M. Gene Aldridge
What is the Basis of American Culture?Abstract
Culture is about survival of the human species. Central values and human capital formation drive cultures. This paper discusses intercultural communication theory from a historical-developmental perspective across the history of humankind, thus defining the uniqueness of the human cultural experience, namely, speech communication. Linking this unique empirical-based human cultural experience to specific cultures and their core values is the topic of this paper. Through a study of the empirical historical-developmental experience of the United States, this paper identifies a core value from the American culture. This paper posits the idea of a core United States cultural value that has implications for studies in intercultural communication leading to an understanding of the difference between first order change and second order cultural changes and research.
The paper suggests that intercultural communication between human groups is not a new phenomenon and may well hold key values to survival for humankind. Studies in intercultural communication research and theory building might do well to apply this anthropological and historical-developmental approach to the study of culture across the span of human time and evaluate those elements of different cultures which seem to be core values that promote survivability of humankind using human cultural capital.
keywords: historical development, anthropology of cultures, speech communication, core values, human cultural capital, survival of mankind.
Johannes Brinkmann
Business Ethics and Intercultural Communication. Exploring the overlap between two academic fieldsAbstract
The paper offers a brief presentation of business ethics as an academic field, and of how it has approached the moral dimension of cross-cultural business activity, i.e. when companies operate in different countries, where stakeholders live in different societies and where norms and values reflect and are affected by cultural differences. Introductory definitions are illustrated by classic case examples and important issues addressed in this field. In a next step, cultural and ethical relativism are discussed, with reference to a four-fold table with combinations of both relativisms and to a process model. This model departs from cultural and moral relativism and outlines how one could transcend such relativism. Among several concluding theses the most important one is a claim that intercultural communication as an academic field can profit from using highly controversial business ethics cases for testing its competence (and for staying humble).
keywords: business cross-cultural ethics, cultural and moral relativism, American culture and identity, academic fields, moral conflict management.
Back to startRuth Lillhannus
Open, Closed, and Locked Images; Cultural Stereotypes and the Symbolic Creation of RealityAbstract
In this paper, I address the complex question of cultural stereotypes and how these kinds of categorising and simplifying notions of the perceived "other" and of ‘difference’ affect the special context of international project industry, a context where cultural diversity is one of the most prominent features. This paper aims at discussing the notion of cultural stereotypes as it appears in an empirical material consisting of field diaries written by Nordic students during their time as trainees at international industrial sites around the world.
I want to suggest that a deeper understanding of stereotypes and their role in cultural encounters can be achieved if an analysis of their contents and functions is connected to a more comprehensive existential question of how people in general create their world-views and interpret their reality. To enhance our understanding of the form and function of cultural stereotypes, I want to propose an alternative perspective in which to interpret them. In this article, I view stereotypes from the humanistic and theological perspectives of intercultural hermeneutics and as structuring components in the symbolic construction of reality (symboliska verklighetsbygget). The question of cultural encounters must not be addressed solely as a question of knowledge, I believe, but as a question also of attitudes and individual emotionally shaped dimensions. This can, I believe, contribute to a more dynamic and comprehensive understanding of the stereotypes and their significance in a world where cultural encounters have become everyday experiences.
keywords:cultural stereotypes, international project industry, field diaries, intercultural hermeneutics, symbolic construction of reality, emotional attitudes.
Amardo Rodriguez
Culture To Culturing. Re-imagining Our Understanding Of Intercultural RelationsAbstract
In this paper I explore the notion that human beings are culturing beings. I contend that the world’s infinite ambiguity is constantly pushing us to construct new and different ways of being and understanding the world. I also argue that verbing our understanding of culture enlarges our understanding of what being human means and, moreover, expands moral action by locating our humanity within a world with an inherent moral potentiality. Finally, I discuss the nature of this emergent morality and the theoretical implications that this emergent quantum understanding of culture brings to bear on intercultural communication theory.
keywords:culturing standpoint, moral potentiality, emergent cultural understanding, quantum tensions, ambiguity and meaning.
Christopher M. Schmidt
Metaphor and cognition: a cross-cultural study of indigenous and universal constructs in stock exchange reportsAbstract
The article examines the aspects of similarity and diversity between different cultures through a cognitive metaphorological approach. The aim is to show in which way both aspects are intertwined and in which way they are relevant for both a theoretical foundation of intercultural communication in general and for solving problems of understanding that can arise in special fields of intercultural communication. The article attempts to demonstrate in which way language can be used to analyze culturally relevant cognitive schemas in the field of business communication. It also demonstrates that the concept of indigenous constructs is needed to promote development in the theory of intercultural communication. The author uses the theory of cognitive metaphors which was introduced by Lakoff/Johnson in 1980 and developed further in the 90s and applies it to a cross-cultural corpus of daily business reports on the stock exchange in Finnish, Finland-Swedish and German newspaper articles. Because of the ongoing world-wide process of synchronic movements of trends in national stock markets since the 90s, the reports in different languages on their national stock market movements have a very high degree of referential comparability. A high degree of comparability in the corpus can be considered methodologically crucial for a cross-cultural study which also aims to solve basic theoretical questions.
keywords:understanding problems, business communication, cognitive schemes, indigenous constructs, cognitive metaphors, stock market reports.