A peer-reviewed research journal Journal of Intercultural Communication published since 1999 – ISSN 1404-1634 Founding Editor: Prof. Jens Allwood View Editorial Board | Article Processing Charge (APC) The Journal of Intercultural Communication (JICC) is an international, double-blind, peer-reviewed, open-access journal published by ICR Publications Ltd, UK. The journal encourages submissions from diverse cultural and intercultural and communication perspectives, welcoming original research, theoretical and experimental studies, systematic reviews, conceptual essays, and case studies […] Read more Journal Metrics ? Understand Journal Metrics › 1.9 CiteScore (2024) 20% Acceptance Rate 7 days Submission to First Decision 1–2 months Peer Review Time 4 months Submission to Publication Indexed in Scopus, WOS RC, EBSCO, Proquest, ERA Q1 SJR Journal Ranking 0.288 SNIP Score (2024) View all metrics >
This journal provides immediate and free open access to all its content and is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). This means readers are permitted to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of articles, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author, as long as proper attribution is given. This policy is consistent with the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) definition of open access.
Digital Stress and Psychological Outcomes in Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants: A Systematic Literature Review
This SLR was conducted in the field of digital communication in the specific context of intercultural communication. The main purpose of this SLR was to assess studies on psychological outcomes, anxiety, self-efficacy, and social media fatigue (SMF) among digital natives and digital immigrants who use social media and experience social media overload (SMO). Unlike meta-analyses, which statistically combine effect sizes, the present study was qualitative in nature; therefore, it employed a thematic Systematic Literature Review (SLR) adhering to PRISMA guidelines to ensure the reliability and transferability of the study, specifically the methodological process. A total of 45 studies were chosen using a Boolean search in Scopus. The studies range from 2000 to 2025. To focus on more recent research, most studies are from 2020 to 2025. Older studies were included only if they provided essential empirical support. The Boolean search included relevant predefined keywords aligned with the objectives of the SLR, such as coping patterns, generational adaptation, and stress responses. Due to social comparison, digital natives exhibited higher emotional dysregulation, with psychological outcomes and digital stress as foci, focusing on mobile social media. The SLR addresses the divide between digital immigrants and digital natives, particularly in Asia, Central Asia, and other regions transitioning from classical to digital communication. Additionally, this study found gaps in psychological outcomes and infrastructural issues, alongside the primary technological barriers, according to the objectives of the SLR. For example, immigrants experienced higher stress, including coping mechanisms, anxiety patterns, and barriers to digital literacy, offering psychological implications and recommendations to manage excessive digital exposure and SMO.
Copyright (c) 2026 Yining Liu, Mohd. Khairie Ahmad https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Interpersonal Intercultural Adaptation Orientations: A Qualitative Study of Engineering Professionals
Professionals in engineering and many other fields are often expected to work on global teams, setting the stage for frequent interpersonal interactions that span cultural boundaries. To further investigate the nature of such experiences, the findings presented in this paper are based on data collected via interviews and focus groups with 23 technical professionals who had varying levels of exposure to intercultural teamwork. Using an inductive thematic analysis approach to our data, we initially observed contrasting patterns of dyadic interactions in the examples and remarks of our study participants. Through further analysis, we developed a two-dimensional framework for such interactions that takes into consideration a given individual’s orientation toward both their own cultural defaults and the defaults held by others in interpersonal teamwork situations. The five specific orientation patterns we identified are arranged from lesser to greater levels of individual concern for one’s own cultural defaults, along with the defaults and norms held by others. In addition to representing a novel contribution to the existing research literature, we anticipate that our findings are useful for intercultural education and training initiatives, including raising awareness of cultural adaptation strategies and orientations among students and professionals. We also hope that our results help stimulate further research on intercultural adaptation, especially in the context of dyadic and other collaborative interactions that are commonplace in global work settings.
Intercultural Communication And Professional Practice...
Copyright (c) 2026 Brent Jesiek, Samantha Lapka, Kris Acheson, Franki Kung https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
How Culture Is Communicatively Constituted In Intercultural Healthcare Organizations: Leadership Sensegiving, Knowledge Sharing, And Employee Innovation
Healthcare organisations are increasingly intercultural workplaces in which leadership, knowledge sharing, and innovation are shaped through ongoing communicative negotiation across cultural differences. However, much existing research treats culture as a static background condition and under-theorises how leadership communication constitutes organisational realities. Drawing on intercultural communication theory, the communicative constitution of organizations (CCO), and leadership sense-giving, this study examines how culture is communicatively constituted through cross-cultural leadership and how these cultural processes shape knowledge sharing and individual innovation in culturally diverse healthcare organizations. Using a sequential mixed-methods design, qualitative interviews were first conducted to explore how healthcare professionals interpret leaders’ sense-giving as cultural cues that define legitimacy and participation. A subsequent quantitative study tested a sequential mediation model. The results show that leadership sense-giving constitutes an inclusive organisational culture, which fosters knowledge sharing and enables individual innovation. By foregrounding culture as an emergent communicative process, this study advances intercultural communication research by explaining how leadership communication becomes consequential for innovation in healthcare contexts. Practically, the findings suggest that culturally inclusive leadership sensegiving can be enacted through everyday healthcare routines, such as team meetings, clinical handovers, and shared decision-making processes, to support knowledge sharing and innovation.
intercultural communication; cross-cultural leadership; leadership sense-giving; inclusive organizational culture; knowledge sharing across cultures; sustainable healthcare organizations; innovation
Organizational Justice, Knowledge Sharing, Innovative Work Behavior and Knowledge Management Capability
Copyright (c) 2026 Ahmad Adeel, Ghulam Hussain, Ahmad Aziz Sheikh https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Multicultural Synergy and Team Performance: The Mediating Role of Cultural Integration In Malaysian Universities
This study examines the relationship between team performance and subjective well-being in multicultural organizational contexts, and the mediating role of cultural integration in these relationships. Existing research highlights that understanding well-being is essential in enhancing team outcomes, yet limited studies have explored this link across diverse work settings. These findings support using well-being as a significant predictor when evaluating performance, helping identify how subjective well-being contributes to improved team performance through cultural integration. This study produced 400 valid responses using a quantitative survey. Descriptive statistics, multiple regression analysis, and mediation analysis were used to test the hypotheses and validate direct and indirect interactions between the variables. The well-being framework, rooted in capabilities approaches and examined by international experts, was used in this study to understand subjective well-being. The study's findings reveal that the well-being variables Life Satisfaction, Flourishing, and Domain Evaluation significantly affected Team Performance. The mediation analysis results indicated that cultural integration mediates the relationships among all four constructs of well-being and team performance. Overall, the findings confirm that team performance is strengthened when employees experience high levels of subjective well-being and cultural integration is effectively fostered within the team. This study adds to the knowledge corpus by offering suggestions for predicting the effectiveness of a multicultural workforce by providing empirical evidence supporting the integration of well-being and cultural diversity in organisational performance models.
cultural integration; multiculturalism; well-being; performance; academia
Copyright (c) 2026 Kavitha Balakrishnan, Ajitha Angusamy, Hafizul Amin Ngatlia, Miza Izwanis Mangso, Krishnaveni Letchumanan https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Exploring the Translatability of the Figures of Speech: The Case of the English Translation of Qabbani’s Letter from Under the Sea
Poetry is a form of literature that depends on artistic images to express emotions, feelings, attitudes, etc. It is, however, assumed that poetry is a difficult genre to translate, since some of the poet's feelings, emotions, and visualizations are untranslatable despite the translator’s professionalism and experience. This study aims to shed light on the translatability of the figures of speech in Moore’s English translation of Qabbani’s Arabic poem, ‘Letter from Under the Sea'. The ST and its translation are compared, analyzed, and discussed to see how figures of speech are rendered. Moreover, twenty native speakers of English were surveyed to see how they perceive the aesthetic effect of the poem, taking into consideration that they had no idea that the poem was a translation from another language. Throughout the analysis, it is found that figures of speech are translatable, but the degree of the aesthetic effect is distorted, thereby affecting the poem’s artistic and poetic images. The findings indicate that, while meaning is preserved in translation, the aesthetic effect of figures of speech is often diminished, underscoring the need for creativity-oriented, culturally informed translation strategies. The study highlights the partial un/translatability of figurative language in Arabic–English poetry and emphasizes the importance of sensitivity to aesthetic and imagistic dimensions beyond semantic equivalence. It also contributes to translation studies by providing insights into readers’ aesthetic reception, with implications for translator training, literary translation practice, and future research.
Copyright (c) 2026 Mohammed Zagood https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Negotiating Cultural Values in Pesantren as Islamic Educational Institutions: A Case Study from Eastern Indonesia
This study examines the negotiation of cultural values in Lombok Islamic boarding schools through an intercultural perspective. Its main focus is to analyze how pesantren become an intercultural space for negotiating cultural diversity amid modernization, using Bourdieu's theory. A qualitative approach with critical ethnographic methods was used. Data were collected from 36 participants, in-depth interviews with key informants, and document analysis. The findings show that the negotiation of cultural values occurs through three main mechanisms: the transmission of religious knowledge, the formation of student habitus, and the accumulation of cultural capital. This process is revealed through curriculum adaptation, modernization of learning systems, strengthening social networks, strengthening religious practices, and the inclusion of vocational and technological skills. As a result, pesantren emerged as a space where cultural encounters encourage collaboration rather than conflict. These findings contribute to the study of intercultural communication by positioning education as an active and reflective arena for value negotiation. Practically, this study recommends that Islamic boarding school leaders and policymakers integrate inclusive curricula and cross-cultural activities to enhance students' capacity to adapt, collaborate, and lead in diverse societies.
Copyright (c) 2026 Onok Yayang Pamungkas, Eko Suroso, Suhanah Suhanah, Novita Siswayanti, Adi Fathul Qohar, Titi Hendrawati https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
From Perceived Rise To Increased Visibility: Intercultural Communication And Visibility Regimes of School Bullying In Kazakhstan
Recent public debates in Kazakhstan increasingly frame school bullying as a growing problem. This study examines how this perception of increase is produced and interpreted within a bilingual Kazakh–Russian communicative context. Drawing on a qualitative corpus collected in 2025—comprising 18 focus group discussions, 100 semi-structured expert interviews, and 154 pre-discussion questionnaires—the study traces communicative repertoires and visibility regimes rather than measuring behavioral incidence. The findings indicate that the perceived rise in bullying reflects shifts in visibility (observability), including institutional detection practices, public circulation through digital media, and changing normative thresholds. Three recurring patterns support this interpretation: (1) the routinization of anti-bullying work through values education modules and scheduled prevention activities; (2) intergenerational narratives that lower tolerance for coercive practices; and (3) mediatization that accelerates digital circulation and moral evaluation. The article introduces a visibility framework that analytically separates behavioral incidence from the processes that render episodes detectable, publicly circulating, and institutionally classifiable. This distinction clarifies how administrative counts may increase without a behavioral surge. The study contributes to intercultural communication by demonstrating how the category “bullying” is negotiated across linguistic repertoires and institutional arenas. Policy implications include event-level monitoring that records detection channels and digital traces, coordinated offline and online prevention strategies, and structured engagement with parents as a key detection pathway.
Copyright (c) 2026 Yermek Buribayev, Zhanna Khamzina https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Conceptual Integration of Contextual Synonyms in Contemporary English Media Discourse
Contextual synonymy plays a significant role in contemporary media discourse by shaping semantic emphasis and emotional framing through figurative lexical choices. While previous research has examined metaphorical and evaluative language within individual domains, systematic cross-discursive comparisons remain limited. This study investigates the mechanisms underlying the creation and functioning of contextual synonyms in medical, political, and sports media texts and analyses their pragmatic role in structuring meaning within contemporary English media discourse. The analysis draws on qualitative content analysis supplemented by discourse-analytical interpretation and descriptive statistics. The corpus comprises 300 texts from five British newspapers (The Guardian, The Telegraph, Daily Mail, Mirror, and The Sun). A total of 325 instances of contextual synonyms were manually identified and coded: 120 in medical discourse, 95 in political discourse, and 110 in sports discourse. Contextual synonyms were operationalised as lexical items or multi-word expressions that substitute more neutral terms while introducing evaluative, metaphorical, or imagistic meaning. The units were classified into four functional-semantic categories: military vocabulary, zoomorphic images, strength/endurance images, and cognitive-psychological images. The findings demonstrate systematic cross-discursive variation. Medical discourse is dominated by military metaphors framing health issues as crises requiring mobilisation. Political discourse relies extensively on zoomorphic and cognitive-psychological imagery that stabilises moral evaluation and reinforces ideological polarisation. Sports discourse privileges strength and animal metaphors that contribute to heroisation and spectacle. The study concludes that contextual synonymy functions as a higher-order framing mechanism linking lexical choice, emotional valence, and discursive strategy. By proposing a unified functional-semantic model, the research offers a framework for analysing evaluative language across media domains and provides a basis for further cross-linguistic and cross-cultural investigation.
Copyright (c) 2026 Iryna Kazymir, Nadia Yesypenko, Olga Soloviova, Olena Hnatkovska, Oksana Staryk https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Re-Examining The Validity of Hofstede's Power Distance Dimension: A Cross-Cultural Comparison of Organizational Employees In Four Countries
The present study examines the contemporary validity and applicability of Hofstede's power distance dimension. Since the introduction of Hofstede's cultural value framework in the early 1980s, cultural, social, political, and commercial relationships among countries have undergone substantial transformation. These changes may have influenced how individuals perceive and enact power relations across intercultural contexts, making a re-examination of the power distance dimension both timely and necessary. Data were collected using a questionnaire that was developed, pilot-tested, and administered to 2,000 organizational members in Mexico, France, Great Britain, and New Zealand. The data were analyzed using analysis of variance (ANOVA). The findings indicate that cultural differences in power distance across the four countries persist; however, the magnitude of these differences is less pronounced than Hofstede's original national rankings suggest. This pattern points to a narrowing of power distance gaps among countries while reaffirming the continued relevance of the dimension. The study contributes to intercultural communication research by highlighting the dynamic nature of cultural values and the need for context-sensitive interpretations of power distance. Future research should incorporate additional variables such as education, organizational position, religion, and degree of intercultural contact to provide a more comprehensive understanding of evolving power distance orientations.
importance of understanding value changes
validity and suitability of previous findings
Copyright (c) 2026 Jung-Soo Yi https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
The Silent Signal: A Mirror Leadership and Intercultural Communication Beyond Strategic Boundaries
The post-pandemic work environment has intensified emotional strain, hybrid-work fatigue, and cognitive disengagement, making it increasingly difficult for leaders to sustain trust and authentic engagement in diverse, digitally disrupted teams. Existing leadership models emphasize cognition and behavior but overlook the real-time emotional, relational, and physiological processes that shape contemporary managerial dynamics. This study introduces Mirror Leadership, a novel theoretical framework grounded in Emotional Appraisal Theory (EAT) and Polyvagal Theory (PVT) to explain how leaders influence team well-being through emotional co-regulation, reflective attunement, and embodied presence. Using a conceptual research design and narrative synthesis across neuroscience, psychology, and leadership studies, the paper advances six propositions that describe how Mirror Leaders cultivate psychological safety, resilience, relational repair, and trust in hybrid and multicultural contexts. The model offers a distinct theoretical contribution by integrating cognitive appraisal mechanisms with neurophysiological processes of safety and connection, thereby reframing leadership as a symbolized, neuro-emotional, and intercultural process rather than a solely cognitive or strategic function. Findings suggest that emotionally attuned and synchronized leaders foster biologically grounded trust, intercultural cohesion, and affective stability during uncertainty. The study further outlines implications for research, including the need for empirical validation using physiological and behavioral measures, and implications for practice, such as enhancing leadership development, cross-cultural training, and emotionally intelligent management in hybrid workplaces. Mirror Leadership thus provides a foundational and globally relevant framework for understanding emotionally intelligent and culturally competent leadership in the new world of work.
Copyright (c) 2026 Muhammad Atif Bashir, Saeed Banihashemi, Muhammad Taimoor, Mohammad Fakhrul Islam, Katalin Szabó https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Navigating Digital Resilience: High-Skilled International Migrants’ WeChat Use During The 2022 COVID-19 Shanghai Lockdown
The enabling and constraining roles of social media in crises motivate a dynamic approach to examining digital resilience, inherent in the interplay between technological properties and enabling conditions. To expand the literature on how migrant groups navigate digital resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic, this study uses the concept of affordances as an analytical lens to examine how high-skilled international migrants in China used WeChat during the 2022 Shanghai lockdown. Through semi-structured interviews conducted in 2024, the study has identified three resilience capabilities enacted by participants to cope with the disruption: tactical negotiations of (in)visibility, active seeking for reliable information, and building localised communities through engaging with WeChat’s affordances, namely visibility, searchability, and association. This process reveals affordances as interactional and flexible, dependent on users’ agency in adaptation to real-life challenges. Emphasising the intercultural contexts, we understand digital resilience as intercultural learning and adaptation, negotiated across sociocultural environments and digital infrastructure. The findings call for fostering inclusive digital and intercultural conditions to enable more effective resilience responses to future crises.
Social media affordances, digital resilience, WeChat, high-skilled international migrants, COVID-19 lockdown
Copyright (c) 2026 Diandian Huang, Bei Ju https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
The Cultural Difference In Nonverbal Expressivity Is Moderated By The Extent of Subjective Self-Construal: A Two-Study Examination Targeting Japanese And Korean Individuals
This research comprises two studies that examined cultural differences in nonverbal expressivity between Japan and Korea. While prior research has highlighted East–West contrasts, less attention has been given to distinctions within collectivistic cultures. Employing the psychological construct of self-construal (subjective, objective, and autonomous selves), which is thought to distinguish Japanese and Korean cultures, we investigated how these dimensions relate to nonverbal expressiveness. Two questionnaire-based studies were conducted with Japanese and Korean undergraduates. The study measured participants’ extent of the three types of self-construal and nonverbal expressivity. Study 1 included 284 Japanese and 272 Koreans. Autonomous self-construal was omitted in this study. Study 2 replicated the design with 189 Japanese and 199 Koreans, incorporating autonomous self-construal. A multiple regression analysis was conducted to examine whether culture (Japan and Korea), the three types of construal, and culture × self-construal interaction predict nonverbal expressivity. The main effect of culture was observed in both studies, indicating greater expressivity among Koreans. Also, the culture × subjective self-construal interaction was consistently found, showing that higher subjective self-construal predicted greater nonverbal expressivity among Koreans but lower expressivity among Japanese. Subjective self-construal signifies motivation to influence others in interpersonal relationships, and the interaction effect is interpreted in relation to culturally endorsed communication styles in Japan and Korea. Objective and autonomous self-construal were not strongly related to nonverbal expressivity. The present findings challenge the assumption that nonverbal communication styles are relatively uniform across collectivistic cultures and underscore the importance of self-construal for understanding cultural variations in emotional communication.
Intercultural communication, self-construal, nonverbal emotional expressivity,
Copyright (c) 2026 Youngsun Yuk, Mariko Kikutani https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
A Multi-dimensional Rhythm Framework for Intercultural Experiences in Higher Education
This article explores the experiences of Chinese postgraduate students in a UK university using the lens of rhythmanalysis. This study goes beyond intercultural interactional moments and examines how intercultural experience is organised through temporal, spatial, and emotional rhythms. The data were generated through narrative interviews with four students, and narrative rhythmanalysis was employed for analysis. Findings show that students’ interconnected temporal, spatial, and emotional rhythms shape and regulate their choices regarding participation and exposure to intercultural experiences. This article provides a multi-dimensional rhythm framework consisting of temporal, spatial, and emotional dimensions for analysing how institutional time, lived space, and emotional experiences shape when and how intercultural experience becomes desirable, possible, or less important for students (e.g., students tended to engage in intercultural activities that are more likely to align with these three rhythms). By shifting the focus from the development of intercultural communication competence to the underlying rhythmic conditions that govern participation, this framework explicitly advances critical intercultural paradigms by theorising time, space, and emotion as integrated, dynamic conditions rather than as contextual backdrops. This approach extends existing critical scholarship by arguing that participation is rhythmically negotiated across multiple dimensions, both prior to and beyond interactional moments, offering a distinct analytical lens for understanding and supporting international student experiences. The article concludes by discussing implications for more rhythm-sensitive support structures for international students (e.g., reducing misalignment between institutional and personal rhythms to encourage intercultural participation) and specifying future research directions.
Copyright (c) 2026 Xian Zhao https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/