Intercultural Communication in the Global Village: How to Understand “The Other”

Intercultural communication scholarship is poised to be a powerful force in the communication field as well as social sciences in general. In this paper, we focus on four main areas which we hope will spur creative academic inquiry in the future. More productive efforts will move beyond the ethnocentrism that permeates current communication research and will entail a thorough redefinition of personhood. Future work will move beyond discussions of how cultures assimilate to include how other cultures interact in a host culture to sustain multiple cultural identities. Additionally, research will move beyond examining linguistic and cultural differences, to also recognize the social-action nature of communication. Finally, future endeavors will move beyond the study of culture-typed identities and question the very notion of cultural boundaries. We predict that the inevitable challenges posed by multiculturalism will allow intercultural communication studies to play a more central role as an interdisciplinary “clearing-house” within the social sciences.