field of ICC [intercultural communication]” (Rogers & Hart 2002: 3; Rogers & Steinfatt 1999.) Rogers and Hart see this work as the foundation of a paradigm for seeing intercultural communication. Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz (1990) outlines the origins of intercultural communication in the Foreign Service Institute, detailing the specific work of E. T. Hall, the collaboration of scholars that worked together to create the training programs used in the Foreign Service Institute, and, most importantly for our discussion, the impact of these origins on the study of intercultural communication.

Hall began outlining his view of intercultural communication in a 1955 article in Scientific American on the “anthropology of manners” and expanded this through a series of books based on his own experiences and interaction with expatriates, including The Silent Language (1959/1973), The Hidden Dimension (1966/1982), Beyond Culture (1976/1981), and The Dance of Life (1983). In these books, Hall presented constructs that scholars and trainers still use today – such as high and low context communication (1976, 1981), monochromic and polychronic time orientations (1966, 1982), the zones of personal space and the idea of high and low contact cultures (1966) and others. He saw culture as patterned, much like language, and patterns being invisible to most people, who follow them without thinking (1959). Culture is an “irrational force,” with the result that “people in culture-contact situations frequently fail to really understand each other” (1976: 214).

Leeds-Hurwitz (1990) describes Hall’s contributions to the discipline in detail, including his shift from a wide-based anthropological and theoretical focus to a “micro-cultural” focus – that is, what were specifics of cultural behavior that diplomats could learn and become adept in – aspects of space, time, verbal and nonverbal communication, and other behaviors. This shift turned attention fully to the focus of communication in cultural contexts, with a special focus on communication between people of different national backgrounds. Hall saw culture as “patterned, learned, and analyzable” (1990: 263), using descriptive linguistics as a model for studying culture. He promoted training techniques still used today and expanded the relevant audience for intercultural knowledge beyond diplomats. Interestingly, Hall did not intend to start a new discipline, leading Kulich to conclude that he should “not be labeled as ‘founder,’ but more indirectly as an inspiration, impetus, or ‘grandfather,’ just as Margaret Mead, Clyde and Florence Kluckhohn, and Ruth Benedict were surely intercultural ‘grandparents’” (2012: 747).

Regardless of how we see E. T. Hall’s role, Leeds-Hurwitz (1990) notes that the historical juncture of the Foreign Service Institute, and the paradigm of research that it inspired (Rogers & Hart 2002), was not due to Hall alone, but to a critical group of scholars gathered by the U.S. government within the Foreign Service Institute. These include many scholars who also form the history of the modern U.S. social scientific study of nonverbal communication (rather than a semiotic or critical view) – scholars who looked at aspects of nonverbal communication, but always with an eye on cultural differences. Central to the work of these scholars were the disciplines of anthropology and linguistics. Hall himself was an anthropologist, and Frank Hopkins, the director of the institute, had also studied both anthropology and linguistics. These authors used the “model of descriptive linguistics” (Leeds-Hurwitz 1990: 272) as their approach to culture, to suggest that cultural behavior was p...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Preface to Handbooks of Communication Science series
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part I. History, perspectives and theories
• Part II. Cross cultural comparison
• Part III. Intercultural encounter
• Part IV. Interactions and exchange between cultures
• Biographical notes
• Index