Intercultural Communication Theory in China: Thirty … Xiaodong IC_Theory_in_China... · Intercultural Communication Theory in China: ... communication, cultural value, ... expectancy

Intercultural Communication

Theory in China: Thirty Years

Review

Xiaodong Dai

Shanghai Normal University,

People’s Republic of China

Introduction

• Intercultural communication appeared in the 1960s.

• It was introduced to China in the early 1980s.

• Over the past 30 years, intercultural communication has gradually developed into a self-contained discipline. During its developing process, Chinese scholars made effort to introduce foreign theories and constructed their own.

• In the early stage, Chinese students of IC mainly dealt with linguistic difference and what role culture played in comprehending the meaning of language, and conducted comparative studies.

• From 1990 on, Chinese scholars began to investigate IC more comprehensively, addressing problems such as non-verbal form of communication, cultural value, pragmatic failure, the influence of globalization, national image, cultural identity and so forth.

• When reviewing IC theory in China, I will take research problems as the main focus and trace out its development.

The Germinating Period: 1980-1990

• Core research problem: Language-culture relations– Daokuan He (1983) first introduced intercultural communication

to Chinese scholars. But his article did not draw so much attention. Till 1990, only a few scholars joined him and published limited number of articles on the relationship between language and culture.

– Articles published in 1980s dealt with the problem of how cultural background affected the meaning of language, discussed issues such as the role of cultural knowledge in foreign language learning and teaching, pragmatic failure, non-verbal form of communication, etc.

• Major Articles and Books:– Introducing a new discipline ― Intercultural communication (He,

1983)

– Intercultural communication and foreign language teaching (Hu, 1985) Non-verbal form of communication (He, 1988)

– Pragmatic problem in Intercultural communication, (Wang, 1990)

– Intercultural Communication ― What It Means to Chinese Learner of English (Hu edited, 1988)

– Language and Culture (Jiazu Gu & Sheng Lu co-edited, 1990)

Leaders in the 1980s

• HU Wenzhong, founder of Chinese IC

discipline; first president of CAFIC

– Who not only introduced IC to Chinese

scholars, but also actively engaged in IC

research.

• HE Daokuan, co-founder of Chinese IC

discipline; former vice president of CAFIC

– Who initiated research agenda and promoted

IC research.

Achievements in the 1980s

• (A) Defining the concept of IC and

mapping out a research agenda

• (B) Identifying the relationship between

language and culture, and revealing the

significance of intercultural awareness

• Their vision was quite narrow, and the

achievement rather limited.

• Several factors led to the result.

Factors that Produce the Result

• (A) Historical factor:– 1980s witnessed a historical change in China. It was a period when

Chinese people reevaluated their way of life and social development. They no longer rejected capitalist ideas, but were dominated by rigid Maxist thoughts.

– From 1982 on, China initiated its modernization project and began to open to the west. But most people believed that the best way to accomplish modernization was to master western technology.

– Chinese people rarely traveled abroad and foreigners were restricted to come into China, intercultural communication had not become a salient topic of the time.

• (B) Researchers’ factor: – Intercultural communication was first introduced to China by foreign

language teachers. Their major concern was foreign language teaching.

– They leant little about research methodology, and were not well prepared to conduct constructive theoretical investigations.

Cultural Factor

• (C) Cultural factor:

– During the Great Cultural Revolution (1966-1976),

Chinese cultural tradition had been seriously ruined.

– In the 1980s, Chinese cultural tradition began to

recover. Scholars rediscovered confucianism, Taoism

and Buddhism, but the cultural boom in that period

spilled little into IC research.

– IC students did not acquired so much Chinese

cultural ideas to produce new theories or have

meaningful dialogues with the western counterparts.

The Establishing Period: 1991-

2000• From 1991on to 2000, more scholars engaged in intercultural

communication research, and they continued to explore the core problem of language-culture relations, and ventured into new fields, working together to establish IC as an independent discipline. Theoretical studies also gained a foothold in that period.

• New issues included the nature of culture, the concept of communication, the nature of intercultural communication competence, acculturation, cultural value and cultural pattern, speech act, stereotype, identity and so forth. Research problems extended into new domains, but the focus was still on language-culture relations. Several well accomplished scholars appeared in the second decade, who contributed to the development of IC in China.

• More IC articles were published, and quite a few important books in Chinese IC development were published in that period.

Major Articles I

• Chen and Dong (1991) – discussed the concept of intercultural communication and its major

dimensions.

• Wenzhong Hu (1992, 1994, 1998) – defined the concept of IC and described the key aspects of IC research.

• Yuxin Jia (1992), Shijie Guan (1996) and Dajin Lin (1999) – introduced the state of the art of IC studies in the United States and

discussed how Chinese scholars could be informed and enlightened

• Yihong Gao (1996), Dajin Lin (1996), Lisheng Xu (1997, 2000) – put forward their understanding on intercultural communication

competence.

• Yanchun Dai (1999) and Ju Xu (2000) – discussed acculturation.

• Most of the articles introduced western accomplishments, and failed to articulate their own interpretations.

Major Articles II

• Ping Yang (1996) and Chao Hu (1998, 2001) – investigated how cultural value affected intercultural

communication.

• Yueguo Gu (1992), Hui Zhang (1994) and Yuelian Liu (2000) – elaborated on speech act in intercultural contexts.

• Yihong Gao (1995) and Xiaoyuan Zuo (2000) – analyzed both the positive and negative aspects of

stereotype.

• Degeng Tang (2000) ; Gang Li (1999) – Tang discussed the attribution theory; Li explored

communicative sensitivity area in English.

Major Books I

• Wenzhong Hu’s Culture and Communication (1994)

• Shijie Guan’s Communications Across Cultures: Improving Intercultural Communication Competence (1995)

• Dajin Lin’s Intercultural Communication: A Guideline to Communication with the English People and Americans (1996)

• Yuxin Jia’s Intercultural Communication (1997)

• Wenzhong Hu’s Introduction to Intercultural Communication (1999)

Major Books II

• These books made comprehensive and systematic introduction to the key concepts, important themes and theories of intercultural communication.

• They not only addressed the problems mentioned above, but also touched some new problems such as intercultural conflict, uncertainty reduction, identity management and cultural pluralism.

Leaders in the 1990s

• Wenzhong Hu, who focused on language and culture relations, emphasizing empirical studies.

• Daokuan He, who was interested in diverse problems such as pragmatic failure, nonverbal form of communication and communication theory.

• Yuxin Jia, who made more comprehensive exploration of IC, and became the successor of Hu, the second president of CAFIC, attaching more importance to theoretical research.

• Yihong Gao, who focused on sociolinguistic issue, language teaching and learning

• Shijie Guan, who focused on international communication.

Major Achievements in the 1990s

• The establishment of intercultural communication as an independent discipline.

• Introducing western intercultural communication achievements and laid foundation for the studies in China.

• initiating indigenous theory building. – Jia, Gao and Yueguo Gu all had attempted to make use of Chinese

cultural ideas to localize western intercultural communication theories.

– Jia revealed that for Chinese characters, both sound and image were relevant to meaning; while for western languages, sound is more essential.

– Gao employed Chinese concepts: Dao (Way, the general principle) and Qi (instrument, function) to analyze the connotation of IC competence. She criticized American scholars’ emphasis on effectiveness.

– Gu reviewed our Chinese interpretation of Li (Confucian ritual, Chinese politeness), and argued that one of the striking characteristic of Chinese politeness was self debasement, and Chinese society encouraged people to keep a low profile in social communication. He also critcised Leech’s interpretation on positive and negative face.

Factors that Produces the Result

• (A) Social development – Since China began to practice opening up policy, it had determined to join the

world community. In 1986, China applied for GATT; in 1995, applied for WTO. At the same time Chinese people became richer and more open. (Per capita GDP rose from 1980’s $400 to 2000’s $800) Thousands of joint ventures appeared, more people traveled abraod, and more foreigners came in to China.

• (B) The development of IC discipline – With the progress made in communication between China and the world,

intercultural communication research had achieved historical development.

– In 1995, CAFIC was founded ; 5 universities began to offer intercultural communication courses to students They included Harbin Institute of Technology, Beijing Foreign Studies University, Helongjiang University and Fujian Normal University. (Lin, 1999)

– Besides, intercultural communication research spread into journalism and communication studies in the same period (Guan, 2006) . Students of journalism and communication studied issues such as mass media, advertisement, national image, cultural imperialism, globalization and so forth. Their engagements significantly strengthened IC discipline.

(C) Better trained IC researchers

• Chinese IC scholars had been aware of the

importance of research methodology. Yihong

Gao (1996), Yongcheng Gao (1998) and Dajin

Lin (1999) wrote articles discussing research

methodology. Some well trained overseas

Chinese joined the domestic research

community. On the whole, IC students had

mastered better research knowledge, but they

were still weak at both quantitative and

qualitative research (Peng, 2005).

The Expanding Period: 2001-

2010• From 2001 on, intercultural communication research

developed rapidly. So did theoretical research. IC researchers actively explored new domains and extended research fields.

• The Core Problems included: language-culture relations, identity, way of translation and globalization– issues they addressed: empathy, psychological shift, nation’s

image, the impact of globalization, domestication and foreignization in translation, cultural identity and so forth.

• More than 3000 articles published during 2001-2010 (1980-1990:4; 1990-2000: 309; 2001-2010:3168) (retrieved from CNKI on March 27)

Major Articles I

• Yongchen Gao (2003, 2005) investigated the principle of empathy and the way to cultivate it.

• Fengjuan Zhang (2002) and Haiqing Jiang (2005) addressed domestication and foreignization phenomena in translation.

• Wen Luo (2006) discussed intersubjectivity and inter-texuality

• Haijian Dan and Yibing Shi (2008) probed into cultural identity.

• Kun Zhang (2005), Yinan Liu and Hui He (2007) and Youzhong Sun (2009) shed light on the construction of national image in intercultural communication.

• Yongchen Gao (2008) and Yuxin Jia (2009) explored the influence of globalization

• Bo Shan and Jinli Wang (2005) discussed the issue of cultural ethics.

Major Articles

• Some scholars began to review IC research

development in the last twenty years, and

integrated research achievements.

– Jiongying Li (2002), Xiangyang Zhang (2003),

Shiyong Peng (2005) and Jiazu Gu (2008) and Yang

Liu (2009) summarized the achievements of IC

research and envisoned its future.

– Chao Hu (2005) and Xiaodong Dai (2009) proposed

new models. (Hu’s E-time model of intercultural

competence; my two-directional extension model of

intercultural identity).

Major Books

• Hongling Zhang (2007)– An Intercultural Approach to Foreign Language

Teaching

• Lisheng Xu (2006)– Studying language and Its Use: An intercultural

Approach

• Dajin Lin (2005) and Chaoqun Xie, Chao Hu (2005), Ming Yan (2009) and my book (2010 forthcoming)– They made more comprehensive review of

Intercultural communication theories and articulated their own interpretations. Here I choose four books to illustrate my point.

Theories reviewed in Lin and Xie’s

Book

• Intercultural Communication: Theory and

Practice (2005)

– anxiety/uncertainty management theory;

speech code theory; face negotiation theory;

convergence theory; adaptation theory;

attribution theory; network theory; expectancy

violation theory; speech act theory.

Theories Reviewed in Hu’s Book

• Intercultural Communication: E-Time Paradigm and Competence Development (2005)– Hu identified Gudykunst’s AUM theory, Y. Y. Kim’s intercultural

adaptation theory and Spitzberg’s competence tripatite (knowledge, motivation and skill) as meta-theory.

– (A) Triandis’ individualism and collectivism; Hall’s high and low-context communication theory; Grice’s conversation maxims; Hofstede’s cultural value orientation; Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck ‘s value orientation; Parsons’ culture theory of pattern variables.

– (B) anxiety/uncertainty management theory; face negotiation theory; conversational restraints theory; expectancy violation theory; intercultural adaptation theory; cultural convergence theory; effective group making theory; communication accommodation theory; co-culture theory; identity management theory; identity negotiation theory; cultural identity theory; networks and outgroup communication competence; intra-cultural versus intercultural networks; networks and acculturation; communication acculturation theory; assimilation, deviation and alienation state theory.

Theories Reviewed in Yan’s Book

• A Study of Intercultural Communication Theories (2009)

– (A) Cultural theories: iceberg model of culture; individualism and collectivism; Hofstede’s cultural value orientation; Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck’s value orientation; Hall’s behavioural components of culture; Parsons’ cultural theory of pattern variables; Demorgan and Molz’s theory of culture

– (B) Intercultural theory: coordinated management of meaning; speech code theory; face-negotiation theory; conversational constraints theory; expectancy violation theory; anxiety/uncertainty management theory; communication accommodation theory; cross-cultural adaptation theory; cultural identity theory; identity negotiation theory; identity management theory; co-cultural theory; intercultural communication competence theory

Theories Reviewed in my book I

• Intercultural Communication Theories (2010 forthcoming) – I classify IC theories according to the basic problems addressed.

– (A) Meta-theories, whose propositions or principles have overarching influence on most of the IC theories: cultural universalism and cultural relativism; linguistic universalism and linguistic relativism; assimilationism and multiculturalism.

– (B) Theories on intercultural difference and conflict: Hall’s high/low context culture theory; Hofstede’s cultural value orientation theory; Gudykunst’s anxiety/uncertainty management theory; Burgoon’s expectancy violation theory; Ting-Toomey and Oetzel’s intercultural conflict management theory.

– (C) Theories on intercultural adaptation and accommodation: Berry’s acculturation theory; Kim’s intercultural adaptation theory; Gallois’ communication accommodation theory.

– (D) Theories on identity: Hecht’s communication theory of identity; Dai’s intercultural identity theory; Ting-Toomey’s face negotiation theory and identity negotiation theory; Imahori’s identity management theory.

Theories Reviewed in my book II

• (E) Theories on meaning and competence: CMM ― Cronen and Pearce’s coordinated management of meaning; Nishida’s cultural schema theory; G. M. Chen and Starosta’s intercultural communication competence theory.

• (F) Theories on power and legitimacy: Philipson’s linguistic imperialism; Tomlinson’s cultural imperialism; Habermas’ communicative rationality.

• (G) Theories on globalization: Gidden’s theory of globalization; Robertson’s theory of global field; Chen’s theory of global communication competence.

Evaluations

• From the above review, we can easily find that

the IC theoretical researches have achieved

remarkable development, extending the foreign

language teacning oriented vision to a broader

perspective. But Chinese IC researchers have

produced very few indigenous theories. In this

period American influence is still strong. At the

same time, we could also find Russian, British

and German influences. Several factors lead to

this development.

Factors Leading to the Result I

• (A) Social development: – From 2001 on, with the deepening of globalization, Chinese

economy has been further integrated into world system. It continues to develop quickly. In 2008, per capita GDP reached $ 3000, and this year it will increase to $4000. Now Chinese people not only engage more in intercultural communication but also become more open to the world. Chinese society has turned more diversified, and problems in intercultural communication have become increasingly salient.

• Development of IC discipline: – IC discipline becomes better established, and is expanding

rapidly. Till 2008, CAIFS has held 8 national conferences. Now there are over 20 IC research centers and more than 5 universities offer doctorate degree courses. (eg. BFS, SISU, Zhejiang University) Many of the overseas Chinese IC researchers come back to join the domestic projects.

Factors Leading to the Result II

• (C) Cultural deficit: – One of the key factors that lead to the poverty of

indigenous theories is the cultural deficit. Since Chinese cultural tradition began to recover in the 1980s, it has gained huge development, but the developing process is slowed down and distorted by political ideology. At the same time, westernization inexorably suppresses the growth of Chinese tradition. A reciprocal interaction between tradition preservation and cultural transformation is yet to be established. Some Chinese scholars have formulated native theories, but they get very limited response from IC circles. Most of the Chinese IC researchers directly borrow ideas from the west.

Conclusion• IC theoretical research starts from language-culture relationship in

1980s. This situation may confine IC research to a narrow vision, but it lays a solid foundation for future development.

• In the second decade, intercultural communication attracts more attention, and the importance of theory building has been recognized. Scholars engage in IC research mainly come from two different fields: one is foreign language teaching, the other is journalism and communication.

• The former is interested in the core problem of linguistic and cultural difference, and the relevant issues such as pragmatic transfer, intercultural competence, cultural value orientation, identity and translation. The latter is interested in the core problem of how ideas are transmitted by media, and the relevant issues such as the manipulation of mass media, the role of power, communication ethics, national image and the impact of globalization.

• IC theoretical research expands rapidly in the third decade, but few interdisciplinary dialogues have been administered. We can find strong American influence. With the recovering of Chinese cultural tradition and its spread to the world, as well as the development of democracy, Chinese scholars will make more contribution to IC research, and the poverty of indigenous theories will be improved.

Thank You!Xiaodong Dai