Theorizing Intercultural Communication Through Dimensional Accrual and Dissociation

This paper elaborates the theory of dimensional accrual and dissociation (DAD) as an approach to intercultural communication research, offering novelty towards the framing of difference. DAD provides an alternative to traditional structural-functional theories, which frequently treat culture as an external communicative feature rather than an ontology. Accordingly, traditional approaches imply that culture and difference are obstacles to be overcome instead of normal, valuable elements of communication itself. In place of functionalism, DAD draws on multidisciplinarity to posit that intercultural communication is framed by different awarenesses of the world – architectures of consciousness – which enable an array of rich, complex communicative activities.