Mapping Cultural Communication Research
In this chapter, Ronald L. Jackson examines 175 articles on culture and communication published in six U.S. mainstream communication journals between 1953 and 2005. He traces the semantic evolution of key terms such as culture, ethnicity, and identity and then adumbrates general trends in culture and communication studies in terms of research topics and methodological preference. He categorizes the 175 studies into four modes of inquiry: intracultural (research on communicative practices within a culture), intercultural (research on communicative practices in intercultural encounters), cross-cultural (comparative research on communicative practices across cultures), and critical cultural (research on power relations in intercultural settings). Based on his extensive literature review, Jackson concludes that the field still “suffers from the residue of one-sided, singular, patriarchal, racially biased and hegemonic interpretations of cultural experiences.” He urges scholars and educators to challenge the privileged position of Eurocentric canonical histories and epistemologies and assume the responsibility “to properly educate our students about the globally diverse culture in which they live.”
In grappling with pinpointing the definition and parameters of intercultural communication research, Starosta and Chen (2003) argue that “intercultural communication study may be a field of no substance. Perhaps communication study lacks a clear identity at the dawn of this new millennium” (p. 7). Clearly, cultural communication inquiry has been varied and vast, yet in many ways this chapter is a reply to the indictment that intercultural communication has lost its robust and supple intent. In mapping the terrain of the field, I would argue that it is not as important for us to articulate a single, all-encompassing definition of intercultural communication as it is to explore the regions/scope and relevance of cultural communication research in the present day. Just as the word “technology” means different things to different generations based on conceptual innovations of the time, intercultural communication as a mode of inquiry has also had shifting interpretations and approaches over time. What it meant to study intercultural communication in the 1960s or 1970s, for example, had much more to do with quantitative analyses of overseas cultural adjustment, racial attitudes, and/or linguistic variation than with contemporary critical, rhetorical, qualitative, and quantitative intercultural studies associated with everything from public deliberation and the public sphere to cross-cultural doctor–patient relationships and health decision making. It will likely have yet another set of meanings and implications for someone exploring intercultural communication thirty or forty years from now. That is the nature of scientific revolution.
For the purposes of this investigation, I define cultural communication research as that which encompasses four modes of inquiry (each representing individual sections of the chapter) that are reflective of paradigm shifts or, as Denzin and Lincoln (2000) call them, “moments” in the evolution of the field: intracultural, intercultural, cross-cultural, and critical cultural communication research. To systematically approach this task of sorting out what the interdisciplinary field of cultural communication looks like presently, we must explore several facets: (1) shifting terminology regarding culture, (2) the approach to the present study, (3) general trends and patterns of cultural communication research, and (4) a brief review of literature related to the four cultural modes of inquiry. The essay concludes with recommendations for future research.
Shifting Terminology
All those who have indicated they study intercultural communication have not studied the same thing. For example, it could be argued that earlier iterations of cultural communication research that were named other things like inter ethnic research constituted different subjects and observed phenomena via a different social lens than what we think is being used today. Rather than repeating another explication of the field’s tautological conundrum, I think it is a far better use of space to consider what some of the definitions are and how they have helped shape the field of cultural communication as it exists today. In doing so, the task is to unravel where we have been as a field that has historically accented ethnic communication and has begun to contemporarily accent culture as a defining component of social identity. So I begin with a description of culture, followed by a brief exploration of research concerning ethnicity and identity.
Understanding Culture
The late-nineteenth-century anthropologist E. B. Tylor’s definition of culture has been oft cited (Chen & Starosta, 1998; Starosta & Chen, 2003): “Culture or civilization, taken in its wide ethno-graphic sense, is that complex whole, which includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by [wo/]man as a member of society.” Edward T. Hall (1959) criticizes this definition, pointing out its “lack of rigorous specificity” (p. 20). Hall (1959) responds to this void with an entire theory on culture comprised of ten elements called the primary message system (PMS), supported by three message components (sets, isolates, and patterns). The theory is explained as being bio-basic and infra-cultural, exhibiting a strong linkage between culture and communication. A less intricate, but suitable conception of culture is found in Clifford Geertz’s (1973, p. 12) The Interpretation of Cultures. Culture is defined within the text as “an historically transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in symbols, a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms by means of which men [and women] communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and attitudes toward life.” This definition is important because it accounts for the evolutionary quality of culture, the process and pattern-based structure of culture, and the traditional/cross-generational transmission of culture. Moreover, the definition includes a description of culture that relates to symbol sharing and interpretations of reality. The only missing, but often assumed, component is the tie to a geographical location. Marshall Singer (1986) adds that culture must be viewed perceptually and therefore instituted and incorporated by an identity group. Geertz (1973) submits that culture has been ill defined and diluted because of the plethora of definitions. Culture is often used to describe subcultural, or what is now called co-cultural, groups such as those related to gender, age, physical impairment, sexual preference, language, nationality, or religion (Orbe, 1998).
Although we have already defined culture, the words “cultural studies” convey a different meaning, as do the words “culture industry,” “popular culture,” and “organizational culture.” Cultural studies and culture industry are terms that evoke discussions of the media and popular culture, as well as the political and economic interests of the media, respectively. They suggest, as Bakhtin (1981) maintains, that there are both carnivalesque and “vulgar” dimensions of our society that are contrasted against the backdrop of a more elite, modern society. The carnivalesque suggests something of a collective nature in which participants feel connected by a public act or celebration. They are more than people gathered together; they have purpose and shared goals at least for the moment. The alleged “vulgar” quality of popular culture is akin to kitsch artistry; it is common, out of order, unruly, flexible, and without boundaries. This is not to elicit the image of a mob, but rather independently minded persons who are unconstrained by any momentary set of rules or norms. They have a sense of being free even while the propaganda or ideologies around them consume their thinking. Their flexibility enables them to respond without notice in erratic or unpredictable ways. Yet, as the prefix “popular” in popular culture suggests, it is the vehicle by which most social learning and social meaning begin to take shape because of their frequent, popular support. Unlike national culture, which has its own set of symbols that help establish both a sense of national pride and normative ways of being, popular culture offers a direct commentary on the social design, and cultural studies scholars analyze how these social structures are facilitated via all forms of media. Some cultural studies research is primarily preoccupied with facets of culture exposed in these media (Hall & DuGay, 1996), and some is more concerned with the economic interests that fuel the desires and interests of the consumer public such that the packaging, marketing, and commoditization of social reality are focally more important as a culture industry than any social lessons learned or reverberated within the text (Adorno, 2001).
In each case, culture is the embodiment of values, norms, beliefs, and patterns of communicative behavior that govern how people relate to the world. Organizational culture is no different; it links who people are as human beings with who they are expected to be as organizational constituents. So there are several shared defining characteristics of each explanation of culture: (1) culture is value-driven; (2) culture is a state, trait, and process; (3) culture shapes how symbolic messages are interpreted; (4) culture is communicated in interaction with others; and (5) culture influences identities. The kind of culture examined in this review is related to what some communication literature refers to as ethnic culture or ethnoculture (Hecht & Ribeau, 1984), which is that which describes a set of patterns, beliefs, behaviors, institutions, symbols, and practices shared and perpetuated by a consolidated group of individuals connected by an ancestral heritage and a concomitant geographical reference location. Although culture is a term that encompasses the features of ethnicity and race, it is more than a catch all. It conceives of identities in ways that zoom out to include broader ideas and ideals that represent the general global social structures and zoom in at a level of specificity associated with ethnic dimensions like language, religion, and nationality.
Ethnicity and Identity
“Ethnicity” is a term that has been criticized for accenting otherness. When the word “ethnicity” is evoked, it implies an intriguing exotic, foreign, or heathen Other. Quite a bit of the early cultural communication research called itself interethnic communication. This was a popular term that went hand in hand with the racial tolerance discourse of the 1970s and 1980s. At the time, it was thought to be quite a progressive way of thinking. It was also thought to be accurate in the sense that culture represented something broader and indicative of nationality. For example, America is considered a culture, not an ethnicity. The ethnic groups are those many indigenous social groups with distinctive micro-cultural facets to their group identities, such as language, religion, traditional rites and rituals, and annual customs. This conception would have made a lot of sense as a progressive way of exploring culture except that Whites in the United States were never considered ethnic in cultural communication research. They were never the focus of inter-ethnic research in communication, but remained central when the discussions were mainly about American culture (Giles & Johnson, 1981; Hecht, Jackson, & Ribeau, 2003; Hecht & Ribeau, 1984; Hewstone & Brown, 1986; Hewstone & Jaspers, 1982; McCall & Simmons, 1978; Ting-Toomey, 1986). This epistemological solipsism within past and contemporary cultural communication research remains mostly uncontested.
Ethnic identity research focusing on cultural Others has been primarily invested in questions of language. In the early 1980s, Giles and Johnson (1981) posited that language identity has been scientifically undervalued, and no clear connection has been identified between language and ethnicity within communication research. The heuristic contribution made by the authors’ theorizing is the link between ethnic and linguistic identity. These concepts are introduced as in-group and out-group experiences, which compel the group member to maintain ethnic group and language loyalty, alternatively labeled “ethnolinguistic vitality” (Giles, Bourhis, & Taylor, 1977). The language attitudes, roles, and interpretations are outlined in order to express linguistic distinctiveness. Giles et al. (1977) present three factors that influence ethno linguistic vitality: status, demographics, and institutional support. These authors mention institutions such as churches, schools, private industry, and government agencies. They further contend that the greater the institutional support, the linguistic population, and economic status, then the greater the vitality level among the members.
Bourhis (1985) offers another set of terms to describe language loyalty: speech convergence and speech divergence. He argues that speech convergence, or code switching, is the result of using the code of the dominant group. Speech divergence is indicative of strong in-group loyalty, even at the cost of suffering repercussions for deviant behavior. Scotton (1988) defines code switching as “the use of any two or more linguistic varieties in the same conversation, whether they are different languages, styles, or dialects” (p. 201). This broad definition encompasses lexical, syntactic, and phoneme variation. When Scotton discusses style variation, she includes references made from a speaker’s stylistic repertoire, which are indicative of his or her social experiences and ethnic group membership.
In addition to these discussions of ethnicity and language, earlier research has examined what is now the sole province of speech pathology and audiology—speech pattern research focusing on adolescent voice changes, nonfluencies, dialectical variations, vocal intelligibility, and linguistic proficiency (Buck, 1968; Darnell, 1970; Hollien & Malcik, 1962; Nichols, 1965; Sereno & Hawkins, 1967). Language and linguistic identity are two areas of ethnic identity research that remain pervasive in cultural communication studies and are discussed later as they relate to intercultural communication. Before delving into that literature, it is important to explain how the present literature review was conducted.
Approach to Present Study
To map the contours of the intellectual terrain in cultural communication studies over the last fifty-five years or so (i.e., 1953–2008), I selected several prominent journals in the field of communication. When considering which ones to include I used several selection criteria:
- The journal needed to have a long history of being a well-respected communication journal
- The journal needed to still exist in 2008
- The journal needed to be associated with existing major communication associations
- The journal needed to be at least fifteen years old so that it could be considered an established journal
The qualifying journals of initial interest included almost all NCA, ICA, and regional association journals. The ones selected were Communication Monographs (formerly Speech Monographs; CM), Journal of Applied Communication Research (JACR), Human Communication Research (HCR), Communication Theory (CT), Western Journal of Communication (WJC), and Communication Quarterly (CQ). There are two NCA, two ICA, and two regional association journals represented in the list, respectively.
I used the same search terms in the Communication and Mass Media Complete, Ebsco Host, and Proquest databases: intercultural, culture, race, ethnic, nationality, collectivism, and individualism. In the case of CM and JACR, the search had to be completed both online and manually, given the limits of the database. For example, CM is the oldest journal included in this study and it was established in 1934, whereas CQ (Today’s Speech) was established in 1954. HCR was launched in 1974, JACR began publication around 1981, and CT and WJC were established after 1990. Since intercultural communication was founded about 1959, it makes sense that journals established in the late 1950s and early 1960s would be prime candidates as they would be more invested in publishing cutting-edge research that reflected the pulse of the discipline. Moreover, about ten years ago, the average communication scholar would likely have said that the majority of intercultural communication research published by our major association journals would probably appear in these six journals. The other journals that seem obvious as candidates for selection are Quarterly Journal of Speech, Journal of Communication, and Critical Studies in Media Communication. However, given the scope of this project, I excluded those, although I suggest they be included in future studies. After searching the literature in the six selected journals, I found 175 articles concerning cultural communication published between 1953 and 2005. The content of these journals were mapped by recognizing patterns in topic, research questions/hypotheses, author, institution, and orientation toward culture.
General Trends and Patterns
Just as a snapshot, there were several generally interesting findings worth sharing about where much of this early work was concentrated among these six journals, who was publishing it, and how frequently cultural communication research appeared: it is interesting that the vast majority of the twenty-one cultural research studies produced in the first twenty years (1962–1982) came from authors affiliated with institutions in the western United States, mainly Texas, California, Colorado, Hawai‘i, and Washington, with only two from Florida, two from Ohio (same author), three from New York, and one from Chicago.
The topics that emerged most in the 1950s and 1960s were related to global, international, and linguistic/speech pattern and speech credibility research. Robert Oliver was the first communication scholar to write a book about international communication in 1962; he almost immediately expanded on this work by writing a book that examined Indian and Chinese communication patterns. In the 1970s, ESL, TOEFL, Black speech, and acculturation of foreign immigrants were hot topics. The transition from a field mostly associated with intercultural training of diplomats and business travelers via the Society for Intercultural Education, Training, and Research (SIETAR) and the U.S. Agency for International Development moved from research about communicating across the globe to a systematic examination of speech patterns and of attitudes about teachers of English as a Foreign Language to the study of Blacks who were being treated as domestic “strangers” in the United States. This evolutionary movement necessarily included studies of acculturation, adjustment, and culture shock (Lysgaard, 1955; Oberg, 1960). In the 1980s, organizational culture and Geert Hofstede’s dimensions of cultural variability predominated the literature in these journals. However, some new constructs emerged, such as intercultural communication competence, self-disclosure, perceived similarity, uncertainty anxiety management, communication apprehension, and communication satisfaction. The 1990s and 2000s have witnessed a burst of scholarship in cultural communication research, with 132 studies appearing in just these six journals in fifteen years.
The trends in methodology also tell a compelling story. Of the forty-five studies published in these journals in the first thirty years since the founding of the field of intercultural communication, they were almost entirely quantitative studies using an assortment of experimental and lab methods as well as surveys and interaction-based content analyses. Coincidentally, the first ethnography and the first rhetorical analysis appeared in 1970 (Kennicott, 1970; Smith, 1970), both exploring Black speech, and the first case study concerning culture in these six selected journals appeared in 1987 (Isenhart, 1987) in JACR. A year later, CM published an article about Japanese national rhetoric (Nishiyama, 1971), and that was the last time CM published any study of rhetoric and culture, with the possible exception of a popular cultural study of film students’ graffiti published in 1994, but popular culture is hardly what is meant here by “culture” in this study.
Another interesting pattern regarding sample size emerged. Up until 1974, the average sample size for quantitative studies was 28 subjects, with the exception of only one study by Darnell (1970), in which 200 native speakers of English served as the criterion group for the evaluation of 48 foreign students. But something strange happened in 1974. It appears Porter (1974) helped redefine scholarly rigor with a whopping 416 subjects in his study of attitudes toward racial stereotyping of Blacks. Kim (1977) seemed to respond in kind with her article involving 400 Korean immigrants’ perceptions of their interactions with the host U.S. culture. Since that time, survey studies in all six journals have involved a large number of participants, with an average sample size of 431 subjects.
By the 1990s, almost half of all studies were critical, textual, rhetorical, or interpretive analyses. Now, qualitative studies are equally as common as quantitative studies in the field of communication, and intercultural research tends to be slightly more qualitative and rhetorical.
Among the six journals, CM (formerly Speech Monographs) and CQ (formerly Today’s Speech) have most aggressively published cultural communication research since the 1950s. In fact, up until 1977, they were the outlets of choice for cultural research among the six journals noted. Today’s Speech regularly reviewed books like Robert T. Oliver’s (1962) Culture and Communication: The Problem of Penetrating National and Cultural Boundaries and Arthur Smith’s [Molefi Kete Asante’s] (1971) The Rhetoric of Black Revolution. Although Today’s Speech kept the conversation about culture alive, there were very few, if any, serious cultural communication studies in this journal until Jack Daniel’s (1969) article, “The Poor, Aliens in an Affluent Society: Cross-Cultural Communication.” Before then, articles by Ellingsworth Huber, Howard Schwartz, Michael Prosser, and Today’s Speech founding editor Robert Oliver were mostly polemic commentaries pertaining to the status of race relations or the dearth of international communication scholarship. This is not to down play their significance; these were excellent perceptive position papers. By the time Daniel’s piece was published, CM had already published eight articles concerning cultural speech patterns. The other journals (JACR, HCR, CT, and WJC) had not been created yet. One might suspect that Quarterly Journal of Speech (QJS) was publishing most of the prominent cultural research, but that would be a false suspicion. It was not until the 1974 release of an article entitled “The Imposed Norm Hypothesis: A Validation,” authored by Howard Giles, Richard Bourhis, Peter Trudgill, and Alan Lewis, that the significant cultural research began in QJS. Their published study was almost immediately followed by the well-noted article by Gerry Phillipsen (1975) titled “Speaking ‘like a Man’ in Teamsterville: Culture Patterns of Role Enactment in an Urban Neighborhood,” one of the field’s first examples of an ethnography.
These are the general trends in the literature; however to get a substantive sense of the content of the literature, I next explore how previous research has conceived of culture as an area of inquiry, and it will be evident how the study of culture has paradigmatically shifted over time.
Review of Literature Related to the Four Modes of Inquiry
As mentioned previously, there are four modes of inquiry that reflect the patterned evolution of the field as evidenced in the six selected journals: intracultural, intercultural, cross-cultural, and critical cultural communication research. Each of these will be defined and generally discussed. It is important to note that approximately two-thirds of the articles reviewed related to either the intercultural communication or cultural perspective, so those sections are naturally more extensive.
Intracultural
Intracultural communication has concentrated on a range of topics from the study of the self to the study of all interactions, styles, norms, beliefs, and behaviors constructed or discovered within a given culture. The intracultural study of the self holds an important distinction relative to the broader study of identity. In studying the self, researchers explore self-disclosure, self-concept, self-efficacy, personhood, perceptions, motivations, and the like. The focus is on the individual’s personal and subjective interpretations of social reality. The study of identity accents the social construction of cultural reality facilitated by an exchange of symbols and cultural nuances that gives meaning to everyday discourse.
Despite the significance of this area of inquiry, it is vastly understudied. Almost every study in the field of communication seems to compare two or more people’s behaviors or perceptions, with the unit of analysis being the broader interaction or message exchange rather than how the individual develops conceptions of the world and lives those out as a single individual on a daily basis. That intrapersonal part of intracultural communication is a void in the literature. Nonetheless, intracultural communication presupposes that people interact within their own cultural groups and cultural communities. Everyone knows this to be true because we all do it ourselves on a rather consistent basis. The way that some scholars have accidentally arrived at this research juncture is by assuming that individuals can speak for the groups to which they belong. So, in asking them to reflect on questions of cultural identity, they are essentially asking them to recall in-group consistencies in their intracultural patterns of behavior.
The first intracultural study of record is Smith’s (1970) study of the effects of age, sex, and education on call-and-response patterns (i.e., vocal feedback) among a Black religious audience. In his ethnographic analysis of twelve Black churches in Los Angeles, Smith examined the extent of visible and vocal feedback among congregants. Of the 783 recorded responses, he discovered that 90 percent were from individuals over the age of twenty-one. Two-thirds of the responses were from women, and 76 percent of the audible responses came from individuals without a high-school diploma. His research concluded that, although vocal interruption or overlap may have negative connotations in one-on-one interaction or among religious audiences in White American settings, Black culture permits and encourages this high level of interactivity, and this is a mark of distinction among Black audiences specifically and Black people in general.
In another study involving Japanese rhetoric, Nishiyama (1971) explains, “In business situations the Japanese are unable to act analytically. To them subjective interpretations of problems is [sic] considerably more important than economic considerations. … In Japan decisions are not made on the basis of facts, but on the basis of moods, because the Japanese are concerned with the harmonious working out of problems without causing interpersonal frictions” (p. 148). At first glance, his analysis of Japanese rhetorical strategies and styles of persuasion is intriguing and seems to fit the description of an intracultural study. However, on closer examination, it becomes clear that it is not really a study of how Japanese people intraculturally persuade one another, although it is possible such strategies may be gleaned from his analysis. Instead, his article is more of a source for American business travelers, teaching them how to negotiate with Japanese business leaders. It appears that yet another study of “Japanese communication practices” does something similar. Klopf’s (1991) comparative analysis of seven research studies outlined attributes of Japanese communication patterns associated with verbal aggressiveness, social style, verbal predispositions, loneliness, immediacy, argumentativeness, and affect orientation. This article appears to be an analysis of Japanese cultural nuances, but he presents his results by juxtaposing American cultural values with those of the Japanese. This is a common tendency in cross-cultural communication research, as is discussed later in this review.
In addition to Martin, Krizek, Nakayama, and Bradford’s (1996) study of White self-labels, which uncovered 371 White students’ ranked preferences for seven racial labels (White, Caucasian, White American, European American, Euro-American, Anglo, and WASP), there are only two studies that unabashedly proclaim to be intracultural investigations: Gudykunst’s (1985) “An Exploratory Comparison of Close Intracultural and Intercultural Friendships” and Collier’s (1988) “A Comparison of Conversations Among and Between Domestic Culture Groups: How Intra- and Intercultural Competencies Vary.” Gudykunst’s (1985) double study found that both intracultural and intercultural friendships among culturally diverse student respondents (seventy-five students in one study and eighty-three student respondents in the other study, all from the Middle East, Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Caribbean), when contrasted, revealed parallel responses regarding notions of perceived similarity, social penetration, and interpersonal relationship development. Although this may also be considered a cross-cultural study, it was one of the only articles to consider how individuals communicated intraculturally. Collier’s (1988) study was similar. She also did a cross-cultural analysis that included an examination of intracultural communication. She compared Mexicans’, Blacks’, and Whites’ conversational competencies using the established competency criteria of communication appropriateness and effectiveness. Although each culture had general rules regarding politeness behaviors and role fulfillment, several other nuances emerged differently among the forty-five Mexicans, fifteen Blacks, and thirty-three Whites in the all-student sample. Rules differed for how one is expected to exercise support for point of view, relevance, constructive criticism, control, affiliation, open-mindedness, directness, assertiveness, and overall prescribed roles. Gudykunst’s (1985) and Collier’s (1988) studies are excellent examples of the contrast between covering laws and rules-governed approaches that predominated much of the quantitatively driven cultural communication literature of the time. This is especially evident in the intercultural communication literature.
Intercultural
According to Leeds-Hurwitz (1990), anthropologist Edward T. Hall (1959) is to be credited with coining the term “intercultural communication” in his book The Silent Language. However, the word “intercultural” had been used much earlier in the work of Columbia University anthropologist Ruth Benedict (1941), who referred to it with respect to “intercultural relations [and programs]” in the schools that if implemented effectively could ameliorate race relations by simply recognizing the achievements and legacies of cultural Others in social studies courses. Incidentally, Benedict seems to use the words “intercultural” and “cross-cultural” interchangeably. Even still, her study of intercultural relations precociously combined the race relations studies so prominent in sociology with the studies of cultural symbols within anthropology. By the mid-1940s, even Gunnar Myrdal (1944), the Swedish economist and banker who was hired by the U.S. government to examine social relations, wrote about cross-racial tensions in his book, American Dilemma. So, by the time the 1950s came, Hall merely extended the thinking about intercultural relations by referring to these social pressures as intercultural tensions. Nonetheless, it was the Lewis & Clark College English professor Ralph K. Allen (1955) who was the first to use the phrase “intercultural communication” in his essay entitled “Mass Media and Intercultural Communication,” in which he speaks primarily about harmonious international diplomatic relations. Yet, even though Allen holds the distinction of having used the term first, it was not until 1959 that the first systematic examination of intercultural communication appeared in Hall’s (1959) The Silent Language.
Hall’s use of the term is much more aligned with the way it is used today. Until recently, inter-cultural communication commonly referred to face-to-face interaction between two or more members of different cultures. Now, with the proliferation of computer-mediated communication (CMC), the face-to-face criterion is optional, and speaking to one another even through CMC qualifies. Therefore, intercultural communication still suggests message exchange between culturally different interactants. It is also accompanied by co-cultural facets of lived reality representing gender, class, sexuality, ability, and other areas of difference such as language. This concept is important to recognize because it speaks volumes about how the significance of identity has always been implied in intercultural communication research. Only recently have identity studies been an overt theme in this area of inquiry, perhaps because as Wiemann (1977) suggests, identity like culture is not stagnant, but situated within the context of space, time, and circumstance.
Ting-Toomey (1989) posits that “the ‘self’ or ‘identity’ is refined and modified through the process of dyadic verbal and nonverbal negotiation” (p. 351). She further comments that identity is relational, reflexive, and multifaceted. In 1986, Ting-Toomey created the identity validation model (IVM), which consists of three dimensions: identity salience, perceived identity support, and communication. Role (group membership) identity and personal identity are the two poles on the continuum of low to high identity salience. Role identity salience is described as a set of self-definitional cultural and social role identities. Personal identity salience refers to the significance one affixes to certain personal characteristics, such as weight, height, and hair texture. Perceived identity support, according to Ting-Toomey (1986), is the validation of self-definition one receives from “relevant others” (p. 123). She further explains that two social or cultural group representatives are much more likely to initiate interaction after having perceived identity support. Communication is the final dimension, which is the actual “identity-negotiation process between the self and relevant others” (p. 123). This identity negotiation refers to the careful selection of one among several role identities to engage within a particular communication context.
Specifically, Ting-Toomey (1986) inquires about the type of individual who would initiate interpersonal ties. Four identity types were listed: balanced, personal, role, and marginal identifiers. Balanced identifiers are those who locate themselves high on the role and personal identity salience measures. In other words, they are communicatively competent and have a high self-evaluation of their personal attributes. Personal identifiers are those who have a high self-evaluation, but are less competent at switching roles to accommodate others. Role identifiers are the opposite: they switch roles well, but do not have a high self-esteem. Marginal identifiers are the final type, who define themselves as low on personal identity and role identity. Ting-Toomey concludes that balanced identifiers are most likely to initiate interpersonal ties among groups, and marginal identifiers are the least likely to initiate interaction. The identity validation model is the first interpretive framework found in the literature that not only indicates that identity is relational but also explicitly notes that identity is a negotiated process. This is important as we map the turning points at which the field became admittedly invested in identity research, but one source of origin for identity research emerged in the work of Berger and Calabrese (1975).
Uncertainty reduction theory (Berger & Calabrese, 1975) is the basis on which Ting-Toomey’s research on initial interaction is founded; however, in Berger and Calabrese’s (1975) formula, negotiation was only considered a general phenomenon and not an actual construct. Ting-Toomey proposes that future research examine the relational dilemmas and paradoxes that arise from members of two cultures “as they attempt to reach out and hold back at the same time, to seek for mutual validation, and yet at the same time to protect their own vulnerability” (1986, p. 126).
Uncertainty reduction theory is one among only a few theoretic constructs that have been around for about twenty years or longer and have become staples in the intercultural communication researcher’s intellectual diet: others include culture shock (Oberg, 1960), value orientations (Kluckhohn & Strodtbeck, 1961), uncertainty reduction theory (Berger & Calabrese, 1975), intercultural communication competence (Wiemann, 1977), acculturation (Kim, 1977), dimensions of cultural variability, afrocentricity (Asante, 1978; Hofstede, 1980), anxiety uncertainty management theory (Gudykunst & Hammer, 1987), cultural identity theory (Collier & Thomas, 1988), and self-construal (Kim & Sharkey, 1995). There have been only a few new constructs, such as co-cultural communication theory (Orbe, 1998), communication theory of identity (Hecht, 1993), and cultural contracts theory (Jackson, 2002).
There are many instances in which the theoretic mapping with in intercultural communication emerges. For example, Kim and Sharkey (1995) examine interaction constraints within pluralistic workplace organizations using an individualistic-collectivistic equivalent, identified by the authors as independent and interdependent self-construals. The two dimensions of independent and interdependent construals of self prove to be useful because they account for an individual self-concept and a personality of the collective. The results of the study indicate that cultural self-construals are directly related to a perceived importance of clarity, efforts to avoid hurting other’s feelings, and avoidance of negative evaluation.
A rules-theory approach to studying culture, personality, and communication is offered by Collier and Thomas (1988) and fortified in Hecht’s (1993) communication theory of ethnic identity. Collier and Thomas recommend that cultural identity be studied as one among many negotiated identities, not independently managed. They present this theory as a set of six assumptions, five axioms, and one theorem. Intercultural competence facilitates the negotiation and validation of cultural identity. Thus, the negotiation is mediated by discursive management. Cultural identity varies according to the scope, salience, and intensity of attributed and avowed identities. The authors suggest a correlation between these three dimensions and the degree of intercultural communication competence. The highest competence is achieved when the interactant’s attributed identity for the partner is consistent with the partner’s avowed identity.
Rubin and Martin (1994) provide the most detailed instrument for measuring intercultural communication competence extant, which includes the following constructs: empathy, self-disclosure, social relaxation, assertiveness, interaction management, alter centrism, expressiveness, supportiveness, immediacy, and environmental control. They define intercultural communication competence as “an impression or judgment formed about a person’s ability to manage interpersonal relationships in communication settings” (p. 33). Initially, intercultural researchers used communication competence to lessen the intergroup contact effect of culture shock (Oberg, 1960) and ensure a “smooth and successful interaction” (Cupach & Spitzberg, 1983, p. 565) among culturally distinct interlocutors (Hammer, 1989).
Communication patterns are adapted to establish appropriate and effective inter-personal-ties among interactants (Ting-Toomey, 1986). Adaptation, accommodation, and acculturation literatures have contributed to the evolution of cultural identity studies within the field of communication (Kim, 1986; Ting-Toomey, 1986, 1989). The studies of immigrants and sojourners’ adaptation and communication conflict (Kim, 1989); acculturative stress, third-culture building, and interpersonal bonding across intergroup boundaries (Ting-Toomey, 1986, 1989); and group affiliation and accommodation have all heuristically advanced intercultural identity research.
So far, it is clear that the field yearned for foundational concepts and paradigms in its first thirty years or so. This is evidenced not only in the literature reviewed but also with the titles of the International and Intercultural Communication Annuals beginning in the early 1980s, such as “intercultural communication theory,” “theories of intercultural communication,” and “ferment in the intercultural field.” In addition to establishing paradigms, the field also matured with respect to exploring phenomena across multiple cultures.
Cross-Cultural
Like intercultural communication studies, cross-cultural communication research has been an environment conducive for the proliferation of identity research. Cross-cultural communication refers to the comparison of interaction patterns and behaviors among cultures. In much of the early cultural communication research, scholars followed the anthropological approach of comparing and contrasting cultural phenomena, such as language, construal, and conversational strategies. For those graduate students studying culture until about 1993, it was very common to first learn about worldview I and worldview II. Worldview I was explained as a highly rational, nomothetic, functionalist orientation to the world in which human behavior was considered to be so patterned that it was predictable and explainable. Worldview II was explained as a subjective, thick-descriptive, fluid, and flexible interpretation of reality governed by the assumption that humans are choice makers whose behaviors, though patterned, cannot be predicted. This pedagogical staple was further enhanced by discussions of worldviews as centricities. For example, students would receive charts with Asiocentric, Afrocentric, and Eurocentric categories of being that listed differences in ontology, axiology, epistemology, cosmology, cognition, oral/verbal presentation, affiliative relationships, nonverbal communication, and communication style. These charts became useful training tools that aided overseas travelers in adjusting to a new or foreign culture.
Cross-cultural communication is also the category in which early cultural communication researchers focused most of their work. As many scholars have acknowledged for years, the field had its beginnings in cross-cultural training associated with the Foreign Service Institute (Kohl & Howard, 1983; Leeds-Hurwitz, 1990; Starosta & Chen, 2003). From an interest in training came burgeoning studies about organizational culture and eventually about cultural nuances across cultures. There seemed to be an unending thirst for knowledge about how cultures differed in virtually every communicative way. Because much of the work published in these journals reflects a distinctly U.S. perspective, I am afraid this review makes it seem as if U.S. scholars and those international scholars they chose to work with were the only ones doing cross-cultural communication research. This is unlikely to be true, but the review is done within the limited scope of six journals.
Perhaps the best way to explain the patterns in the cross-cultural communication literature is to speak of its geographical and cultural interests. Again, usually U.S. scholars wrote in these journals, and so naturally they tended to compare U.S. culture with other cultures, mostly those in Asia and Europe, but also in North America (i.e., Canada and Hawai‘i) and Africa (Nigeria, Cameroon, Namibia, Zambia, and Senegal). The Asian cultures that were explored were Korea, Japan, China, India, Pakistan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, and Nepal. The European countries were Germany, France, Sweden, Ukraine, Poland, and Finland. Japan, Hawai‘i, and Korea were most frequently compared to the United States.
At first, I was rather surprised that Hawai‘i, a U.S. territory, was so often compared to the United States, but then I noticed that most of these comparative studies regarding self-construal were written by Min-Sun Kim and associates, who were all at one point at the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa in Honolulu, Hawai‘i. The cross-cultural communication literature related to Asian cultures is dominated by studies of self-construal (Kim & Sharkey, 1995; Park & Levine, 1999; Tasaki, Kim, & Miller, 1999), facework (Cupach & Imahori, 1993; Oetzel et al., 2001), uncertainty reduction theory (Gudykunst, Yang, & Nishida, 1985), individualism-collectivism (Cai, Wilson, & Drake, 2000; Kim et al., 1996; Oetzel, 1998), high-context/low-context (Gudykunst & Nishida, 1986), as well as trustworthiness, friendship, and self-disclosure (Nishishiba & Ritchie, 2000; Samter & Burleson, 2005; Wolfson & Pearce, 1983), with only a few studies exploring television (Lee & Benoit, 2004) and print media. The cultural comparative studies with Europe as the focal point examined humor, nonverbal immediacy, communication apprehension (McCroskey, Burroughs, Daun, & Richmond, 1990; Watson, Monroe, & Atterstrom, 1989), and self-construal (Hackman, Ellis, Johnson, & Staley, 1999). Not surprisingly, North American studies (besides those of Hawai‘i) included investigations of ethnic identity and gender (Kim & Bresnahan, 1996). The sole study concerning Africa (unless we count the diversified sample of Kim and associates) is related to communication apprehension in Nigerian classrooms (Olaniran & Roach, 1994). Thus, this brief review of the sixty-six cross-cultural studies found within the cultural communication literature signifies a fairly narrow theoretic purview across a broad range of countries and continents.
Critical Cultural
The earliest critical cultural communication research examined race and class relations (Clark, 1953; Daniel, 1969). At the time, the term “critical cultural” had no meaning and probably would have sounded rather awkward. Now, it is a robust area of inquiry replete with implications regarding retrieved agency, social justice, contested hegemony, and public political deliberation. Because this is a rather old area of research that has been given a new name, critical cultural studies seem awkwardly positioned. For marginalized group members, the conversations are old, but they are pleased that at least the rest of the field has joined the conversation and in droves. The amount of writing in this area over the last fifteen years matches the volume of cross-cultural communication research since 1960 (within the selected journals). The primary patterns that emerged from the mapping of this mode of inquiry are as follows: whiteness (Avant-Mier & Hasian, 2002; Flores & Moon, 2002; González & González, 2002; Steyn, 2004; Warren, 2001), critical theory (Ashcraft & Allen, 2003; Cooks, 2001; Kraidy, 2002), politics (Hasian & Delgado, 1998; Sanchez & Stuckey, 2000), textual analysis (Gullicks, Pearson, Child, & Schwab, 2005; Parameswaran, 2002), gender (Durham, 2001; Glascock, 2003; Mandziuk, 2003) health (Dutta-Bergman, 2004; Mclaurin, 1995), and public memory (Goodnight, 1999; Hasian & Carlson, 2000). There has been at least one double special issue on the negotiation of cultural identity in CQ and a special issue on masculinity in CT since 2000. There is quite a bit of writing still to come on the subject of identity, which has already grown at an exponential rate in the last fifteen years. Critical cultural communication studies is the newest wave of inquiry and is just gaining momentum. The founding of a journal Critical Cultural Communication Studies bespeaks the support and attention this area of research is being given.
Conclusion and Implications
Within this review I have argued there are four modes of inquiry that are present and vibrant in cultural communication research: intracultural, intercultural, cross-cultural, and critical cultural communication. Over the years, there have been multiple and periodic attempts to document the patterns of cultural communication inquiry (Hammer, 1989; Harwood & Sparks, 2003; Hecht, Jackson, & Pitts, 2005; Hogg, Terry, & White, 1995; Kohl & Howard, 1983; Leeds-Hurwitz, 1990; Prosser, 1978; Rowland, 1988; Starosta & Chen, 2003). Each falls short in its own way, quite frankly because the field has grown to be so large and disparate. More than 1,000 essays on cultural communication research can be found in more than forty journals within and outside of the field of communication. There are even dozens of communication studies that simply include culture as an independent variable within a study that is otherwise unconcerned with culture. So, mapping the field is a mammoth task. What I have tried to accomplish here is to offer a glimpse into some of the shifting terminology, some general trends, and four modes of inquiry that are apparent within the literature.
Future research should either include more journals or examine some of the more recent trends among the newer journals. Perhaps the reader would be better served by examining how culture intersects only certain areas of the field such as organizational communication or rhetoric. Even still, there may be additional constructs or co-cultural identities to consider that have had a major impact on the shaping of cultural research. In short, there is still much work to be done to map the field. This is merely a small contribution to a much larger project.
As we celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Eastern Communication Association and the 55th anniversary of CQ, we have much about which to be proud. As this review has shown, ECA’s first and oldest journal CQ has always been a forerunner in cultural communication research, being the first in the field to publish a study on class differences in communication (Daniel, 1969) and the first to seriously engage intracultural communication as a mode of inquiry (Collier, 1988; Gudykunst, 1985). Its founding editor Robert T. Oliver (1962) was also a pioneer in international communication research with his substantial research on India and China. Cultural researchers continue to find CQ an amenable place for their work, frequently publishing there despite the wide range of options such as Critical Studies in Media Communication, Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, Howard Journal of Communications, Critical Cultural Communication Studies, Journal of Intercultural Studies, and International Journal of Intercultural Relations, to name a few.
Because we have been a leader in this area and we have an opportunity to effect change even more, I would be remiss if I did not state the painfully obvious—and that is that our field still suffers from the residue of one-sided, singular, patriarchal, racially biased, and hegemonic interpretations of cultural experience. We have consistently been negligent in our responsibility to properly educate our students about the globally diverse culture in which they live. There is no excuse for the indefatigable imposition of Eurocentric canonical histories and epistemologies that occupy the privileged center of all communication thought at the expense of marginalizing and rendering cultural Others invisible. The fact that this goes virtually unchallenged is perhaps most disturbing, because this egregious act runs counter to the clarion call for open, equitable, and liberal ways of knowing in the academy. If we cannot marshal a eurhythmic shift of this discourse from within the confines of intercultural communication research, where it is safe to talk about difference and devaluation, then it seems to me we are only reifying what we tell our students is impermissible and unacceptable—disrespect and disregard for others. As committed scholars who seek to reinscribe the legacies of communication thought, we must be attentive to diverse epistemologies, diverse authors, and diverse experiences. That is the only way to work toward the kind of change that embodies effective, progressive discursive practice and confronts the crisis of meaning so profoundly embedded in all systematic examinations of culture.
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