15.8 Learning About Culture From the Source

What do these words mean?

1. Bharat
2. Zhōngguó
3. Misr
4. Suomi
5. Hrvatska
6. Elládha
7. Magyarorszag
8. Nippon
9. Eire
10. Sverige
11. Deutschland
12. España

Answer: they are all country names. If you’re not familiar with them, it’s probably not because you’re bad at geography or they are tiny countries, but because you’re more familiar with their “exonym”: the name used by outsiders for a country, city, or region. In much of the English speaking world, for example, those countries are known as:

1. India
2. China
3. Egypt
4. Finland
5. Croatia
6. Greece
7. Hungary
8. Japan
9. Ireland
10. Sweden
11. Germany
12. Spain

The last one might have been the easiest one for you to get since it is so close to what actual Spaniards call their country, except for one small problem: according to Spanish pronunciation rules, you can’t start a word with “sp.” Imagine how arrogant it would sound if someone from thousands of miles away told an Arkansas resident that they are saying the name of their state wrong: “No, it’s not ARkansaw, it’s ArKANsas!” The respectful thing to do, obviously, is to honor what the locals call themselves. Even if you grew up hearing a group of people referred to as “gypsies” or “Eskimos,” if they ask you to call them “Romani” or “Inuit” instead, especially after they explain why the old terms are offensive to them, you should go to the trouble of learning the new term.

Using endonyms (the name the natives use, such as the twelve names in the first list) is just one example of a broader habit of listening to what people say about their own culture. If you are truly interested in the female experience, don’t rely on men “mansplaining” it to you, but let women tell you about their lives. If you want to understand what it’s like to live with autism, ask an autistic person. If you want to understand the conservative mindset, don’t rely on analyses written by liberals, but instead engage a conservative in conversation. The same is true for all the aspects of culture discussed in this chapter.

Granted, there are reasons to talk to outsiders sometimes: a brain biologist, for example, can tell you things about the neurological aspects of autism that an autistic person may not understand. Sometimes understanding something fully requires stepping outside of that realm and looking at it with an outsider’s eyes. There’s an old expression that if you want to learn about water, don’t ask a fish, or, as Albert Einstein put it, “What does a fish know about the water in which he swims all his life?”^[1] If you want to understand what it’s like to live in the water, at least ask an amphibian that goes back and forth between water and dry land. That said, relying only on research by outsiders will never give you a complete understanding of a culture.

Unfortunately, much of the research on intercultural communication was historically done by westerners: Geert Hofstede was Dutch, Edward T. Hall was a white North American. In a chapter entitled “Whiteness in Intercultural Communication Research,” Thomas Nakayama, Judith Martin, and Robert Razzante note that, as recently as 2023, “non-white scholars continue to be underrepresented in publication rates, citation rates, and editorial positions in communication studies” (p. 521).^[2] One result of this is that whiteness is often portrayed as “normal,” and the standard by which people from other cultures evaluate themselves.^[3] Whiteness, in other words, is the “water” that the scholars themselves have trouble recognizing. In recent years, more attention is being paid to scholarship that is not so Eurocentric.

• 15.2: Intercultural Research by Non-Europeans

  Given the “horse’s mouth” theme, if you’re interested in scholarly research on intercultural communication that isn’t written by the white male crowd, I don’t think you should rely on summaries by me — an American white male. Instead, here is a reading list of sources to dig into, compiled by librarian Kim Clarke.

  NOTE: it has been said that the problem with information in the modern world is that bad information is readily available for free, but high-quality information is hidden behind paywalls. These sources are in the second category, and in order to read them, you will have to access them through a library system (either a college library or your local public library) or pay for access. You should also know that they are written in a more scholarly style than I’ve used in this book.

   

  • Anderson, R. (2012). MolefI Kete Asante: The Afrocentric idea and the cultural turn in intercultural communication studies. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 36(6), 760–769. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijintrel.2012.08.005
  • Biswas, M., King, E., Newton, A., & Nguyen, N. (2022). Addressing diversity across the communication curriculum: A case study. Teaching Journalism & Mass Communication, 12(1), 24-35.
  • Cardwell, M. E. (2023). Charting a path: Race, research, and practice in communication studies. Annals of the International Communication Association, 47(3), 358-380.
  • Enghel, F., & Becerra, M. (2018). Here and there: (Re)Situating Latin America in international communication theory. Communication Theory, 28(2), 111–130. https://doi.org/10.1093/ct/qty005
  • Ganter, S. A., & Ortega, F. (2019). The invisibility of Latin American scholarship in European media and communication studies: Challenges and opportunities of de-westernization and academic cosmopolitanism. International Journal of Communication, 13, 68–91.
  • Hua, Z. (2024). Intercultural communication. In The Routledge Handbook of Applied Linguistics (2nd ed., Vol. 2, pp. 81–93). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003082637-9
  • Li, H., & Wekesa, B. (2022). Beyond De-Westernization: Transcultural communication studies perspectives from the Global South — An introduction. Journal of Transcultural Communication, 2(2), 123–128. https://doi.org/10.1515/jtc-2023-0002
  • Li, M. (2020). Highlights, trends and patterns in Asian international communication research in the twenty-first century. Journal of International Communication, 26(2), 238–259. https://doi.org/10.1080/13216597.2020.1780461
  • Mano, W., & Milton, V. C. (2021). Afrokology of media and communication studies: Theorising from the margins. In Routledge Handbook of African Media and Communication Studies (1st ed., pp. 19–42). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351273206-2
  • Mudavanhu, S. L., Mpofu, S., & Batisai, K. (2024). Connecting the dots: Decolonising communication and media studies teaching and learning in sub-Saharan Africa. In Decolonising Media and Communication Studies Education in Sub-Saharan Africa (1st ed., pp. 3–19). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003388395-2
  • Mutua, E. M., Musa, B. A., & Okigbo, C. (2022). (Re)visiting African communication scholarship: critical perspectives on research and theory. The Review of Communication, 22(1), 76–92. https://doi.org/10.1080/15358593.2021.2025413
  • Rodny-Gumede, Y., & Chasi, C. (2021). Decolonising media and communication studies: An exploratory survey on global curricula transformation debates. In Routledge Handbook of African Media and Communication Studies (1st ed., pp. 107–125). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351273206-8
  • Shi-xu. 2009. “Asian Discourse Studies: Foundations and Directions.” Asian Journal of Communication 19(4): 384–397. doi:https://doi.org/10.1080/01292980903293262
  • Waisbord, S. (2022). What is next for de-westernizing communication studies? Journal of Multicultural Discourses, 17(1), 26–33. https://doi.org/10.1080/17447143.2022.2041645

Adding to the problem of perceiving the white way as the norm is the dominance of Western popular culture throughout the world. When I was walking through a night market in Bangkok, Thailand, I was overwhelmed by all the Disney merchandise and NFL jerseys for sale, not to mention the American music being piped over the sound system. Many non-English speakers say they learned the language (and along with it, the culture) by watching English-language TV shows and movies. How widespread is the influence of American movies worldwide? Consider the reaction of Somali-born actor Barkhad Abdi to acting alongside Tom Hanks in the 2013 film Captain Phillips: “I can’t believe I’m doing a scene with the Forrest Gump guy!”

How do you break out of the “U.S. = normal” mindset? Watching movies and TV shows from other parts of the world is always helpful, but of course the best way to broaden your horizons is to actually visit somewhere far from home. The first question this raises is how you can afford it, but I’ll end this chapter by asking another question: what is your philosophy of travel? Are you an insulator or an embracer?