Neoliberalism,Nationalism, and Intercultural Communication: A Critical Analysis of a Japan's Neoliberal Nationalism Discourse under Globalization

Abstract

This paper attempts to draw implications of neoliberalism for intercultural communication by critically analyzing a Japanese neoliberal nationalism discourse. In January 2000, a governmental report proposed adopting English as an official language of Japan. Utilizing the notion of representation as a methodological lens for the analysis, this essay first examines how Japanese culture and communication, which have played key roles in asserting Japanese “uniqueness” along with the Japanese language, are redefined in the report. This essay then investigates how Japan's relations with Asia and the West—two significant discursive “Others” for constructing Japan's identity—are depicted in the text and situate the representation of Japanese culture and communication in the discursive triad for further contextualizing the analysis.     

Commemorative places,political spaces: Virginia Indians,the Jamestown Quadricentennial,and the quest for sovereignty

ABSTRACT

This essay examines the cross-cultural communication strategies deployed by a coalition of indigenous tribes in Virginia to leverage the Quadricentennial commemoration of the founding at Jamestown in support of their sovereignty campaign. The tensions between Jamestown’s mythos as the “birthplace of democracy” and the natives’ historical and contemporary lived experiences, combined with the national and international attention focused on the events, constructed the 400th anniversary “celebrations” as a compelling location for social action. The coalition employed intercultural communicative practices—particularly cross-cultural dialogue and negotiation—as means of mobilizing these tensions to renegotiate their relationship with the federal government, illustrating the intersection of intercultural communication, memory, and identity.     

Attending to the “face of the other” in intercultural communication: Thinking and talking about difference,identity, and ethics

This essay contributes to the discussions in intercultural communication scholarship on key intercultural urgencies, issues, and challenges in today's world through the ethical framework of Emmanuel Levinas and his discussion of “absolute otherness” that informs and expands the dialogue on interculturality, cultural humility, and ethics. Levinas's discussion of “absolute otherness” aims to preserve difference—the otherness of the other—by asserting the ethical relation prior to the ontological relation and carries significant communicative implications in terms of the relation of the self and the other as well as making sense of difference and identity, and offers a new way of talking about these issues in the field of communication studies, specifically in intercultural communication. An illustration of attending to the other beyond reduction to the same is offered through a pedagogical application of the Levinasian framework in the intercultural communication class.     

Language Convergence and Meaning Divergence: A Theory of Intercultural Communication

Abstract

Meaning lies at the core of intercultural communication. The ways in which meanings are made and the differences in meanings form a core problematic for intercultural communication. Yet intercultural communication theorists have yet to systematically explore the processes by which language and meanings converge and diverge within and across particular cultural milieus. The goal of the present analytical essay is to move the theory of language convergence/meaning divergence (LC/MD) into the intercultural communication realm. LC/MD processes discussed in the analysis include language convergence, meaning divergence through meaning clusters and meaning fragments, and the illusion of shared meanings. To illustrate ways in which LC/MD can be utilized by intercultural communication scholars, cults and morality as foreign policy are analyzed.     

A taste of Europe: Eating/reading between the lines of the German–Italian failed love story

This essay examines the topicality of intra-European intercultural tensions, focusing on German–Italian relations. Grounded in Burke’s interpretation of literature as “equipment for living,” this project uses Marisa Fenoglio’s Never without a woman—a novel about an Italian Gastarbeiter in Germany—as a case study and suggests a critical cultural analysis of German–Italian food-related rhetoric as reflective and constructive of German–Italian interculturality. This essay invites a nuanced understanding of the rhetoric of European foodways as representative of the contemporary European culture and intercultural communication because we are what we eat.     

Stages and Transitions of Relational Identity Formation in Intercultural Friendship: Implications for Identity Management Theory

Abstract

In light of identity management theory (IMT), this research seeks to uncover the stages and transitions that explain the process of relational identity formation within intercultural friendships. Three stages (i.e., initial encounter, interaction, and involvement) and two transition phases emerged within the intercultural friendships of this research. This study concludes that while IMT contributes to our understanding of the process of intercultural relationship formation, it overlooks how intercultural relationships transition from one stage to another and the influences of networks and a third cultural context.     

Intercultural Interaction at a Multicultural University: Students' Definitions and Sensemakings of Intercultural Interaction

Abstract

This essay examines how racially or ethnically different students define, make sense of, and evaluate intercultural interaction at the multicultural university. Eighty qualitative in-depth interviews were conducted with university students of varied backgrounds. These interview sessions access students' definitions, sensemakings, and experiences of on-campus intercultural interaction as it has played out in their lives. The findings demonstrate that interviewees equate intercultural interaction with being present in demographically diverse settings. Moreover, this study reveals that definitions and sensemakings of intercultural interaction vary among interviewees primarily based on their racial or ethnic background. Latino/a, Black/African American, White/European American, and Asian American interviewees define and make sense of intercultural interactions in culturally specific ways and in relation to their historical experiences.     

A Multimodal Approach to Identity: Theorizing the Self through Embodiment,Spatiality, and Temporality

Abstract

This article problematizes the theoretical assumption of communication-as-symbolic that delimits the way identity is theorized. I argue that deconstructing identity requires moving beyond the symbolic construction of social categories, and instead focusing on how a perceptual and embodied subject is constituted through communication. Informed by Merleau-Ponty's phenomenologically driven approach to critical inquiry, I present a multimodal approach that reveals how perceptual subjectivity and the reflexive body are constituted within, and constitutive of, the symbolic mechanisms of social construction. Utilizing various examples pertinent to intercultural communication, I theorize cultural identity through the perspective of communication-as-embodied.     

Performing Difference: Repetition in Context

Abstract

In this essay, I sketch a performative, constitutive theory of difference that avoids the major trappings of this discussion in current communication scholarship. Building from Gilles Deleuze and Judith Butler, I argue that by focusing on difference in intercultural communication scholarship we can, as a discipline, create more complex understandings of people in cultural contexts. I first examine how difference has been written in communication scholarship. Second, I offer a reading of Deleuze and Butler who, together, provide the grounding for seeing the repetition of difference as political and contingent ontology. I conclude by examining an everyday context, showing how intercultural communication scholarship can benefit from this kind of analysis.     

Two stories,one vision: A plea for an ecological turn in intercultural communication

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.     

Our Role as Intercultural Scholars,Practitioners, Activists,and Teachers in Addressing These Key Intercultural Urgencies,Issues, and Challenges

As the finale, the participating scholars connect their discussion of key intercultural urgencies, issues, and challenges to our role as intercultural scholars and the pathways for engagement. We all inhabit different and multiple roles for addressing and confronting such urgencies—as researchers, practitioners, activists, teachers, and community members with macro and micro modes of agency, influence, and impact. Discussants grapple with how to envision these roles in contemporary society and actuate meaningful change for multiple constituencies and communities around us.     

Contextual Negotiation of Cultural Identifications and Relationships: Interview Discourse with Palestinian,Israeli, and Palestinian/Israeli Young Women in a U.S. Peace-Building Program

Abstract

An integration of critical and interpretive perspectives frames the analysis of interview discourse from participants in a U.S. peace-building dialogue program during 1997–1998. Israeli, Palestinian, and Palestinian/Israeli identified participants’ discourse reveals that they negotiate multiple and contextually contingent cultural identifications, and that the context both enables and constrains their relationships with each other. Discursive themes demonstrate the complexity and struggle in which participants position themselves and exercise levels of agency, and negotiate their cultural and intercultural relationships. The findings of the study substantiate calls by scholars and practitioners to incorporate contextual factors such as history, politics, social hierarchies, and agency into research and training models of intergroup dialogue.     

Slumdog Millionaire Meets “India Shining”: (Trans)national Narrations of Identity in South Asian Diaspora

Abstract

This study uses the filmic text Slumdog Millionaire to examine how the tension between the nation and the transnational was communicated within South Asian diaspora. Findings from the textual analysis of commentary in the New York Times, The Guardian and the Times of India show that identity is articulated in purist as well as hybrid ways among South Asian diasporans. A lack of comfortable fit between cultural identity and place is evident. The analysis also shows that diasporic identity, hybridity, nation-state, and transnational forces work in particular configurations to raise consciousness about subaltern oppressions and exclusions within multiscalar operations of power and representation in globalizing conditions. Implications for intercultural communication and transitions are discussed.     

Appraisal models of intercultural communication apprehension among sojourners

We used R. S. Lazarus’ (Emotion and Adaptation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991) appraisal theory of emotions to propose a theoretical model of anxiety, upon which we built two empirical models centering on intercultural communication apprehension (ICA), distinguished by timing. We tested the models in three samples: Chinese in the US (N?=?268), US Americans who studied abroad (N?=?419), and US Americans in the US (N?=?515). The models achieved good fit. The results showed that during an anticipated or actual intercultural interaction, people had multiple, potentially conflicting goals. The goal-related appraisals of the situation resulted in emotional reactions, such as ICA, as well as coping strategies. ICA and coping further influenced people’s immediacy behaviors and the intention to interact. Our empirical models supported the utility of the theoretical framework for all three samples, and provided advice for practitioners to improve sojourners’ time abroad.     

Half and Half: An (Auto)ethnography of Hybrid Identities in a Korean American Mother-Daughter Relationship

Abstract

This essay focuses on how immigrant mothers and second generation interracial daughters construct, perform, and negotiate racial and ethnic hybrid identities. Placing my mother's experiences in dialogue with my own experiences, I (auto)ethnographically examine how we navigate our mother-daughter relationship and intercultural and interracial identities in relation to discourses of Asian American-ness. I identify three sites for identity formation: location, language, and the dialectical tension of assimilation-preservation. I argue that the enactment of a racial self is not always a conscious part of one's identity. Rather, we each enact racialized cultural identities that are contextually performed and continuously shifting.     

Assessing Cultural Differences in Translations: A Semantic Network Analysis of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Abstract

Intercultural communication, in many cases, is cross-lingual communication. Effective cross-lingual communication requires successful translation processes. Translation quality involves two factors, the technical and the linguistic. Focusing on the influence of language factor, this study demonstrates the application of semantic network analysis and spatial modeling to examine translation equivalence. The examined texts are seven different linguistic versions of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (six official languages and Korean). The results suggest that translations are roughly equivalent but with subtle differences reflective of each language's cultural predispositions. The paper concludes by discussing the importance of translation and language issues for intercultural communication.     

News Translation and Cultural Resistance

Abstract

News translation, which takes many forms, encounters two types of cultural resistance that hinder intercultural understanding. The first is apparent in the need to transform a text in order to make it meaningful in a new context, while the second results from the irreducibility of culture as a way of life to the form of a text. This article illustrates both forms of resistance by analyzing a story originally broadcast on The National in Canada in 1992, and it concludes by considering the implications of the power relations between journalists and the people they describe in acts of news translation.     

Connecting Community Voices: Using a Latino/a Critical Race Theory Lens on Environmental Justice Advocacy

Abstract

This study examines the contested space of environmental inequity and demonstrates how engaged intercultural communication research can be used to put forth seldom heard cultural environmental meaning systems. In an attempt to bridge ecojustice–environmentalist divides, we use Latino Critical Race Theory (LatCrit) to understand and promote practices of Hispanic communities enacting environmental justice and cultural activism. We also exemplify the value of an explicit focus on the role of race in environmental issues for communication scholarship.     

Thawing the North: Mostly Martha as a German-Italian Eatopia

Abstract

The establishment of the European Union, reunification of Germany, and Germany's extension of dual citizenship to immigrant minorities provided challenges to the country's understanding of itself as a nation. In negotiating these changes, debates on citizenship frequently centered on definitions of German culture. Using the concept of Leitkultur (guiding culture), conservatives argued that Germany should reject multiculturalism and stem immigration. This essay analyzes discourses on cultural policy in Germany through a contextual and textual analysis of the film Mostly Martha. In its alignment with aesthetic conventions of the art house food film, Mostly Martha participates in the debate on cultural citizenship and embodies changes in the German film industry that have moved German cinema toward increased commercialism. The film's main character, Martha, is transformed through an intercultural relationship and a trip to Italy. We argue that the film's citation of this well-known tradition of traveling south to redeem oneself and its treatment of ethnic “Otherness” engages in the Leitkultur debate and participates in the transition from national German to transnational cinema. Through the utopian treatment of Italian food, the film fetishizes cultural difference and reaffirms fixed constructs of nation and gender, thereby avoiding an explicitly politicized engagement with intercultural citizenship and identity.     

Identity,Communication, Inclusion: The Roma and (New) Europe

Abstract

Based on the theoretical concepts of imagined communities (Anderson, 2006), public sphere (Habermas, 1962/1991), and muted groups (Kramarae, 1981), this essay looks at issues of identity and identity formation of the largest European minority—the Roma, or Gypsies. The essay argues that, similarly to the European identity project, the Roma are actively building a transnational identity without abandoning national identities. Although this model can be a valuable blueprint for increasingly globalizing societies, it is neglected as a possibility because of Roma's marginal social status. Further exploration of self-organized Roma identity-construction is advised.