1994- ‘Perspectives on intercultural communication: A critical reading’ (original) (raw)
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SIETAR Congress, 2002
In the last years the term "globalization" has become one of the most frequently used words and an umbrella term to describe the ongoing changes that accompany not only the end of the cold war and the breaking down of former strict boundaries, especially the iron curtain, but also the latest technological progresses. According to 'globalization' stands for the overlapping of global and local factors. The development of new communication and information technologies as well as improved transport systems resulted in the reduction of spatial and temporal distances. One consequence is an increasing number of intercultural contacts: More people than ever are confronted with foreigners, e.g. students, business men, tourists. In general, this development towards an increasing amount of cultural encounters includes great chances as well as a potential for conflicts, too. While the chance to learn from each other is quite obvious, a rather problematic aspect, that influences this learning process, is not always seen clearly: As the confrontation with different cultural backgrounds is an essential feature of all cultural encounters, the effect may be a tendency to strengthen the boundaries between oneself and 'the other', perceived as alien, because it is a widespread attitude to view 'the other' as a threat for one's own identity.
1997
Scientific thought succumbed because it violated the first law of culture, which says that "the more man controls anything, the more uncontrollable both become." In the totalizing rhetoric of its mythology, science purported to be its own justification and sought to control and autonomize its discourse. Yet its only justification was proof, for which there could be no justification within its own discourse, and the more it controlled its discourse by subjecting it to the criterion of proof, the more uncontrollable its discourse became. Its own activity constantly fragmented the unity of knowledge it sought to project. The more it knew, the more there was to know." Stephen Tyler examples for illustrating theories, methodologies as well as the core of knowledge in I.C.. A foreigner entering a Japanese home without removing his or her shoes or a Northamerican keeping a certain distance while speaking with a person from the Middle East are some of those typical examples. A particular anecdote that I want to narrate happened recently while this author was attending a party with people from different cultural backgrounds. A young boy from an Indian family, first generation born in the United States, and about twelve or thirteen years old, came to me and asked, "Are you Hispanic?" My first reaction to the tone of his voice and his attitude was to feel if this young guy was seeing in front of him a "label", a "category"; I wondered whether he could see just another person. I responded, "Hispanics are people from Spain and I am not from Spain." My answer was such that today I believe it was a surprise for him as well as for me. Responding with an O.K. sign, the young boy moved away from me. This scene which could be labeled as an unfortunate, ineffective-and perhaps rudesituation between two persons from different cultural backgrounds trying to communicate is, however, more than that. It symbolizes, in essence, the meaning and the complexity present today in many similar situations around the world when people that are different-in this case culturallyare trying to communicate among themselves. A field like I.C., which is seen as a new and growing field, pertains to the field of communication, and defines its main purpose as related to these issues, specifically, trying to understand how people communicate among themselves and how their cultures frame this communication, its means as well as its results. Trying then to deal with some of these issues currently defined, conceptualized, and researched by this field, this paper will try to focus on some prevailing perspectives and discussions. To accomplish this goal, the paper will illustrate some trends in social sciences and communication that are being discussed contemporarily. Next, a detailed epistemological description of some of the current points of view used in social sciences, communication, and I.C. will be made, particularly emphasizing some of the modernist assumptions in contrast with some of the postmodernist assumptions. This, in order to offer an open background about some important points of view, are seen to be disregarded in some of these fields, but specifically in I.C.. Continuing, a critical review about some of their theories, methodologies, concepts as well as subfields will be attempted using, for that purpose, some of the modern and postmodern assumptions previously discussed. It is the central expectation of this paper to demonstrate how the influence of modernism in general, but positivism in particular, as a deep philosophical basealmost like a kind of "worldview"-is present through the theories, methodologies, and concepts discussed and proposed in this field. I. A BRIEF PANORAMA IN COMMUNICATION In the summer of 1993, for the second time in the last twenty years the Journal of Communication published a series of articles trying to see the " ferment of change" in communication. Despite all the different points of view, proposals and approaches of the authors
Reviewed Work:Intercultural Communication: A Discourse Approuch
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The Practice of Intercultural Communication-reflections for professionals in cultural meetings
2003
In this article I will argue that the globalisation process has carried two major implications for intercultural communication research: 1) It has provided a new target group; professional practitioners in multiethnic societies. 2) It has made 'cultural identity' one of the most important concepts in intercultural research. The challenge for intercultural research today is to provide analytical tools for the practitioners-tools which are developed in relation to the complexity in multiethnic societies. Intercultural communication research has got a new target group due to the globalisation process: The professional practitioners in multiethnic societies; the nurses, the social workers, the lawyers, the teachers etc., who in respect of their professionalism are responsible for a successful intercultural communication. Traditionally the professional practitioners have been left with handbooks and readers mainly based upon functionalistic theories (
This paper calls for a "fifth moment" in the field of intercultural communication that re-examines modern culture's values, beliefs, and assumptions about human being in the world and the role of such in fomenting today's ongoing planetary-wide ecological crises. To conduct this re-examination, we turn to ethnoautobiography, a framework rooted in story and in the indigenous paradigm. We raise deep questions regarding the default assumptions of a discipline ensconced almost exclusively within the monocultural logic of modern culture and civilization. We end by posing key problematics that we deem crucial for renewing the discipline toward contemporary relevance, ecological awareness, and responsibility.
Communication, discourses and interculturality
Language and Intercultural Communication, 2010
Communication, discourses and interculturality Communication is generally realised through social action in the form of interpersonal discourse. Social action can make implicit and/or explicit claims about the various associated, and perhaps conflicting, collectivities to which those involved in a given communicative event are affiliated (cf. Scollon & Scollon, 2001). However, a substantial amount of commercially produced literature in the field of crosscultural communication (CCC) and inter-cultural communication (ICC; much aimed at students in higher education) inclines towards the formulaic or rhetorical, tending to be reductionist, essentialist (Holliday, Hyde, & Kullman, 2004) and simplistic; and is often based on a priori (yet unjustified and unjustifiable) assumptions of 'cultural' difference (Piller, 2007). There is, then, in much of the literature available to students of ICC or CCC a tendency to ignore the inherent complexity of interdiscourse communication and the concomitantly critical issue of context (see, for example, Goodwin & Duranti, 1992). This special issue of Language and Intercultural Communication (LAIC) has its origins in a colloquium of the same name which we convened for the 41st annual meeting of the British Association for Applied Linguistics (for which the above statements largely constituted the thematic call to participants). The colloquium brought together a group of researcher-educators with an interest in interculturality and interdiscourse communication. All share, to some degree, dissatisfaction with currently prevailing models of ICC applied in higher education, especially regarding training and research in ICC aimed at students in the field. The colloquium proposed a series of papers to consider interdiscourse communication from a range of positions, with the specific aim of considering ways in which interaction informs, shapes and reflects the (social and cultural) make-up of discourse participants, in different contexts, the complex nature of which might be summarised as the 'Other is in Us and we are in the Other' (Kramsch, 2001, p. 205). In particular, we are interested in contributing to the debate on interculturality as realised through interdiscourse interaction. Interculturality is seen here as a dynamic process by which people draw on and use the resources and processes of cultures with which they are familiar but also those they may not typically be associated with in their interactions with others. This may mean that people implicitly question aspects of their own and each other's cultures, but can also lead to innovation and the adoption and adaptation of features derived from other cultural contexts. 1 Thus, we aim to redress the imbalance frequently located in notions of language and cultural categorisation that view these as coterminous in CCC and ICC literature. This issue appears at a time when the study of CCC and ICC is a rapidly expanding field, in the UK. This is evidenced by the increasing number of CCC and ICC programmes being offered at universities in Britain. Since 2000 the number of modules and courses now available at UK institutions of higher education has expanded exponentially. 2 Much of the motivation for this relates to the rise in