Word-Dancing Together Towards Noble Outcomes

Illustration of ai ki by Alexandra Vansteenland Bodies and minds meet, leaving me weak in the knees, harmonising life. This haiku echoes the many faces of love. My love for aikido taught me about all kinds of love. Interestingly, love in Japanese is ai. It is a homonym, a word that sounds like ai in aikido, 合 as in 合気道, but does not look like it: 愛.   | Excerpt from the author’s  doctoral dissertation : p. v.  |

Considering that many intercultural misunderstandings, whether innocent or not, have their origins in inequality and not just difference (Blommaert, 2005, p. 77), the need to achieve a goal together, even if only for strategic purposes in the military, diplomacy, and business, has often led to results. The results are generally an effort of either cooperation or competition; similar processes take place in everyday micro-level intercultural encounters. When an intercultural interaction leads to an effective — and preferably appropriate — outcome (Deardorff 2006, 256), it is indeed at least because the interlocutors have a goal they want to achieve. Intercultural interaction ‘does not just happen’ (Deardorff 2009, xiii). Kecskes (2018) explained that intercultural communication relies more on emergent common ground, because of the limited availability of core common ground resulting from little or no mutual prior experience. Co-construction, which is the co-creation of emergent common g...

Intercultural communication typically refers to challenges and corresponding opportunities in communication that occur when people from different cultures meet. In many people’s minds, a static notion of culture prevails based on approaches that explain challenges in intercultural communication through cultural differences linked to national norms described by scholars of comparative intercultural studies (like Hall, Hofstede, Lewis, and Trompenaars). The identification of cultural differences with norms and values that are supposedly characteristic of the corresponding nationalities from which the leading management of a given multinational company stems generates conclusions whose simplicity is worrying. The resulting classification of cultures according to their degree of individualism versus collectivism or of masculinity versus femininity is so stereotyped and ethnocentric that it can hardly contribute to the study of intracultural and intercultural dynamics. (Dietz, 2018, p. 12) ...

As is often the case with phenomena that are subject to interpretation, there are many definitions for aikido. Going to the source is a good approach to finding an original definition or description. The source of aikido is Morihei Ueshiba ,  who lived from 1883 to 1969. He created aikido and is often referred to as the founder or ō sensei (Japanese for grandmaster). Even if I could read Japanese, many of the texts attributed to Ueshiba are interpretive sources, as they are transcripts of recorded lectures and interviews. “Bud ō , Teachings of the Founder of Aikid ō ” (M. Ueshiba, 1938/2013) is probably the only available book that Ueshiba wrote. It is an instruction manual and a statement of the aim and spirit of aikido’s philosophy. It became available to the English-reading world in 1993 thanks to a translation by John Stevens, an American professor of Buddhist studies and an aikido instructor who lived in Japan from 1973 till 2013 (“ John Stevens (Scholar) ,” 2023). The name ai...

| This blog will dive into the application of aikido in communication training. |  If we want to know what aikido means in the context of business communication training courses, it is useful to understand aikido as it is taught in the dojo (dōjō, training place). Aikido is a relatively modern, global phenomenon that originated in Japan in the 1920-1960s. It is rooted in older martial arts (history), has a curriculum of physical movements (external), fosters mental development (internal), bears a philosophy (spiritual), is an embodied experience (individual), and has usage in daily life (applied). Aikido scholars often refer to Westbrook and Ratti's “Aikido and the Dynamic Sphere: An Illustrated Introduction” (2001) for definitions, descriptions, and illustrations. In fact, Westbrook and Ratti cover many aspects of aikido clearly and quite profoundly. Their description of aikido hints at the six aspects (historical, external, internal, spiritual, individual, and applied): EMERGIN...

  | In memory of Professor Jan Blommaert |  This is an account of how Jan Blommaert made me stop saying that I sell hot air. It happened when my doctoral advisory committee met in December 2018. It was an exciting meeting in which all the professors got acquainted who had agreed to accompany me on the long road to a doctorate. Jan was one of them. We soon shared perspectives on the research topic and discovered the alluringly diverse interests of the committee members. It was a refreshing dive into academic talk, especially for me because I had just stepped out of a career as a free-lance business communication trainer. When I humbly linked the subject of my PhD research with my professional experience, I claimed that this research may well show that I had been selling hot air for years, “ dat ik al jaren gebakken lucht verkoop .” Jan promptly replied that I must not say that. He eloquently explained that if participants of a business communication train...