Cross-cultural communication is a field of study that looks at 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. 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.
Tu Weiming is an ethicist and a New Confucian. He is Chair Professor of Humanities and Founding Director of the Institute for Advanced Humanistic Studies at Peking University. He is also Professor Emeritus and Senior Fellow of Asia Center at Harvard University.
Culture shock is an experience a person may have when one moves to a cultural environment which is different from one's own; it is also the personal disorientation a person may feel when experiencing an unfamiliar way of life due to immigration or a visit to a new country, a move between social environments, or simply transition to another type of life. One of the most common causes of culture shock involves individuals in a foreign environment. Culture shock can be described as consisting of at least one of four distinct phases: honeymoon, negotiation, adjustment, and adaptation.
Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin was a Russian philosopher, literary critic, semiotician and scholar who worked on literary theory, ethics, and the philosophy of language. His writings, on a variety of subjects, inspired scholars working in a number of different traditions and in disciplines as diverse as literary criticism, history, philosophy, sociology, anthropology and psychology. Although Bakhtin was active in the debates on aesthetics and literature that took place in the Soviet Union in the 1920s, his distinctive position did not become well known until he was rediscovered by Russian scholars in the 1960s.
Interculturalism refers to support for cross-cultural dialogue and challenging self-segregation tendencies within cultures. Interculturalism involves moving beyond mere passive acceptance of a multicultural fact of multiple cultures effectively existing in a society and instead promotes dialogue and interaction between cultures.
The dialogical self is a psychological concept which describes the mind's ability to imagine the different positions of participants in an internal dialogue, in close connection with external dialogue. The "dialogical self" is the central concept in the dialogical self theory (DST), as created and developed by the Dutch psychologist Hubert Hermans since the 1990s.
Former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami introduced the idea of Dialogue Among Civilizations as a response to Samuel P. Huntington’s theory of a Clash of Civilizations. The term was initially used by Austrian philosopher Hans Köchler who in 1972, in a letter to UNESCO, had suggested the idea of an international conference on the "dialogue between different civilizations" and had organized, in 1974, a first international conference on the role of intercultural dialogue with the support and under the auspices of Senegalese President Léopold Sédar Senghor.
Integrative communication theory is a theory of cross-cultural adaptation proposed by Young Yun Kim. The first widely published version of Kim's theory is found in the last three chapters of a textbook authored by William Gudykunst with Young Yun Kim as second author. See acculturation and assimilation.
Face-Negotiation Theory is primarily based on the research of Penelope Brown and Stephen Levinson. 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.
Philosophy of dialogue is a type of philosophy based on the work of the Austrian-born Jewish philosopher Martin Buber best known through its classic presentation in his 1923 book I and Thou. For Buber, the fundamental fact of human existence, too readily overlooked by scientific rationalism and abstract philosophical thought, is "man with man", a dialogue which takes place in the "sphere of between".
Cultural contracts refer to the degree that cultural values are exchanged between groups. It extends identity negotiation theory and uncertainty reduction theory by focusing defining the negotiation experience from the perspective of minority groups when dealing with majority cultural norms. Cultural contracts theory was developed in 1999 by Dr. Ronald L. Jackson, an identity scholar and a professor in media and cinema studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign.
Intercultural philosophy is an approach to philosophy that had its precursors in the past but has started as a concept in the 1980s. It mostly emanates from the German-speaking parts of Europe and can be seen as a need to factor other cultures into one's own philosophical thinking and thus creating an intercultural perspective.
Cultural Detective is designed to improve conditions and productivity in an international or multicultural environment. As an intercultural competence tool, it is designed to lessen stereotyping and improve dialogue. Cultural Detective, while it is a registered trademark of a single business entity, it is also a project involving around 130 professionals from various places in the world.
Fred Reinhard Dallmayr is an American philosopher and political theorist. He is Packey J. Dee Professor Emeritus in Political Science with a joint appointment in Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame (USA). He holds a Doctor of Law from the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, and a PhD in political science from Duke University. He is the author of some 40 books and the editor of 20 other books. He has served as president of the Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy (SACP); an advisory member of the Scientific Committee of RESET - Dialogue on Civilizations (Rome); the Executive Co-Chair of World Public Forum - Dialogue of Civilizations (Vienna), and a member of the Supervisory Board of the Dialogue of Civilizations Research Institute (Berlin).
Asiacentrism is an ethnocentric perspective that regards Asia to be either superior, central, or unique relative to other regions. This ideological stance can take the form of ascribing to Asia significance or supremacy at the cost of the rest of the world. The concept arose in the context of a projected Asian Century, the expected economic and cultural dominance of Asia in the 21st century, in the 1990s.
The Center for Intercultural Dialogue (CID) was established by the Council of Communication Associations (CCA) in March 2010. Intercultural dialogue occurs when members of different cultural groups, who hold conflicting opinions and assumptions, speak to one another in acknowledgment of those differences. As such, it forms "the heart of what we study when we study intercultural communication." The goal of the CID is double: to encourage research on intercultural dialogue, but to do so through bringing international scholars interested in the subject together in shared intercultural dialogues about their work.
Intergroup dialogue is a "face to face facilitated conversation between members of two or more social identity groups that strives to create new levels of understanding, relating and action." This process promotes conversation around controversial issues, specifically, in order to generate new "collective visions" that uphold the dignity of all people. Intergroup dialogue is based in the philosophies of the democratic and popular education movements. It is most commonly used on college campuses, but may assume different namesakes in other settings.
