Introduction
It is always useful to start searching reference books to get an overview of the topic.
Starting with more common view we search at first The Handbook of Communication Science which includes the chapter Intercultural Communication written by Young Yun Kim.
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Intercultural communication is commonly defined in terms of two central concepts, culture and communication. The anthropological concept of culture has been employed as a label for the collective cultural life experiences associated with a society or nation. Over time the domain has expanded to include communication activities involving individuals of differing domestic sociological groups of differing backgrounds such as ethnicity, race,and other discernible social categories. Accordingly the domain of intercultural communication is closely linked to the domains of other social science disciplines such as cultural anthropology and cross-cultural psychology, as well as sociology. Within the discipline of communication, intercultural communication can be conceptually differentiated from interpersonal communication based on the relatively high degree of difference in the communicators' internalized culturally or subculturally rooted system of meaning, knowledge, values and worldviews. Young Yun Kim
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In the article Young Yun Kim introduces six core theories motivating intercultural communication inquiry:
- speech code theory - the theory of cultural communication
- face negotiation theory and conversational constraints theory - representing the theory of cross cultural communication
- three theories of intercultural communication - anxiety/uncertainty management theory, communication accommodation theory and the integrative communication theory of cross-cultural adaptation.
Overview of these theories you can read in the Handbook of Communication Sciences, on the pages 454 - 460.
The Handbook of Intercultural Communication gives a more exhaustive overview of the topic intercultural communication. In this book different authors give the overview of different sides of intercultural communication.
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Research on intercultural communication is a multidisciplinary endeavour. As early as the 18-th century, researchers in disciplines such as psychology and anthropology were exploring how culture and language mutually influence each other and how this in turn impacts on thinking. Editors Introduction Whilst culture is characterized by meanings shared within a social group, communication is a mode of social interaction through which new meanings can come to be shared. However, communication is generally at risk of failure, because the attribution of meaning depends on the interlocutors' ability to reason in the way intended to select the right context for the interpretation of communication act. As there is no guarantee that the addressee will interpret the communicative act in the way intended meanings will consider. Since a person's cultural knowledge crucially determine the contexts which are available to them, the risk of miscommunication is generally higher in interactions between people from different cultural backgrounds.
Vladimir Zegarac
Power and dominance within intercultural communication are due to asymmetrical constellations within three different instances of reality: societal structure, actants' knowledge and language.
Winfried Thielmann |
Some examples from themes touched in the Handbook of Intercultural Communication were given above. The most significant idea emerging in these handbooks is that intercultural communication is multidisciplinary research area linking together cultural, psychological, sociological, linguistic and communication studies.