32.1452, Review: Anthropological Linguistics; Applied Linguistics; General Linguistics: Rings, Rasinger (2020)

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Subject: 32.1452, Review: Anthropological Linguistics; Applied Linguistics; General Linguistics: Rings, Rasinger (2020)

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Date: Mon, 26 Apr 2021 16:42:39
From: Zsuzsanna Zsubrinszky [zsubrinszky at gmail.com]
Subject: The Cambridge Handbook of Intercultural Communication

 
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/31/31-1834.html

EDITOR: Guido  Rings
EDITOR: Sebastian  Rasinger
TITLE: The Cambridge Handbook of Intercultural Communication
SERIES TITLE: Cambridge Handbooks in Language and Linguistics
PUBLISHER: Cambridge University Press
YEAR: 2020

REVIEWER: Zsuzsanna Zsubrinszky, Budapest University of Technology & Economics

SUMMARY

“The Cambridge Handbook of Intercultural Communication” aims to provide a
highly interdisciplinary overview of the wide spectrum of current
international research and professional practice in intercultural
communication. With over thirty chapters from leading experts in the field, it
serves as a collection of current research which will be of interest to a
wide-ranging audience, from professionals working in cultural studies to
students, who will appreciate its clear yet in-depth approach. In the volume,
examples of contrastive, interactive, imagological and interlingual approaches
are discussed, as well as the impact of cultural, economic and socio-political
power hierarchies in cultural encounters. It consists of five major thematic
parts: Part I, ‘Introducing Intercultural Communication’, examines some key
concepts used in intercultural communication, while Part II offers an in-depth
exploration of ‘Theoretical Approaches’ in the field. Part III provides a
survey of ‘Methods’ in intercultural communication, and Part IV shifts the
focus towards the ‘Application’ of different theories. And finally, Part V is
dedicated to the discussion of ways of different ‘Assessment’ of intercultural
communication. 

Part I, ‘Introducing Intercultural communication’ offers a thorough discussion
of key concepts used in the field. In the first chapter, ‘What is culture’,
Werner Delanoy clarifies different meanings of culture in their historical and
linguistic contexts with the intention to invite its readers to compare their
notions of culture with those expressed in this piece. The author argues in
favour of non-essentialist and power-critical perspectives in line with a
(post)-humanistic and cosmopolitan agenda.
 
In the second chapter, ‘What is intercultural Communication?’,  Jan D. ten
Thije discusses the spectrum of scientific and societal issues referred to as
intercultural communication and identifies five theoretical and methodical
approaches. First, he discusses interactive approaches, which clarify how the
need for contextualization in intercultural communication can be countered by
applying a third-party perspective. Then he focuses on contrastive approaches,
which require ‘tertium comparationis’ in order to develop proper comparisons
between languages and cultures. The third approach comprises cultural
representation, which introduces the notion of intersectionality to understand
how race, culture, social status, etc. are defined by their relationships with
other categories. The fourth approach includes studies into multilingualism
and linguistic diversities, and finally, the transfer approach synthesizes the
contributions of the other approaches.

In Chapter 3 ‘Rethinking Intercultural Competence’, Jürgen Bolten explores
intercultural competence as a form of general ‘action competence’, which is
implemented in intercultural, i.e. uncertain contexts. He argues that the
competence measurement tools when selecting staff for international
assignments should be strongly contextual and thus culturally dependent. He
distinguishes two research directions in developing intercultural competence,
the structural thinking patterns and the process-oriented understanding, which
are inseparable as they build upon each other. The author also raises the
question whether intercultural competence can be measured objectively and
proposes to use the term ‘competence assessment’ instead of ‘competence
measurement’.

The first part concludes with Heinz Antor ‘Interculturality or
Transculturality’ (Chapter 4), who presents the different notions of culture
(e.g., ‘inter-‘, ‘multi-‘, ‘cross-‘ and ‘transcultural’) used to describe
contact situations between two or more cultures. While these terms were used
rather fuzzily and inconsistently in the 1980s and early 1990s, since the turn
of the millennium, interculturality and transculturality have come to dominate
the various discourses in the field. Because the various terms designate
different cultural phenomena, the author looks at the conceptual distinctions
of these concepts and discusses the anthropological and psychological
dimensions, their relevance to issues of identity and alterity, borderlines
and their transgression, hybridity and diversity, as well as their social,
political, religious and psychological implications. 

Part II, ‘Theoretical Approaches’ elaborates on selected theoretical
approaches in intercultural communication. In Chapter 5, ‘Critical
Intercultural Communication and the Digital Environment’ Thomas K. Nakayama
explores the ways that social inequality is reinforced in the digital
environment and the ways that people utilize social media to resist that
inequality across cultures. The chapter looks at the Twitter account of
President Obama, the use of Twitter in the Black Lives Matter movement, the
development of the Microsoft artificial intelligence bot, Tay, (replaced later
with Zo) and the tweets that shaped her early development.

In ‘From Shared Values to Cultural Dimensions: A Comparative Review’ (Chapter
6), Elizabeth A. Tuleja and Michael Schachner explore a substantial number of
contrastive approaches, from Hofstede’s Globe study to the work by Schwartz,
Inglehart and Minkov. The chapter discusses shared values as building blocks
of societies, the social and psychological value orientations, the importance
of mental programming and the examination of leadership perspective from both
a conceptual and a methodological point of view. Rather than opting for an
either/or solution, the authors suggest that researchers, educators and
practitioners should choose the theory that best suit their needs.

In Chapter 7, ‘Towards Integrative Intercultural Communication’, Liisa
Salo-Lee first revisits the development of the field and then presents
integrative intercultural communication as a proposal for an interdisciplinary
approach. This approach aims to provide researchers with supporting concepts
and tools (i.e. the use of rhizome as a metaphor for culture, the use of nexus
analysis and intercultural dialogue, in conjunction with negotiating reality)
to tackle the complexities of intercultural communication.

The next three chapters explore the importance of literacy, psychoanalytic and
sociological approaches to intercultural communication. Birgit Neumann’s
chapter ‘The Power of Literature in Intercultural Communication’ (Chapter 8),
focuses on characteristics of literature, i.e. the distinct aesthetic and
affective potential of (narrative) fiction and provides close readings of two
selected texts, namely Andrea Levy’s Small Island (2004) and Teju Cole’s Open
City (2011), to illustrate how literary configurations of intercultural
encounters may promote, trouble or problematize connectivity between different
cultures.

In ‘Psychoanalytic Approaches to Memory and Intercultural Communication’
(Chapter 9), Jolanta A. Drzewiecka highlights the main theoretical issues in
the study of memory and maps out some of the key concepts of Lacanian
psychoanalytic criticism as a method for studying the relational dynamics of
memories about others. Then, she illustrates these concepts with examples from
her research on a passionate debate in a Polish newspaper about Jan T. Gross’s
book Neighbours: The destruction of Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland
(2001). 

Uttaran Dutta and Judith N. Martin’s chapter on ‘Sociological Approaches to
Intercultural Communication: Exploring the ‘Silent Zones’ (Chapter 10)
identifies influential sociological concepts and methods across various
paradigmatic approaches, including the concept of Simmel’s ‘stranger’ as well
as the contributions of European critical sociologists (e.g., Habermas,
Foucault). This chapter is a plea for more attention to the ‘silent zones’ in
intercultural communication research. It identifies historically
under-researched topics (e.g. hidden/forbidden cultural practices,
posthumanism) and addresses issues of socioeconomic and structural disparities
particularly in the silent zones of the Global South region.

In closing Part II, Richard Evanoff’s chapter, ‘Introducing Intercultural
Ethics’ (Chapter 11) examines the process by which people from different
cultures negotiate the norms that will govern relations between them at
interpersonal, intergroups and international levels. The chapter then
discusses descriptive, normative and meta-ethical directions as three main
methodological approaches to intercultural ethics, and it concludes by
considering how intercultural dialogue on ethics might be conducted. Evanoff
suggests that it may be possible for people from different cultures to
co-create ethical norms which aim to build not walls but bridges between those
cultures.

Part III, ‘Methods’ provides a survey of methods and methodologies in
intercultural communication. In line with Nakayama’s plea to focus more on the
continuities and discontinuities in power relations (Part II, Chapter 5), Lara
Lengel, Ahmet Atay and Yannick Kluch propose in their chapter, ‘Decolonizing
Gender and Intercultural Communication in Transnational Contexts’ (Chapter
12), to theorize decolonization as a framework that emphasizes empowerment
through the potential to reframe and re/envision history. The aim is to break
away from dominant Western and US-centric ways of studying culture,
communication and identity and the relationships among them, including
especially the construction and performance of gender. This chapter also
presents methodological strategies for critical intercultural communication
research, particularly with focus on the intersectional nature of gender,
identity, culture and power.

Peter Stockinger’s chapter on ‘Migration in the Digital Social Mediasphere’
(Chapter 13), provides a comprehensive theoretical and methodological
framework for describing and interpreting audio-visual media as tools for
producing and communicating cultural images in the form of “common” cultural
topics. The chapter interprets the cultural interpretations through a corpus
of 150 videos uploaded to YouTube, which are particularly popular with
millennials and post-millennials. This can be regarded as a potentially very
fruitful way to take research on cultural values further by reconstructing the
‘meaning landscape’ of cultural images of migration.

Claus Ehrhardt in his chapter on ‘Linguistic Politeness’ (Chapter 14) proposes
an approach that considers politeness as an integrative part to intercultural
communication. First, the author provides a rather intuitive definition of
politeness, and then he describes the role of contrastive and intercultural
approaches in politeness theory. The next section is dedicated to research in
intercultural communication, leading to the formulation of an idea how the
different scientific fields can benefit from each other. And, finally, the
chapter gives a brief overview of the discussions in the theories of
politeness.

The next three chapters link up to Neumann’s exploration of the power of
literature (Part II, Chapter 8), but they take her ideas on the intercultural
potential of narratives in three different directions: intercultural German
studies, storytelling and cinema. Gesine Lenore Schiewer’s chapter,
‘Contemporary Literature and Intercultural Understanding’ (Chapter 15),
explores approaches within intercultural German studies, which combine
literary studies and communication research, to assess how dialogue
competences and intercultural understanding can be trained by working with
literary texts. This leads to suggestions for applied work in the context of
secondary schools, university courses, teacher training and communication
training.

In ‘Enhancing Intercultural Skills through Storytelling’ (Chapter 16) Stephan
Wolting presents storytelling as an essential contribution to the development
of intercultural skills, knowledge and competences. In the light of research,
Stephen Wolting comes to the conclusion that storytelling is likely to
increase in the long term, as both contemporary cultural and memory studies,
as well as research in creative and autobiographical writing highlight it as
an innovative and sustainable area for development of intercultural
communication.

Joanne Leal’s chapter, ‘Cinema as Intercultural Communication’ (Chapter 17)
investigates how far and how exactly cinema is able to offer a
representational counterbalance to conservative notions of national belonging
and exclusionary constructions of what social cohesion should mean. Within a
Western European framework, the chapter deals with the question of what film
can do to promote intercultural sensitivities within contemporary European
contexts when the attitudes to the impact of globalization and transnational
movement of people are often ambivalent. It also examines critical assessments
of the positive intercultural impact of watching foreign films, which might
encourage empathetic responses to transnational tales.

In ‘Intercultural Memory and Violence in Jewish Literature’ (Chapter 18),
Verena Dolle examines memories written down in fictional and factual texts by
Jewish Latin American writers, such as Alberto Gerschunoff, Margo Glantz and
Bernardo Kucinski. Her chapter combines ideas of narrative power and
intercultural memories to analyse texts that address Jewish migration and
adaptation to new countries. By exploring the subjectivity and polyphony of
memory reflected in literary texts, the chapter gives voice and visibility to
competing narratives that stress crucial aspects in the interaction between
different cultures.

Antonio López Peláez and Emilio José Gómez Ciriano’s chapter, ‘Intercultural
Communication in Social Work Practice’ (Chapter 19), analyse the different
frameworks within which intercultural communication is now placed in the field
of social work, especially with regard to intercultural mediation. The authors
suggest that social work is a field that has recently been largely neglected
in intercultural communication research, although social work practice has
been fundamentally shaped by international migration and globalization. Their
chapter focuses on the extent to which intercultural communication is present
in the different degrees is social work, and presents good practices and
recommendations for social workers.

The next two chapters draw on the plea to negotiate cultural norms that govern
relations between people at different levels, which correlates with the
development of intracultural and intercultural competence. In ‘Intercultural
Education in Study Abroad Contexts’ (Chapter 20), Jane Jackson rejects the
assumption that tertiary students who participate in a study abroad programme
will always become more interculturally competent, global-minded and
proficient in a second language. Her chapter develops a rationale for
intercultural interventions at all stages (pre-sojourn, sojourn and
post-sojourn) of the study abroad cycle. Examples of innovative intercultural
pedagogy in study abroad programmes are presented, including interventions
that encourage students to acquire a more critical awareness of themselves and
their positioning in the world.

Bertil Cottier’s chapter ‘Intercultural Communication in the Courtroom: The
Doctrine of Public Policy’ (Chapter 21) explores the doctrine of ordre public,
which allows judges to block the ‘import’ of unacceptable foreign customs and
traditions. The ordre public doctrine is examined in respect of issues
pertaining to family law and succession law, two domains where its impact is
most significant since marriage, divorce, filiation and inheritance are deeply
rooted in social and religious values. Special attention is paid to the clash
generated by immigration from Muslim countries, between Islamic legal
institutions such as polygamy and repudiation and Western principles of
equality and non-discrimination.

The fourth part of The Handbook shifts focus towards the application of the
different theories and approaches to intercultural communication in a range of
different contexts.

Focusing on refugee students, Emmanuelle le Pichon-Vorstman, in her chapter
‘Intercultural Communication in the Context of the Hypermobility of the School
Population in and out of Europe’ (Chapter 22), raises two key issues as
regards the integration of refugee students: (1) students’ mobility and the
organization of their educational trajectories; and (2) potential segregation
and the danger of social exclusion of this vulnerable group of students.
Schools are seeking new ways of teaching and alternative paths of language
planning by strengthening anti-discrimination and fostering partnership with
parents and community members.

Marie-Thérèse Claes’s chapter ‘Culture and Management’ (Chapter 23), examines
the impact of positivist theories in intercultural management, and proposes
three further positions that hold a scientific view of culture, making a
distinction between emic and etic approaches. While etic approaches such as
the positivist and critical views analyse and compare cultures based on
predefined, comparable constructs and models, emic approaches are emergent,
trying to understand members’ meanings. In particular, this chapter suggests a
move from positivist to interpretive, postmodern and critical approaches, all
of which are illustrated with examples.

Anne Ife’s ‘Language and Othering in Contemporary Europe’ (Chapter 24)
provides evidence of linguistic othering, assesses its causes and motivations,
and its impact on intercultural relations by using media and documented
sources. It focuses specifically on the case of the United Kingdom, where
language issues featured predominantly in political and media discourse
relating to migrant communities during the campaign for the UK to leave the
European Union.

Chapter 25 and 26 present applications to methodological suggestions regarding
the power of narratives. In ‘Black British Writing: Benjamin Zephaniah’s
Didactic Poetics’ (Chapter 25), Deirdre Osborne examines Black British poetry
as an aesthetic vehicle for catalysing intercultural communication and
explores the concept of ‘Didactic Poetics’ as a means of teaching the reader
and listener new or unexpected ways of understanding the linguistic play, the
verbal flexibilities and the resulting canonical counter-fashioning. It offers
analyses of his ‘school poems’ and considers the factors affecting longevity
and legitimation that indicate the degree to which permeation and traction
within British culture is an outcome of intercultural communication through
Black British poetics.

Sarah Barrow’s chapter, ‘Cultural Encounters in Contemporary Latin American
Cinema: Intersections of Transnationality’ (Chapter 26) sets out to emphasize
the importance of the concepts of cultural encounter and human connectivity
within the broader arena of transnationalism with regard to the cinema of
Latin America. The three chosen films exemplify many from the region that were
made in the first decade of the twenty-first century. The analyses of the
films highlight some of the ways that make us better understand how film
culture explores, highlights, disrupts and interrogates notions of
intercultural communication. 

In ‘Religion and Intercultural Communication’ (Chapter 27), Margaret Littler
adopts a critical approach to the understanding of religion as an object of
intercultural knowledge in the context of German-language literature. Religion
is approached by the author not as a set of codified and culturally specific
practices about which one presumes to know, but through literary texts, in
which religion is not so much content or theme, but a source of creative
intensity that erupts into settled notions of established religious practices
and cultural identities.

Bronwen Walter’s chapter, ‘Irish-English Cultural Encounters in the Diaspora’
(Chapter 28), draws on sociological concepts in its exploration of hidden
nuances in relationships between Irish migrants and descendants on the one
hand and people of English background on the other. The chapter draws on
qualitative data from ten discussion groups with second-generation Irish
‘experts’ in four locations in England. The major themes identified are as
follows: language, religiosity, family and sociability. The author claims that
the widespread failure to recognize them has led to inequalities in many parts
of society.

In ‘Intercultural Dimensions in Academic Mobility: South Korea and Spain’
(Chapter 29), F. Manuel Montalbán, Francisco M. Llorente and Evelina Zurita
apply key ideas from critical assessments of study abroad contexts when they
examine the effects of academic mobility. The chapter draws on comments from
Spanish and South Korean students within joint internationalization programmes
led by the University of Malaga and South Korean universities. The authors
identified three different interpretative repertoires related to the
intercultural experience of South Korean and Spanish students: ‘Language Open
Doors’, ‘Imagined Otherness’ and ‘People and Culture’. These repertoires
include the mastery and interest in the language, the measure in which
students are favourably disposed towards counter-stereotypic otherness, and
the possibility of ‘putting faces’ to the culture.

The final part of The Handbook, Part V, is dedicated to the discussion of
different ways of assessing intercultural communication and intercultural
communicative competence.

Darla K. Deardorff’s chapter, ‘Defining, Developing and Assessing
Intercultural Competence’ (Chapter 30), highlights the terminology and
definitional themes of intercultural competence, (i.e. principles and changing
assessment paradigm), as well as provides a general overview of the
development of this construct in individuals. It is argued that
cross-disciplinary researchers need to engage with one another, to build on
cumulative knowledge in this area.

In ‘Effects of Social Media Use on Cultural Adaptation’ (Chapter 31), Ming Li
and Stephen M. Croucher provide an overview of the concepts of cultural
adaptation and cultural fusion, highlighting how newcomers adapt to the new
culture while also maintaining elements of their own culture. The chapter also
explores the link between social media and adapting to a new culture and the
directions for future research.

The volume concludes with Milton J. Bennett’s chapter on ‘A Constructivist
Approach to Assessing Intercultural Communication Competence’ (Chapter 32). 
In order to clarify the idea of paradigmatic context, the chapter begins with
a short exposition on the epistemology of assessment in general, continuing
with a focus on the paradigmatic contexts of intercultural communication and
their implications for assessment. Bennet offers the Developmental Model of
Intercultural Sensitivity (DMIS) as an example of how constructivist theory
and methodology can be applied to assessing ICC.

EVALUATION

The aim of “The Cambridge Handbook of Intercultural Communication” to propose
a comprehensive and interdisciplinary volume that explores contrastive,
interactive, imagological and interlingual approaches, has been fully achieved
as all the chapters in the book help the readers come to a better and deeper
understanding of the phenomena of culture. Although the book makes a cohesive
whole, its chapters can be read independently.

Through an examination of a range of questions, such as interculturality or
transculturality, the impact of digital environment, gender, region and
migration on intercultural communication, the role of intercultural
competence, etc., readers will find both theoretical and practical approaches
to understand the dynamic communication processes between one’s own cultural
framework and the foreign environment. An excellent example for this is ‘The
Integrated model of action competence’ (in Chapter 3), which clearly
demonstrates how the three dimensions of intercultural competence (cognitive,
behavioural and affective) can easily be integrated into four competence
categories (self-, social, strategic, and specialist competence).

One of the strengths of the volume is that readers will find visual summaries
of the major dimensional theories (e.g., Chapter 6, p. 99, 109 and 113)
focussing on the commonalities and differences in cultural value research
orientations, as well as the thematization of the cultural visions of the
migration complex from the most varied points of view (see Chapter 13, p.
231), which can give researchers and students the opportunity to see the
cultural values in their full complexity.

The inclusion of the literary approach to intercultural communication (Chapter
8, and 18) in the volume is significant because in our contemporary age of
accelerated globalization, the potential of literature for our understanding
of intercultural relations is considerable as it provides a rich site for
creating and negotiating concepts of self and otherness. Of particular
importance are a community’s lived and inherited history with its rhetorical
and ideological framing of the past. Therefore, literature can create unstable
knowledge, which provides room for different, partial truths and can prevent
readers from falling prey to one-dimensional and totalizing world views.

Although all the contributions in the volume are excellent, still Jolanta A.
Drzewiecka’s psychoanalytic approach to memory and intercultural communication
(Chapter 9) presents a particularly fresh approach to the study of
intercultural communication. The author herself admits that memory studies
have received scant attention in intercultural communication, and scholars are
only now turning their attention to the dynamics of remembering and forgetting
as forms of communication with and about the other; I am very much convinced
that this research direction will provide much more useful data for studying
intercultural communication in the future.

When the opportunity to study abroad arises, the vast majority of people think
that those who participate in one will automatically become interculturally
competent. It was very useful and thought-provoking to learn about the myriad
of other elements, external factors and pedagogical intervention that can
bring about divergent learning curves in study abroad contexts (Chapter 20 and
Chapter 29). In line with Jane Jackson’s research, Anne Ife (Chapter 24)
confirmed the importance of considering the external factors, such as the
attitude towards language tolerance in Western Europe.

Overall, this is a well-edited book, which deserves appreciation for its
breadth and focus, and the way how it managed to transfer the debates of power
relations to contemporary monocultural settings. Based on original
contributions to the field, The Handbook takes a genuinely interdisciplinary
approach and will certainly inspire future research in the field of
intercultural communication.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Zsuzsanna Zsubrinszky, PhD is a full-time Senior Lecturer at Budapest
University of Technology and Economics, Faculty of Economic and Social
Sciences, Centre of Modern Languages. Her research interests involve Business
English Language teaching, Intercultural Communication and Diplomatic
Discourse.





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