Klyukanov Igor - Principles of Intercultural Communication

The first edition of this text stayed in print for over ten years and was adopted by over two dozen universities and colleges. I want to thank everyone who found my text useful for teaching and learning.

I thank those who shared with me their positive experiences of using the text in the classroom and encouraged me to prepare a second edition: Philip Dalton (Hofstra University), Deborah Eicher-Catt (The Pennsylvania State University-York), Inci Ozum Sayrak (Duquesne University), Steve Stewart, Jessica Boyer, and Galina Sinekopova (Eastern Washington University), and Andrew R. Smith (Edinboro University).

To Andrew R. Smith I owe special thanks for his expertise, time, and generosity. He read all the revised chapters and sent his comments, edits, and suggestionsalways intelligent, insightful, and constructive. His extremely useful feedback helped me not only to improve this text but also to refine my overall understanding and appreciation of intercultural communication.

I thank those whose comments and ideasexpressed in emails, casual conversations, or presentations at scholarly conferencesinfluenced my thinking and found their way into this text: Ronald C. Arnett, Steven Beebe, Garnet Butchart, Isaac E. Catt, Richard L. Lanigan, Frank J. Macke, Thomas Pace, and Richard Thames.

I am grateful to Howie Giles (University of California, Santa Barbara), Deborah Eicher-Catt (The Pennsylvania State University-York), Dominic Busch (Universitt der Bundeswehr Mnchen, Germany), and Andrew R. Smith (Edinboro University) for their wonderful endorsements: I hope my text will live up to them.

I thank Kiara Wiedman, a graduate student at Eastern Washington University, for her help editing the chapters, figures, and tables as well as preparing the ALT-text for the images.

I thank Felisa Salvago-Keyes, Grant Schatzman, and Jennifer Vennall at Routledge/Taylor & Francis Books for their editorial guidance and assistance. I also thank Gail Welsh for her thorough copy-editing.

Finally, I want to thank all those who will read this revised edition and use it in their classrooms and their lives.

• Key Theme: Boundaries
• Problem Question: What is the process of cultural identification?
• Objective: To help you understand how and why cultural identities are formed

Key Concepts:Barbaroi, border, boundary, boundary crossing, boundary fit, colonization, communication, cultural appropriation, culture, cultural erasure, ethnic identity, group, hard boundaries, Homo Faber, identity, identity confirmation, identity disconfirmation, in-group, intercultural communication, looking-glass self, national identity, out-group, punctuation, racial identity, resource, role-taking, salience, soft boundaries, symbolic.

Leonard Pitts Jr., a well-known U.S. journalist, writes in his article entitled Alas, what to call non-Caucasians?:

In a saner world, when somebody asked a non-Hispanic, black Native American Indian, what he preferred to be called, he wouldnt have to give the currently acceptable term for his genus, his group or his type. Hed only have to give one thing. His name.

(Pitts, 2003)

Yes, everyone thinks of oneself as a unique individual and would prefer to live in the world where, as in the famous Boston bar in Cheers, the iconic U.S. sitcom of the 1980s, everybody knows your name. However, that is not realistic as it would require for every person to get to know everyone else in the entire world in every interaction. In many situations, though, one is called by such names as an American, a Buddhist, a Democrat, a Dane, a woman (Adler, 2002). The list can be continued to include a coach, a doctor, a pastor, a teenager, a student, etc. While a unique person, everyone is in some respects just like other people with whom we all share some characteristics because communication not only separates, sets apart, particularizes its members but also unites them and makes alike inside its own boundaries (Bauman, 1993, p. 40).

In this chapter, thus, we take up the following Problem Question: What is the process of cultural identification?

The subject of this book is intercultural communication so lets begin by defining its two basic termsculture and communication.

Culture is sometimes conceptualized as a deposit, a repository (Cress, 2012) or a set of shared meanings, symbols, and norms (Croucher et al., 2015, p. 73). This may create an impression of culture as a mechanical collection of things of the same kind arranged in a certain order that can be stored in some place and used when needed. We should remember, however, that the word culture goes back to the Latin cultura derived from cultus and meaning cultivation or tillage (Morris, 1982, p. 321). Just as a crop is produced and cultivated by Nature, a group of people can produce and cultivate their own cropa system of symbolic resources. So, it is more accurate to think of culture as a cultivated system of symbolic resources shared by a group of people.

Lets address briefly each main component of this definition.

Culture is a cultivated system of symbolic resources shared by a group of people. Since a symbol is anything that represents meaning, virtually anything shared (or assumed to be shared) among members of a historically recognizable group can rightfully be called culture (Hall, 2014, p. 60). For example, for many Western companies, a field with oil may mean the potential to create a lot of consumer goods and services. Or, in some Asian cultures, making sounds while eating (slurping) has the meaning of appreciation of the food and tribute to the chef. These meanings might seem natural to those who share them, and yet meanings are symbolic creations, produced and reproduced by people themselves, not by Nature. A field with oil does not always mean consumer goods and services; for the Uwa Indians, oil is sacred as the blood of mother Earth and cannot be drilled. And in most Western cultures, slurping sounds have the meaning of lack of respect and bad manners.

Culture is a cultivated system of symbolic resources shared by a group of people. A resource is anything that makes it possible for people to accomplish a task. Symbolic resources can be seen as the source to which people resort whenever needed; hence, re-source. Just like a natural crop, symbolic resources allow us to accomplish various tasks. For example, people use oil when they need to produce gas for our vehicles or when they need to connect to mother Earth. People resort to slurping when they want to show appreciation of the food or display lack of respect.

Culture is a cultivated system of symbolic resources shared by a group of people. Symbolic resources are shared with others and constructed jointly through interaction (Littlejohn, 2002, p. 165). Symbolic resources are meaningful insofar as people from a certain group agree on what something means. For example, people from a certain culture may agree that slurping represents lack of respect and bad manners; if one does not share this meaning, one comes across as disrespectful or rude when making slurping sounds during a meal.

Culture is a cultivated system of symbolic resources shared by a group of people. A system is an organized whole in which all parts are interrelated: culture here is a system of concepts, structures, and relations that groups of people use to organize and interpret their experienced worlds (Kronenfeld, 2018, p. 6). For example, culture is characterized by interactions between two or more individuals, and the outcome of each interaction is determined by their interactions and cannot be attributed to a single individual; also, a change in their interactional dynamics affects the entire system (cf. Kim, 1992). By the same token, cultural behaviors and practices are organized into a system, e.g., we understand the meaning of a handshake only insofar as it relates to other forms of greeting, such as a hug or a kiss, and as greetings relate to other forms of behavior, such as farewells.