African American Communication: Exploring Identity and Culture is a 2003 book by Michael Hecht, Ronald L. Jackson II and Sidney A. Ribeau.
The book seeks to demonstrate why and how communication in interpersonal interactions between African Americans differs from that between European Americans. The authors argue that African-American identity, communicative competence, language style and relationship formation and maintenance are strategies adopted in order to navigate a dominant European power structure than inhibits cultural authenticity and access to power. [1] The authors' intent is to establish a starting point for research into the communication styles of African Americans and other cultural groups. [2] The major questions the authors seek to address involve the differences in communicative experiences that are unique to African Americans, how African Americans self-define culturally, and how African Americans perceive intercultural communication. [3] The book concludes by presenting ideas and recommendations for future scholarship, including the necessity of a non-Eurocentric perspective on African-American identities. [2]
Writing in the Southern Communication Journal, Charlton D. McIlwain criticized the book for failing to engage with disputes over the validity of racial differences in a postmodern world and for failing to explain the motivation behind the work or how it would add to understandings of intercultural communication or African Americans' communicative experiences. However, he also noted that the book "does include some discussion of a fairly vast amount of literature", and that it had the "potential to instigate debate over the ontology of human difference." [1] Lillie M. Fears in Mass Communication and Society wrote that "the authors do accomplish their goal of presenting a cultural analysis of African American communication" and that "the book, replete with information from diverse bodies of literature, is really a reader or guide that can be used by researchers seeking to better understand African American culture and communication styles, patterns, and even some basic history of African peoples in the United States." [3] Gloria Greene in American Speech recommended the chapter on communicative competence "to anyone seeking better understanding of how to communicate effectively with African Americans and other cultural groups" and the book as a whole to "sociolinguists who are thinking about this or similar particular topics of communication among cultural groups." [2] Writing in the Journal of Language and Social Psychology , Michael Irvin Arrington praised the authors for their "interpretive, cultural approach", and described the fifth chapter of the second edition, which focuses on intraracial and interracial relationships and friendships, as "impressive" but noted that it failed to address its multiple themes "sufficiently, settling instead for a cursory glance at each topic." Arrington also described the original edition as "groundbreaking in its interactional approach and its subject matter". [4]
Cross-cultural communication is a field of study investigating how people from differing cultural backgrounds communicate, in similar and different ways among themselves, and how they endeavor to communicate across cultures. Intercultural communication is a related field of study.
Acculturation is a process of social, psychological, and cultural change that stems from the balancing of two cultures while adapting to the prevailing culture of the society. Acculturation is a process in which an individual adopts, acquires and adjusts to a new cultural environment as a result of being placed into a new culture, or when another culture is brought to someone. Individuals of a differing culture try to incorporate themselves into the new more prevalent culture by participating in aspects of the more prevalent culture, such as their traditions, but still hold onto their original cultural values and traditions. The effects of acculturation can be seen at multiple levels in both the devotee of the prevailing culture and those who are assimilating into the culture.
Interculturalism is a political movement that supports cross-cultural dialogue and challenging self-segregation tendencies within cultures. Interculturalism involves moving beyond mere passive acceptance of multiple cultures existing in a society and instead promotes dialogue and interaction between cultures. Interculturalism is often used to describe the set of relations between indigenous and western ideals, grounded in values of mutual respect.
Intercultural communication is a discipline that studies communication across different cultures and social groups, or how culture affects communication. It describes the wide range of communication processes and problems that naturally appear within an organization or social context made up of individuals from different religious, social, ethnic, and educational backgrounds. In this sense, it seeks to understand how people from different countries and cultures act, communicate, and perceive the world around them. Intercultural communication focuses on the recognition and respect of those with cultural differences. The goal is mutual adaptation between two or more distinct cultures which leads to biculturalism/multiculturalism rather than complete assimilation. It promotes the development of cultural sensitivity and allows for empathic understanding across different cultures.
Michael L. Hecht is a researcher in the field of human communication, emphasising the areas of interpersonal and inter-ethnic relationships, identity, and adolescent drug resistance. In 1973, Hecht earned his M.A. from Queens College, City University of New York and his Ph.D. I in communications from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He is now Liberal Arts Research Professor of Communication Arts and Sciences and Crime, Law, and Justice in the Department of Communication Arts and Sciences at Penn State University. He has previously been full professor at Arizona State University.
Molefi Kete Asante is an American professor and philosopher. He is a leading figure in the fields of African-American studies, African studies, and communication studies. He is currently a professor in the Department of Africology at Temple University, where he founded the PhD program in African-American Studies. He is president of the Molefi Kete Asante Institute for Afrocentric Studies.
Intercultural learning is an area of research, study and application of knowledge about different cultures, their differences and similarities. On the one hand, it includes a theoretical and academic approach. On the other hand, it comprises practical applications such as learning to negotiate with people from different cultures, living with people from different cultures, living in a different culture and the prospect of peace between different cultures.
In anthropology, high-context culture and low-context culture are ends of a continuum of how explicit the messages exchanged in a culture are and how important the context is in communication. The continuum pictures how people communicate with others through their range of communication abilities: utilizing gestures, relations, body language, verbal messages, or non-verbal messages. "High-" and "low-" context cultures typically refer to language groups, nationalities, or regional communities. However, the concept may also apply to corporations, professions, and other cultural groups, as well as to settings such as online and offline communication. High-context cultures often exhibit less-direct verbal and nonverbal communication, utilizing small communication gestures and reading more meaning into these less-direct messages. Low-context cultures do the opposite; direct verbal communication is needed to properly understand a message being communicated and relies heavily on explicit verbal skills. The model of high-context and low-context cultures offers a popular framework in intercultural-communication studies but has been criticized as lacking empirical validation.
Cultural competence, also known as intercultural competence, is a range of cognitive, affective, behavioural, and linguistic skills that lead to effective and appropriate communication with people of other cultures. Intercultural or cross-cultural education are terms used for the training to achieve cultural competence.
Face-Negotiation Theory is a theory conceived by Stella Ting-Toomey in 1985, to understand how people from different cultures manage rapport and disagreements. The theory posited "face", or self-image when communicating with others, as a universal phenomenon that pervades across cultures. In conflicts, one's face is threatened; and thus the person tends to save or restore his or her face. This set of communicative behaviors, according to the theory, is called "facework". Since people frame the situated meaning of "face" and enact "facework" differently from one culture to the next, the theory poses a cultural-general framework to examine facework negotiation. It is important to note that the definition of face varies depending on the people and their culture and the same can be said for the proficiency of facework.
Identity management theory is an intercultural communication theory from the 1990s. It was developed by William R. Cupach and Tadasu Todd Imahori on the basis of Erving Goffman's Interaction ritual: Essays on face-to-face behavior (1967). Cupach and Imahori distinguish between intercultural communication and intracultural communication.
Co-cultural communication theory was built upon the frameworks of muted group theory and standpoint theory. The cornerstone of co-cultural communication theory is muted group theory as proposed in the mid 1970s by Shirley and Edwin Ardener. The Ardeners were cultural anthropologists who made the observation that most other cultural anthropologists practicing ethnography in the field were talking only to the leaders of the cultures, who were by and large adult males. The researchers would then use this data to represent the culture as a whole, leaving out the perspectives of women, children and other groups made voiceless by the cultural hierarchy. The Ardeners maintained that groups which function at the top of the society hierarchy determine to a great extent the dominant communication system of the entire society. Ardener's 1975 muted group theory also posited that dominant group members formulate a "communication system that support their perception of the world and conceptualized it as the appropriate language for the rest of society".
Cultural contracts refer to the degree that cultural values are exchanged between groups. They are the agreements made between two groups of people regarding how they will modify their identities in unison. Cultural contract theory investigates how identities shift and are negotiated through cross-cultural interaction. It extends identity negotiation theory and uncertainty reduction theory by focusing defining the negotiation experience from the perspective of minority groups when dealing with cultural norms set by the majority groups. Relationally coordinating with others is the main objective of a cultural contract. The three fundamental premises of the cultural contracts theory are that identities are contractual, continually transferred, and requirement for validation.
Interpersonal communication is an exchange of information between two or more people. It is also an area of research that seeks to understand how humans use verbal and nonverbal cues to accomplish a number of personal and relational goals.
Individualistic cultures are characterized by individualism, which is the prioritization or emphasis of the individual over the entire group. In individualistic cultures people are motivated by their own preference and viewpoints. Individualistic cultures focus on abstract thinking, privacy, self-dependence, uniqueness, and personal goals. The term individualistic culture was first used in the 1980s by Dutch social psychologist Geert Hofstede to describe countries and cultures that are not collectivist, Hofstede created the term individualistic culture when he created a measurement for the five dimensions of cultural values.
Ronald L. Jackson II is an American academic and author. He is Past President of the National Communication Association and a professor of communication, culture, and media, and a former dean of the McMicken College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Cincinnati.
Dr. Robert Martin Shuter was an American author, academic, and consultant specializing in intercultural communication. He was Research Professor at the Hugh Downs School of Human Communication at Arizona State University and Professor Emeritus at the Diederich College of Communication at Marquette University, where he taught for 41 years and chaired the Department of Communication Studies for 29 years.
John L. Jackson Jr. is an American anthropologist, filmmaker, author, and university administrator. He is currently the Provost and Richard Perry University Professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Jackson is the author of Harlemworld: Doing Race and Class in Contemporary Black America (2001); Real Black: Adventures in Racial Sincerity (2005); Racial Paranoia: The Unintended Consequences of Political Correctness (2008); Thin Description: Ethnography and the African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem (2013). He has also directed films that explore questions of race, diaspora, migration, and media.
Virtual exchange is an instructional approach or practice for language learning. It broadly refers to the "notion of 'connecting' language learners in pedagogically structured interaction and collaboration" through computer-mediated communication for the purpose of improving their language skills, intercultural communicative competence, and digital literacies. Although it proliferated with the advance of the internet and web 2.0 technologies in the 1990s, its roots can be traced to learning networks pioneered by Célestin Freinet in 1920s and, according to Dooly, even earlier in Jardine's work with collaborative writing at the University of Glasgow at the end of the 17th to the early 18th century.
Charlton Deron McIlwain is an American academic and author whose expertise includes the role of race and media in politics and social life. McIlwain is Professor of media, culture, and communication and is the Vice Provost for Faculty Engagement and Development at New York University.
