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 ground, builds not only on actual situational needs and context, but also existing shared knowledge and information. The socio-cognitive approach emphasizes that both the actual situational experience and context, and prior experience and context, are important in meaning construction and comprehension, but to varying degrees. This is how we can make sense of the differences between intracultural and intercultural communication. He also mentioned the constructivist view represented by Blommaert, Gumperz, and Rampton that intercultural communication creates or constructs a completely new interculture. The socio-cognitive approach explains that intercultural communication blends old and new and is therefore more than just a created and co-constructed phenomenon (Kecskés, 2014).Research showed the shortcomings of contrastive studies, languages, and relative power positions for understanding and developing intercultural communication competence. It also showed that despite shortcomings, many intercultural interactions co-construct new common ground and create intercultures. Therefore, intercultural competence development needs to address the triadic nature of intercultural communication, i.e. what the context, one person, and another person bring to the dynamic interactional game.
| Adapted excerpt from the author’s doctoral dissertation: pp. 124-125. |
The context, one person, and another person create the triadic interactional game of intercultural communication.
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| Tomoe Mon (Pinterest) |
Blommaert, J. (1998, February 27). Approaches to intercultural communication: A critical survey. Expertentagung über Lernen und Arbeiten in einer international vernetzten und multikulturellen Gesellschaft, Universität Bremen, Germany, 27-28 February 1998. Unpublished. http://rgdoi.net/10.13140/2.1.1052.0324
Deardorff, D. K. (2006). Identification and Assessment of Intercultural Competence as a Student Outcome of Internationalisation. Journal of Studies in International Education, 10(3), 241–266. https://doi.org/10.1177/1028315306287002
Deardorff, D. K. (Ed.). (2009). The Sage handbook of intercultural competence. Sage Publications.
Kecskés, I. (2014). Intercultural pragmatics. Oxford University Press.
Kecskés,
I. (2018). How does intercultural communication differ from intracultural
communication? In A. Curtis & R. Sussex (Eds.), Intercultural
Communication in Asia: Education, Language and Values (pp. 115–135). Springer.
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