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Theories of Culture and Communication

Bradford ‘J’ Hall

In this chapter, Bradford ‘J’ Hall compares three theoretical perspectives on culture and communication that have been predominant since the 1980s: (1) the traditional postpositivist paradigm, (2) the Coordinated Management of Meaning (CMM) paradigm, and (3) the Ethnography of Communication paradigm. He elaborates on the conceptualizations of culture and communication and clarifies the research goals from these paradigmatic perspectives, paying particular attention to how each research tradition conceives the forms, functions, and locus of culture and communication. He also characterizes the relationship between culture and communication in the three approaches as synecdoche, irony, and metaphor. Hall finally explores practical implications of the postpositivist, CMM, and Ethnography of Communication paradigms for understanding and analyzing communication competence and acculturation.

In part this article arises out of a recent International Communication Association meeting held in Ireland. During one of the sessions of the Intercultural and Development Division it was remarked that we still have not developed a unified theory of intercultural communication. Two thoughts came to mind: (1) Do we need or want one? Other areas of the field such as interpersonal, organizational, and mass communication have not developed unified theories. (2) We do have prominent theories of culture and communication in that certain perspectives have generally accepted assumptions about the nature of these concepts, which both account for certain actions and lead to testable generalizations. The purpose of this article is to compare and thus help clarify three of these prominent theoretical perspectives in regard to the fundamental issues of culture, communication, and their nexus. In addition, the implications of these perspectives for the very pragmatic concern of acculturation, as informed by the concept of competence, will be discussed.

The three perspectives are traditional, coordinated management of meaning (CMM), and ethnography of communication. The term traditional was chosen for the first perspective because, although this perspective does not have one consensually accepted label, it is generally consistent and is the perspective reflected in the greatest number of scholarly publications, including textbooks. The traditional perspective is largely modeled after work in the natural sciences, is basically neopositivist in nature, and is concerned with causal relationships among variables. The CMM perspective takes its lead from the seminal work of Pearce and Cronen (1980) and is explicitly and inherently concerned with issues relevant to intercultural communication as it seeks a multicultural input in order to find a culturally independent way of understanding the communication process. The ethnographic perspective has grown out of work by Hymes (1962), Geertz (1973), and Philipsen (1975) and explicitly seeks to discover and describe the communicative particularities of a cultural community (not to be confused with the sometimes synonymous use of the term ethnography for qualitative methods and the diverse concerns such use entails).

Although each of the above perspectives draws on work outside of the communication discipline, for the purposes of this article these perspectives will only be discussed in terms of how they are manifested in the work of communication scholars. This demarcation may seem parochial given the abundance of interdisciplinary work relevant to the relationship of culture and communication. However, the narrow focus of this article makes possible a depth of development and clarity of comparison that would not be possible in a broader treatment of the subject.

It should also be noted that the three perspectives do not provide exhaustive coverage of all theoretical perspectives within the field of intercultural communication. Rather these three perspectives hold prominent places at the present time and promise to continue to do so for some time into the future. The constructivist and phenomenological perspectives, for example, are intriguing and play a significant role in other areas of communication study, but are not currently central to intercultural studies. Most constructivists and phenomenologists still seem to be writing about doing intercultural research rather than doing it. Other intercultural theories tend to be positivist in nature and are thus subsumed within the traditional perspective. Even systems theory, which Kim (1988a) argues is part positivist and part humanist, and which is more sensitive to emergent processes than most traditional theories, essentially falls within the traditional perspective as defined here.

Defining the concepts of culture and communication has proven to be complex and perhaps is inherently ongoing given that the terms culture and communication are symbols and thus necessarily have an open texture about them, being arbitrary and conventional. Indeed, in what may be seen as one of the founding treatises of the intercultural communication field, Edward Hall (1959) wrote, “Culture is communication and communication is culture” (p. 217). The purpose of this article is not to recapitulate every definition of these concepts (Kroeber & Kluckholn [1952] found 160 for culture and Dance & Larson [1976] found 126 for communication), but rather to help clarify the nature and scope of these concepts as they are typically used within three theoretical perspectives. Due to space limitations, the discussion of these perspectives will be somewhat simplified. Slight variations in wording are often pregnant with implications such that there is subtle (and not so subtle) diversity within each of these perspectives. The diversity is not fully reflected here, but effort is made to be consistent with the mainstream versions of each of these perspectives.

Each perspective’s view of both culture and communication will now be compared along three points: form, function, and locus. This will be followed by an overview of each perspective’s general research goals, views of the culture–communication relationship, and the implications of the foregoing for the concept of acculturation.

Culture

Form

Form is used here to call attention to what counts as culture from a given perspective and how culture is typically operationalized by researchers working within that perspective. Philipsen (1987a) has implicitly proposed a taxonomy of the term culture as it relates to form. He articulates three different ways to materialize culture as found in the current literature on intercultural communication: (1) culture as community or a named human grouping that provides for social identity and the sharing of communal memories; (2) culture as conversation or the patterned representation and enactment of a people’s lived experience; (3) culture as code or a system of values, meanings, images of the ideal, and so on. These three ways of giving culture form are reflected in the three perspectives under consideration. This should not be taken to mean that each perspective fits exclusively within one category, but rather each has a different emphasis.

The traditional perspective tends to focus on culture as community. The following are two typical definitions of culture from within the traditional perspective: “culture is the deposit of knowledge, experiences, beliefs, values, attitudes, meanings, hierarchies, religion, timing, roles, spatial relations, concepts of the universe, and material objects and possessions acquired by a large group of people in the course of generations through individual and group striving” (Samovar, Porter, & Jain, 1981, p. 24), and “culture is a script or a schema shared by a large group of people” (Gudykunst & Ting-Toomey, 1988, p. 30). Although the above characterizations of culture are somewhat different, they are generally taken as harmonious within the traditional perspective with the former just including more specifics, which taken as a whole provide group members with a shared script or pattern for living.

Virtually anything shared (or assumed to be shared) among members of a historically recognizable group can rightfully be called culture. Samovar et al. (1981) define culture as “the deposit of …” and then list such things as knowledge, values, and rituals. Although the definition does not make this explicit, the “depositing” of these shared items seems to take place within the collective minds of the members and to a certain extent in the physical artifacts created by the group. However, as seen in the Gudykunst and Ting-Toomey (1988) definition, this latter aspect is often dropped. Culture is thus a kind of abstract average based on the knowledge, experience, and so on, of all members of a group.

Shared group membership is the ultimate form of culture in the traditional perspective. Two people from one ethnic group who have differing values are still considered to be members of the same culture, whereas shared values but differing group membership would justify classifying them as belonging to two different cultures. Certainly shared values, meanings, acts, and so forth, are culture; however these component parts are subservient to shared group membership. Culture is largely operationalized within this perspective as a recognized group (with particular emphasis on racial, ethnic, and national groups). Both definitions above take for granted that those who share a group membership share the same culture. Different group membership necessitates a different life script, so what is important in deciding if two people share a particular culture is not their beliefs about how the world works but their recognized membership in a racial, ethnic, national, or similar group. The term international communication is often used within this perspective synonymously with intercultural communication, which highlights this point. In addition, Gudykunst (1986) indicates that intercultural communication can be seen as one kind of intergroup communication.

Taking the above approach has several consequences and implications. One, its definition of culture matches most closely the popular use of the term and, therefore, is readily understood by a wide audience. On a related note this definition allows work done in this area to be seen in a very practical light, given the increasing frequency of and concern over contact between diverse national and ethnic groups. However, with this emphasis on community or a socially tangible group, culture ceases to be sui generis, rather it becomes one variable, such as gender, age, empathy, or communication apprehension. Each of these variables may contribute to some system (social, normative, etc.), but none constitutes an independent system in its own right. Thus, as Gudykunst and Nishida (1989) note, “the major task for the scholar interested in explaining intercultural communication is to extend an existing communication theory to explain intercultural interactions” (p. 23).

The relatively efficient and easily understood operationalization of the culture as a given community can facilitate research. However, this leaves room for distortions or glosses that may bring into question the validity or generalizability of the data. An example of such a gloss is related by Friedrich (1989):

Group membership (racial or otherwise) does not guarantee shared knowledge or values. Does a person who classifies himself or herself as Hispanic, necessarily share more perceptions with another Hispanic than with a member of some other ethnic group (see Weider & Pratt [1990] for another example)? In practice the traditional definition tends to gloss over these types of problems as well as ones stemming from the premature assumption that certain concepts have relevance across cultures (see Wierzbicka, 1985).

Culture from the CMM perspective emphasizes conversation or the ongoing lived experience of its members, with culture constantly being recreated through the interaction of its members. Cronen, Chen, and Pearce (1988) maintain that cultures are both coevolving and polyphonic. In other words, culture (or social reality) is an ongoing creation of the everyday activities of its members and, though generally shared, contains diverse, but harmonious, expressions of lived experience.

A brief look at the six exemplar cultures presented by Pearce and Cronen (1980) reveals the form culture is seen as taking in this perspective: Primitive, Eastern, Western/Humanistic, Levantine, Modern, and Contemporary. These labels derive from time periods or locations associated with distinct schools of thought or philosophical orientations. Indeed, Pearce, Stanback, and Kang (1984) in reference to theory stemming from the CMM perspective claim “that those who believe the principles of action theory themselves comprise a culture. …” (p. 9). Culture within the CMM perspective is a shared set of beliefs (Pearce & Cronen, 1980; Pearce et al., 1984) that constitutes a socially constructed world (Pearce & Kang, 1988). Pearce and Kang note that culture is used synonymously with social reality or a given set of beliefs about how the world operates, and that cultures are given substance through communication.

Although references to national boundaries are found in CMM discussions of culture, these discussions typically emphasize the differing world views found within the respective countries. In contrast to the traditional perspective culture is not one of many variables in a system, but is the overriding social system or reality that encompasses all social variables. From this perspective culture becomes a viable topic on its own, rather than just a variable among many used to explain some other phenomenon. CMM also explicitly incorporates, celebrates, and provides a way of understanding within-culture differences. Of course, culture becomes much more difficult to operationalize because it is always in flux, and drawing firm lines between cultures is intentionally more problematic than in the traditional perspective.

The ethnographic perspective has tended to focus on culture as a code or system of meanings and ideals. Philipsen (1989) has defined culture as “a historically transmitted system of symbols, meanings, premises, routines, and rules …” (p. 260). Unlike the traditional perspective that would see a given “act” and its attendant meaning(s) as culture or the CMM view that it is the individual’s social reality, culture in the ethnographic perspective is the intersubjective resources available for generating a given meaning or meanings from an observed act (for example, Katriel and Philipsen (1981) describe the system that accounts for the cultural act of communication and its attendant meanings in middle-class America; Irvine (1980) explains the speech act of “request” and its attendant meanings for a Wolof community in Senegal). These resources constitute a system, making culture, as with the CMM perspective, a distinct entity.

This system operates at the level of common sense and, although often tacitly taken for granted, it is intersubjective and thus public. Carbaugh (1990) also notes that it is “deeply felt.” In other words it delineates the nature and scope of appropriate feelings and their objects.

Group labels may be used in the ethnographic perspective, but these refer to communities whose shared codes have been or are being studied. The focus is not the “individual qua group member” or even the group per se but the system of symbols and meanings that constitute the group as a distinctive cultural entity.

Function

The functions discussed below do not comprise an exhaustive list of functions that each perspective might attribute to culture. Rather they are primary ones highlighted by scholars working within the three perspectives. The functions discussed are not necessarily incompatible, but rather reflect the particular angle of vision stressed by each perspective.

The traditional perspective, as the definitions above show, focuses on the role of culture as a schema or pattern for living. Culture thus functions as a performance script for the individual’s life. This script can be viewed as a general guide for what the individual should do, think, and feel in various social situations (Brislin, Cushner, Cherrie, & Yong, 1986). However, culture is not the only performance script from which a person works; at the very least each person also has a personal or idiosyncratic script for how to act, think, and feel.

Two major functions of culture, or social reality, from the CMM perspective are organizing and interpreting (Pearce & Cronen, 1980). Speaking of these as functions from the CMM perspective is a bit tricky because culture is not posited as a means for organizing and interpreting some world out there, but is the taken-for-granted organization and interpretation that is our social world. Culture is the “emic” grammar in which we punctuate our actions and interactions as humans—“Emic,” rather than “etic,” in that the grammar is not some underlying truth of the social world that exists separate from persons’ communicative practices, but a very local creation of those practices. Culture thus constitutes for the individual the meaningful and necessary relationships of all that is social. A person’s interpretation of behavior is simultaneously informed by and informs that person’s culture or social reality. Pearce and Kang (1988) note that “acting like a native” refers to using a culture’s essential organization to identify the intention of one’s acts.

The ethnographic perspective takes culture to be both integrative and transformative (Carbaugh, 1990). Similar to the functions highlighted in the CMM perspective, culture allows a group of people to create shared meaning, participate in the emotive world of a community, and coordinate potentially diverse lines of action by integrating named entities into a recognizable whole. Culture is also integrative in that it binds generations together (future and past), not through forced stagnancy, but through a continual, yet cohesive change. Just as a family tree changes over the years but is consistent with what has gone on before, change or transformation occurs in a way consistent with past and present systems.

In summary, the primary function of culture from the traditional perspective is that of a performance script for the individual to follow. Thus, as one becomes more familiar with a person’s culture, one can better predict which course of action that person will follow. This is quite different from the grammatical function of culture highlighted in the CMM perspective. Culture is how the practices and features of social life are organized and punctuated for the individual. Given an understanding of culture the researcher can better make sense of the practices of the natives; however this understanding can never be severed from the ways in which the natives “get on” with life. The ethnographic perspective stresses cultural functions that are reminiscent of a family tree. Culture provides the person with a sense of place in one’s social world. This sense of place is invoked and constituted through community-specific ways of speaking, thus facilitating a sense of shared meaning and a coordination of action among members (Philipsen, 1989). In addition, cultural changes are not new independent creations, but are transformations linked to and coherent with the past. In learning about a person’s culture the researcher is learning what it means to think, feel, and act as a particular type of person.

Certainly any of the above analogies pushed to their limit would distort a given perspective. However, they attempt to capture each perspective’s primary orientation. In reference to human thought, feelings, and actions, the traditionalist asks, “What will these be?”; the CMM scholar asks, “How are these done?”; and the ethnographer asks, “What do these mean?”

Locus

Locus refers to the “place” where culture is seen to reside. Following the discussion of form, culture resides for traditionalists in the individual’s group membership or group identity. Although in one sense culture can be seen as residing in the sum of all the minds of a group, it is better described as an individual possession.

Even though in the CMM perspective culture is all pervasive (being synonymous with social reality), it is not some powerful transcendent force separate from single individuals. Persons, not cultures, are posited as the only powerful and enduring entities (Pearce & Cronen, 1980). The CMM perspective is immanentist in nature and views culture as residing in the heads of individuals and constantly being recreated in the daily activities of those individuals (Cronen et al., 1988). In this sense every communication encounter is to some extent intercultural (Pearce et al., 1984). Although differences tend to be the focus of CMM research, given the above assumption perhaps the most amazing thing about persons from different parts of the globe is their similarity.

Within the ethnographic perspective, culture is not viewed as the property of an individual or group of individuals set in time; rather, culture transcends individuals both in time and space (Philipsen, 1987b). Culture exists by convention and, though dynamic in nature, is not fully dependent on a particular individual or set of individuals. The ethnographic perspective assumes that culture is commonly accessible (Carbaugh, 1990). Although on the surface this claim is unlikely to result in disagreement among the three perspectives, its implications differ for each perspective when examined in light of the question of where culture resides. From the traditional perspective culture resides simultaneously in that part of an individual’s self-concept often referred to as her or his social identity and in an extended sense in the collective social identities of the group’s members as a sort of conglomeration of shared perceptions, experiences, memories, and so on. From a CMM perspective it resides in individuals’ heads, created and recreated through personal interactions. The ethnographic perspective posits culture as having an intersubjective existence, thus residing between individuals and even between generations.

Communication

Form and Function

The form and function of communication for each of these perspectives are closely related. The purpose of this discussion is to highlight those forms and functions that play a dominant role in the perspective. For each perspective communication is both verbal and nonverbal in form. In addition, for behavior to count as communication it must be recognized as meaningful. The rest of the forms or functions discussed below are less compatible than those discussed under culture.

Porter and Samovar (1988) define communication as “a dynamic transactional behavior-affecting process in which sources and receivers intentionally code their behavior to produce messages that they transmit through a channel in order to induce or elicit particular attitudes and behaviors” (p. 17). A similar definition is espoused by Gudykunst and Ting-Toomey (1988) who, following Miller and Steinberg (1975), state that “communication involves an intentional, transactional, symbolic process” (p. 20). The model is basically one of stimulus (encoding) and response (decoding) with the term transactional focusing on the simultaneous impact of external environment (including the other participants) and internal mental states on the communication process. The internal mental state of the encoder can be seen as the correct meaning, which the decoder must understand in roughly the same way for the communication to be called effective (Gudykunst & Kim, 1984). Communication, then, within the traditional perspective is essentially a tool or vehicle separate from the participants and meaning of the message, although it reflects beliefs about and has an impact on the meaning and participants involved.

Pearce and Cronen (1980) maintain that communication is the process by which persons co-create and co-manage social reality (what they both believe and believe that other people believe). Communication, then, is an omnipotent source of all that is social. One cannot choose whether or not to communicate, rather communication is inherent in being human, and is constitutive of all cultures (Pearce & Kang, 1988). Pearce and Kang further elaborate by saying that communication “is the generic term for the processes of interpreting one’s own and others’ actions, and for performing actions that will be interpreted” (p. 25). Communication, therefore, is action versus a tool or vehicle for action. Meanings can best be said to be made in particular communication encounters.

The CMM perspective posits communication as creator. Communication is not a morally vacuous or completely relative creator, rather it is accountable and open to critique based on its role as liberator (Cronen et al., 1988). The ultimate good or ultimate function of communication is to allow for the freedom of creatively extending seminal ideas and for the freedom of going beyond old ideas to new ones. Of course, not only can communication liberate, it can also bind or imprison, and it is how communication functions in regard to these two opposite processes that provides the major basis for critique in the CMM perspective.

Carbaugh (1990) reasons that “communication is the primary and situated social process of meaning-making, which occurs in particular forms and yields multiple outcomes” (p. 19). Communication is, therefore, posited in a similar manner in ethnographic research as in that of CMM. It is viewed as necessarily constitutive of what is meaningful in the world, such as persons, relationships, and institutions. Communication, however, is not omnipotent in the ethnographic perspective. Communication by itself, without reference to such inter-subjective realities as setting and positioning, cannot change the social world.

The highlighted function of communication within the ethnographic perspective is the communal function, to provide a means whereby individuals experience a subjective sense of shared identity or community membership (Philipsen, 1989; see also Hall’s [1988/89] discussion of communication as it plays the fundamental role of unifier). Every meaningful communicative act can be seen in terms of what it includes and what it excludes. This process of inclusion and exclusion exists at a very micro, intracommunity level as well as at a more macro, intercommunity level.

Locus

One of the key terms for each of the perspectives in defining communication is intentionality. The connotations associated with this term are different for each perspective. Gudykunst and Ting-Toomey (1988) refer to communication as an intentional process such that if there is no intent, there is no message. Intention for Gudykunst and Ting-Toomey is inherently associated with consciousness. From this perspective the axiom “one cannot not communicate” is essentially untrue. A lack of communication (or really no communication at all) exists in any encounter where there is no sender of a conscious message or whenever a consciously sent message is not received.

Intentionality in the CMM perspective does not imply a conscious, purposeful act, but rather an act that is meaningful (Pearce & Kang, 1988). Intentionality is inherently a feature of expressions in action (Cronen, Pearce, & Changsheng, 1989/90). As such, all acts are communication and thus intentional because they imply the directed choice of one act (and its appropriate meaning(s)) over other possible acts. In this sense a communicative act is always directed toward something, even if not consciously. Any physical motion, therefore, becomes action only as it is seen in relation to the narrative context and a whole system of possible meanings. One cannot not communicate in this perspective because communication is the very substance of social reality.

Philipsen (1989) also maintains that to communicate is to “produce messages so as to create an intended meaning” (p. 258). Indeed a communicative act (versus behavior) is one with intent in light of the social situation (Philipsen, 1987b). This type of intention is more a social than a personal possession in that it depends less on the so-called sender of a message than on the receiver and resides less in the internal workings of an individual mind than in the social conventions of a community. Thus, a behavior recognizable within a given community as meaningful and oriented to as purposeful in regard to that meaning, regardless of what is going on inside the sender’s head, can rightly be referred to as intentional.

Research Goals

In the traditional perspective the related goals of effectiveness and predictability are given top billing (Brislin et al., 1986; Gudykunst & Kim, 1984). Effectiveness in one sense subsumes the goal of prediction, in that prediction is desirable mainly because it affords greater control and thus greater effectiveness: For example, a researcher might study culture and nonverbal styles in order to make a causal link between the culture and a particular nonverbal style or behavior. Based on this information one might be able to predict problems that a nonnative might encounter when interacting with host nationals, and thereby take steps to help alleviate these problems, thus improving the effectiveness of the encounter.

The type of prediction emphasized in the CMM and ethnographic perspectives is a more clinical assessment, similar to that of a physician diagnosing a patient’s symptoms. These perspectives attempt to understand and account for particular practices and anticipate the shape of future communicative conduct (even creative variations). CMM tends to focus more on a single episode and potential prescriptions for its cure, whereas the ethnographer would focus on the phenomenon in general or the meaning and implications of such an ailment (such as what it includes and excludes).

The major goals of the CMM perspective are interpretation and critique (Cronen et al., 1988). The goal of interpretation takes as its focus particular episodes, including the rules used for producing and understanding them as well as their negotiated, reflexive features. The interpretation process is, therefore, a kind of meta-retrospective sense-making. But the goal of critique plays the subsuming role for CMM. Cronen et al. maintain that critique aimed at enhancing human life is a fundamental responsibility of any social science and that one’s guiding principles for critique should be the same as for interpretation. They go on further to highlight a culture’s resources in regard to the dual modes of liberation as the solid ground from which to engage in this critique. The two liberties are creative elaboration and imaginative reconstruction and are inherently constituted through, by, and in the communicative practices of individuals. Indeed, “efforts opposed to the intrinsically liberating character of communication strike at the heart of what it means to be human” (Cronen et al., 1988, p. 93), thus allowing for a meaningful critique of incommensurable social realities.

This notion of critique is not shared by the other perspectives. The traditional perspective would only provide for a critique in the sense of what facilitated or hindered the effectiveness of an interaction. The ethnographic view does not see critique as an essential part of the researcher’s job, although Carbaugh (1989/90) notes several ways in which critique may be included in ethnographic projects. In addition, Philipsen (1987a) could be read as suggesting a given culture’s ability to maintain a balance between the opposing pulls of individual freedom and communal constraint as a vantage point from which to engage in critique.

The goals of description and understanding can be seen as the driving forces behind the bulk of ethnographic research (Philipsen, 1989). Philipsen explains that ethnography is concerned with developing a “theory of description.” In juxtaposition to the traditional approach, which would only see description as a forerunner to theory making, ethnographers strive to develop an ever finer framework for discovering the distinctive communication patterns of any particular community. The descriptive framework also provides a means for intelligible comparison and conversation between communities marked by different ways of speaking by establishing comparison points with universal significance (though these comparison points have an inherently open texture that changes in light of each new community studied). These comparison points along with universal theses regarding communicative conduct provide a way of delineating the nature and scope of cultural variation in communicative conduct. In addition, there is constant effort to elaborate and explain the relationship between culture and communication both in a general sense and in particular cases.

Relationship of Culture and Communication

In light of the preceding discussion, it is not surprising that the relationship between culture and communication in the traditional perspective tends to be largely unidirectional, with culture determinant and communication dependent. Hall’s (1959) claim that communication is culture (as is virtually any shared phenomenon) fits nicely within this perspective, although the other side of his claim, “culture is communication,” becomes problematic. Hall’s quote and the relationship between communication and culture from this perspective are like a synecdoche in which the part (communication) may stand for the whole (culture). Thus they are generally treated as distinct entities with communication being somewhat subordinate to culture.

Porter and Samovar (1988) note that “it is through the influence of culture that people learn to communicate” (p. 24) and explicitly discuss the relationship in terms of culture determining communication. Research stemming from this perspective uses culture as an independent, not a dependent, variable (see the recent handbook edited by Asante & Gudykunst, 1989). Although Gudykunst and Ting-Toomey (1988) do state once that the relationship is reciprocal, this is obviously more a nod to other perspectives than an integral part of the perspective from which they work, as their entire book is explicitly focused on culture’s effects on communication. In short, culture is group membership and the inherent map for life that goes along with that membership, whereas communication like a legend on a map is made meaningful by the map and can be used instrumentally to navigate according to that map.

Turning now to the CMM perspective, we see that culture (social reality) is collectively created and maintained by communication, which comprises every motion that we engage in that can be interpreted within our system of meaning (social reality). Pearce et al. (1984) go one step further and explain the sense behind this seeming tautology. They write that “there is a reciprocal, causal relationship between human actions [communication] and social reality [culture]” (p. 7; see also Cronen & Shuter, 1983). Questions such as, “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” (could it be simultaneous?) are not crucial to understanding this perspective and imply a linearity that those within the CMM perspective would see as artificial.

The causal note in the CMM perspective lends a certain literalness to Hall’s communication is culture (and vice versa) statement in that it implies that communication and culture share a mutually necessary and sufficient relationship. The positing of a mutually causal relationship raises questions about the strength and nature of the causality involved. Swidler (1986), for example, has convincingly argued that one reality can find expression in various communicative forms and that a given communicative form can be associated with a variety of social realities. The CMM stance that cultures are polyphonic would seem, at least partially, to allow for Swidler’s point, but the term causal tends to imply a one-to-one, stimulus-and-response, predictive relationship uncharacteristic of the CMM perspective. Causal, in the CMM perspective, is not used to imply that one set of communicative practices always leads to one and only one social reality and vice versa. Rather, communicative practices in general can always be understood to be necessary and sufficient for the existence of a social reality, and are inevitable expressions of social realities. You cannot have one without the other. This stance highlights the socially constructed or created aspect of both culture and communication.

Thus, the relationship of culture and communication in the CMM perspective is marked by irony, for it is not what it appears to be. What seems like a literal social world “out there” (culture) is not. What seems like merely a vehicle to express thoughts and emotions (communication) is not. Therefore, most importantly, what seem like mere representations of social reality are actually the substance of that reality. As with irony, culture and communication provide some of their most telling insights into the human condition in terms of differences, such as through the contraposition of incommensurable systems (see Pearce, 1989).

The ethnographic perspective tends to connect communication and culture in weaker terms than the CMM perspective. “Weaker” is, of course, a relative term and is not intended to imply that the culture/communication relationship is weak in the ethnographic perspective. This weaker relationship in part stems from the ethnographic emphasis on code rather than conversation. It portrays both communication and culture as resistant to change. The ethnographic view of the relationship between culture and communication is one of interdependence, such that each can be viewed as constraining and enabling the other (see Philipsen, 1989). Burke’s (1966) point about decisions involving both a creation of alternatives as well as a particular choice helps to illuminate this position. A given culture, or system of resources, provides the individual with the list of alternatives and, in a weaker sense, a push toward a given choice. This naturally places constraints on individual action as well as facilitates it. In either case, the influence exerted is not determinant. The same is true of the influence of communication on culture in that one’s ways of communicating reinforce certain cultural aspects (and vice versa), but there is still room for dynamic, yet coherent change.

In this approach communication and culture are two distinct entities in that “not all communication is culture, fully, nor is all culture communication” (Carbaugh, 1990, p. 21). Although Carbaugh takes the notion that “culture is communication” and its converse as expressed by Hall (1959) to be an irritating tautology, it is better seen from this perspective as metaphor. Metaphor works by allowing us to see two separate entities as one, thus both facilitating a better understanding of things unfamiliar and encouraging fresh insights into what is common. Good ethnographies do the same by focusing on “cultural communication” (see Katriel, 1986). For, although communication and culture are distinct entities, they overlap in telling ways and each provides at least a partial explanation of the other. Weider and Pratt (1990) provide a nice example of this with culture (as a mutually accessible, deeply felt system for turning behavior into action) and communication (production and interpretation of situationally meaningful messages) each helping to illuminate and explain the other. In addition, Pratt himself becomes an example of partaking of a given culture without necessarily always communicating in terms of that culture.

Implications for Acculturation

Acculturation inherently involves the “communication” of culture. As such it provides a problem for which practical implications of the three theoretical perspectives can be profitably explored. This applied exploration will be facilitated by the use of the concept of “competence” (communicative and cultural) as defined by each perspective.

Traditional

Within the traditional approach the researcher searches for causal linkages between variables that, once found, provide the base for understanding, prediction, and control. This base in turn facilitates increased effectiveness in explaining the past and especially in influencing the future. The topic of acculturation is problematic for the traditional approach because in a sense culture becomes not only the independent but also the dependent variable. The operationalization of culture as group (with inherent script) works well when one is examining such phenomena as initial interactions, self-disclosure, communication apprehension, and values. However, this way of operationalizing culture is obviously lacking when applied in a strict sense to the acculturation process. For example, one’s place of residence and legal national membership could change in a day, but the connotations associated with acculturation are obviously more complex (and recognized as such from all three theoretical perspectives). This potential problem is largely resolved in the traditional perspective by focusing on communication competence. Communication competence for the traditionalist is generally taken to refer to appropriate and effective communication as perceived by both the sender and the receiver (Spitzberg & Cupach, 1984). It is appropriate in the sense that it does not violate the accepted norms of a community and effective in that it generally enables the speaker to fulfill his or her needs or desires. Communication competence is focused on “means,” as it is taken to involve the knowledge, motivating attitudes, and behavioral skills necessary for an individual to meet his or her goals in the social world.

Cultural competence for traditionalists is best termed intercultural communication competence and is essentially communicative competence in multiple cultural groups. (An entire issue of the International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 13(3), is dedicated to this topic.) From this perspective acculturation is the process of assimilating a new group’s social means. The goal, then, in the traditional perspective, is to identify what will enable a person to obtain these group means, that is, to interact appropriately and effectively in the new environment. Given the pivotal role of communication competence, it is not surprising to find that every one of the 28 theorems posited by Kim (1988b) to explain and predict acculturation revolves directly or indirectly around it. For example, Kim’s first theorem is, “The greater the development of host communication competence, the greater participation in host interpersonal communication” (p. 76). Later communication competence and participation in interpersonal communication are both directly linked to the three adaptation outcomes posited by Kim, thus constituting six more theorems. Communication competence becomes the “tyrannizing image” to which all other variables must relate either as cause or outcome in order to be intelligible as part of a theory of acculturation.

Gudykunst and Kim (1984) note that communication competence, although an individual possession, has cognitive, affective, and behavioral aspects (see also Imahori & Lanigan, 1989; Spitzberg, 1989). Kim (1988b) suggests attendant outcomes of acculturation for each aspect, a functional fitness (behavioral), psychological health (affective), and an intercultural identity (cognitive). The recognition of an “intercultural identity” indicates that, even though to adapt to a specific culture one may have to drop certain behaviors and pick up new ones, the process of assimilating another group’s means can be additive in nature, allowing the individual to become multicultural. Indeed, Martin and Hammer (1989) studied a wide range of behavioral skills (the primary and essential aspect of acculturation from this perspective) that could provide a basis for being multicultural.

Coordinated Management of Meaning (CMM)

The idea of acculturation is particularly relevant to the aims of CMM as acculturation involves cultures in contact and thus provides a potentially revealing context for testing and discovering ways of comparing incommensurable systems (cultures). The notion of communication competence also plays an important role in understanding the process of acculturation from the CMM perspective. Pearce and Cronen (1980) posit communication competence as “systemic,” explaining that it deals with the relationship between an individual’s communicative abilities and the performance demands of any given culture. Building on work by Harris (1979) they go on to elaborate three general types of competence: minimal, satisfactory, and optimal. The minimally competent are anything but competent, having no real control or understanding of the social system in which they find themselves (a stranger in a strange land). Although there are two levels of satisfactory competence, this type of competence is in essence the same as the competent communicator discussed in the traditional perspective, a person who functions appropriately and effectively within a social system (a native at home). Optimal competence refers to those who can move from one social system to another with relative ease and, therefore, are not bound by the limits of a given system (a native of many homes).

Given this view of competence and the earlier definition of culture from this perspective there is room for an apparent contradiction (which is not necessarily a cause for sorrow in the CMM perspective). The contradiction appears in writings relevant to the acculturation process (Pearce & Kang, 1987, 1988). Based on the idea of optimal competence, Pearce and Kang (1987) argue that individuals can reach a state where they can “choose whether to act like an American or like a Korean in particular episodes” (p. 243). An optimally competent person is taken to operate unproblematically both inside and outside of multiple cultures. Culture is claimed to be “unnecessary because the human mind, particularly in social interaction, can organize meanings in any number of ways rather than following some inherent necessary principle” (p. 242), thus dispelling the idea that one has to deculturate in order to acculturate, or for that matter be enmeshed in one system at all. Indeed, optimal competence seems to imply a multicultural person, perhaps not unlike what may be found in the traditionalist perspective.

On the other hand Pearce and Kang (1988), consistent with the idea of culture as discussed by Pearce and Cronen (1980), note that “To be human is to have been enculturated, and not just enculturated to culture in general, but to some specific culture …” (p. 29). They go on to cite Geertz in support of the idea that there is no “backstage” where the real person resides. In fact, given the definition of culture not only as shared social reality but as a person’s social reality (remember each encounter is to some degree intercultural), it would seem that the very idea of an optimally competent communicator is misleading. Whatever changes occur in the individual through interaction with those of another culture create not a multicultural person but a person with a new culture. The CMM perspective regarding culture and communication would in fact necessitate a new culture versus a multiculture perspective on the acculturative process. Although this new culture may be additive in nature, to say that an individual is truly “inside” either of the other cultures is misleading (see Rodriguez’s [1982] discussion of this impossibility, via his summer work experience, at the end of the fourth chapter).

There is at least one potential resolution to the apparent contradiction in CMM theory. Pearce and Kang (1988) note that cultures are made up of a number of systems. Each individual is involved in many of these systems, for example as a sister, a teacher, a friend, and a daughter. Each of these roles calls upon slightly different social realities and performance demands. If one were to add to this list such roles as American, Korean, or Irish, one could quite easily see how a person could come to have optimal competence for any number of these role systems. This would not, however, mean that they really are competent in more than one “culture,” living some sort of culturally schizophrenic life under the control of some real person backstage.

The difficulty here is being clear about what is being discussed. Pearce and Kang (1987) seem to be using the term culture in the same way as traditionalists and not in accordance with their 1988 chapter or the seminal work of Pearce and Cronen (1980). National boundaries may or may not coincide with differing social realities and the idea that somehow people maintain two quite separate ones (which they can choose from some separate area) rather than create a new one does not follow with the bulk of CMM writings. Even the work on so-called “re-entry problems” in the traditional perspective would seem to provide evidence for the creation of a new culture. This “new culture” might not be recognized by the individual, especially while still immersed in the environment of the second culture, for memory has a way of glossing over inconsistencies and changes (Nisbett & Wilson, 1977). Such unawareness of change would explain the surprise and difficulty often found in a re-entry experience after a prolonged stay in another culture. A key issue from the CMM perspective is how the new culture created out of intercultural interaction compares with either of the previous cultures in terms of facilitating the liberating role of communication.

Ethnography of Communication

By and large the ethnographic perspective is not concerned with the acculturation process in that it focuses on discovering and detailing the particular ways of speaking for a speech community rather than on the transitions faced by an individual or group of individuals in adapting to a new culture. Even so, the ethnographic perspective has general implications for this concern, and a community of immigrants could be made the topic of study (see Hoffman, 1990). The definition of communication competence in this perspective is similar to the traditional definition and the CMM definition of satisfactory competence: As a competent member of a speech community, one shares with others the ability to interpret and produce meaningful and appropriate speech. A distinguishing difference stems from what would be called culture competence. Culture competence implies not only communication competence, but also that such notions as self and communication are deeply felt. Thus, acculturation necessarily involves a change in what is deeply felt, whether by addition or replacement. To the extent that the feelings involved are incompatible, that change must necessarily be one of replacement.

This perspective sees culture competence as also involving ends. To be considered truly acculturated, one must have the appropriately deep feeling regarding ends as well as means. This perspective differs from that of the traditionalists in that culture competence is not simply an extension of communication competence, but a different kind of competence. It is a type of competence that would necessitate a certain amount of deculturation in the process of acculturation. Given the fundamental role of one’s conception of self in the ethnographic literature, one might refer to the acculturation process as a sort of death and rebirth of the person. This should not be taken to imply that it is not possible to adapt to living in another culture with acculturation never occurring (see Hoffman [1990] for a report on Iranian immigrants to the United States).

Philipsen (1987a) suggests one useful means whereby the acculturation process may be tracked and perhaps partially accounted for through communication forms. He describes three apparently universal forms through which the communal function of communication is carried out: myth, ritual, and social drama. Myth refers to public stories that express and resolve the hopes and fears of a group of people. Ritual is the correct performance of structured moves that pay homage to some object. Social drama involves a remediation and aligning process whereby the moral boundaries of a group are established and maintained. Although these forms are posited as universal, the contents will vary across communities. It would seem logical to expect that as individuals became acculturated, the content of the myths, rituals, and social dramas in which they engaged would change also. (This is not to say that one could not learn the myths, rituals, and dramas of a group and thus be considered communicatively competent without ever feeling them deeply and becoming culturally competent.)

For example, one might trace the myths of an immigrant population from those that existed in their native land, to those that deal with adapting to the new environment, to those that reflect their new culture as their own. This is not meant to imply that everyone would, or should, follow this pattern. However, if one were to be considered acculturated into the middle-class American culture described in ethnographies, it would seem reasonable to assume that one would have to participate in the communication ritual that pays homage to the “self” (Katriel & Philipsen, 1981), tell and appreciate the “need to find oneself” myths reflected in such movies as Kramer vs. Kramer and Ordinary People, and be willing and able to serve as the community representative in social dramas that center on violations that impose on the “self” (Carbaugh, 1988).

Conclusion

Differences and similarities among the three perspectives have been reviewed with an eye to the conceptual and research implications of assumptions about culture, communication, and their nexus. These implications were developed more fully for the specific topic of acculturation. Table 4.1 summarizes these differences. In presenting Table 4.1, however, two caveats must be given. First, a table necessitates a degree of simplification that much of this article has tried to avoid. To use the table without consulting the text of the article and the works of scholars within each perspective would mean missing important nuances and insights germane to each perspective. Second, the table highlights primary features of each perspective and should not be considered exhaustive.

One of the fruitful aspects of a comparative discussion such as the foregoing is that it allows for both internally and externally generated insights about the perspectives discussed. While avoiding redundancy, some of the primary reactions to each perspective from the other perspectives will be summarized. Although these reactions tend to focus on concerns or limitations, they also serve to highlight valued aspects of the reacting perspective.

Articles detailing the CMM perspective frequently feature brief vignettes from the fictional village of Chelm. Chelm is inhabited by fools who routinely “miss the point.” These stories are generally directed toward the traditional/neopositivist perspective described above. The idea of being able to treat culture as simply one among many variables that can be analyzed objectively and depended upon to have certain effects seems foolish. After all, culture is something constantly being (re)created and is not some “thing” to be found, but something to be practiced. The question becomes, why spend your time trying to find something “out there” to which everyone can turn despite our differences when there are a multitude of things out there, all of which are only the results of particular human choices and interactions?

Two questions highlight the ethnographic view of the traditional/neopositivist perspective: (1) Is it true?, and (2) Is it useful? The truth of a social world that can be characterized by the tidy formulation of deterministic causes and effects has been difficult to establish (see my [Hall, 1988/89] discussion of the “normative force” position). Indeed, ethnographers frequently use violations of these so-called “causal” effects and the subsequent attention paid to them to help discover, explicate, and support culture-specific claims. The fact that the traditional methods and assumptions are questionable at the truth level does not mean that they are not useful. Hypotheses generated out of a traditional perspective often lead to fruitful insights (both culture specific and cross cultural) when subjected to the rigorous discovery and testing procedures of ethnographers working within a particular community. It is not so much that the possibility of transcendent or universal relationships is dismissed out of hand by ethnographers, but that the particularity of social groups is assumed. Thus, a more pressing concern might be the development of a transcendent method for discovering these particularities. Indeed, the usefulness of the traditional research agenda is often retarded by the tendency to assume the existence and meaning of certain communicative acts across cultures in the search for effectiveness recipes.

From the traditional perspective the CMM approach to research is too relativistic and too ambiguous. CMM is too relativistic because, although it often seems to generate a detailed after-the-fact analysis of a specific interaction, it does not deal well with the predictive concerns of traditionalists. For traditionalists the multiplicity of social realities and the somewhat ad hoc nature of meaning in communicative encounters seem to set the stage for endless digressions and qualifiers. Partly because of this explicit lack of solid ground from which to generalize and partly due to CMM scholars’ refusal to accept many of the traditional definitions and evaluative standards, CMM seems fraught with ambiguity and lacking in methodological rigor. From the traditional perspective, knowledge claims are subject to replication and require strict control of contaminating factor.

An obvious similarity between the CMM and ethnographic perspectives is their emphasis on working from an inside position such that the researcher’s story resonates with the culture being studied. From an ethnographic perspective the CMM approach to this is potentially flawed and subtly different. The potential flaw is grounded in the CMM eagerness to engage in critique and intervention activities. This eagerness to evaluate even if only to improve the quality of communication and, therefore, human life, can still serve to eclipse a possibly fuller understanding of another culture. The subtle difference rests in the nature of the relationship between the researcher and the group studied. Grounded in the notion of optimal competence, the CMM scholar emphasizes becoming a part of the community (adding that community to the growing list of communities in which she or he is natively competent), whereas the ethnographer participates in the community, but does so without expectation of becoming a member. The ethnographer’s participation is characterized by a studied distance. The ethnographer sees this difference as due in part to CMM’s failure to recognize a difference between cultural and communicative competence. It is also related to the primary desire of the ethnographer to resonate with rather than intervene in the communicative practices of a community. Finally, the all-encompassing definition of culture advocated by the CMM perspective is seen as defusing the concept’s value.

From the traditional perspective, ethnography is best characterized as a limited perspective that produces good but in the long run insufficient research. It is not that what ethnographers are doing is wrong, but one is left to wonder, so what? From the traditional perspective, ethnographic work is a nice resource for developing hypotheses to test or more culturally sensitive questionnaires to distribute. Further, ethnography might be used in the discussion section of an article to help make sense of the research results. However, a traditionalist may wonder how research that is so localized can ever play more than a supporting role in the search for invariant truth in our social world.

The major complaint aimed at ethnography from the CMM perspective is that it doesn’t live up to its social responsibility as a social science. That is, it seems too focused on knowledge for its own sake. It lacks the necessary pragmatic focus that is so basic to a well rounded and fully responsible social science. Its impact on the emancipation of humankind is too indirect. Nor does the ethnographic approach go far enough, by CMM standards, in recognizing the mutually causal link between culture and communication.

So which of these theoretical perspectives is the true perspective to which we should be flocking? Given our current understanding of the social world, that question (as well as the worry that we don’t have one unified theory of intercultural communication) appears premature, if not inherently dysfunctional. Each perspective has facilitated insights into the culture–communication connection and each is in need of greater refinement. Certainly this refinement will be aided by rigorous research efforts that seek to exploit the potential of each perspective from within. However, a completely “live and let live” approach to theoretical differences is insufficient for the refinement needed. Rather a tacking back and forth between efforts at rhetorical and social eloquence as defined by Pearce (1989) is also needed. This would involve trying to find a “best fit” between theory and data as well as new points of cross-perspective comparison that enrich our understanding and theoretical alternatives for the study of culture and communication. Such refinement is not easily achieved but is well worth the effort required. I hope this article will contribute to that process.

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