Intercultural Communication as Applied Ethnology and Folklore
Author(s): Klaus Roth and Juliana Roth
Source: Journal of Folklore Research, Vol. 36, No. 2/3, Special Double Issue: Cultural
Brokerage: Forms of Intellectual Practice in Society (May - Dec., 1999), pp. 206-215
Published by: Indiana University Press
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Klaus and Juliana Roth
Intercultural Communication as Applied
Ethnology and Folklore
Intercultural communication is usually defined as any direct communicative
interaction between individuals or groups of individuals belonging to
different cultures. In other words, the term denotes interpersonal commu?
nication between "strangers" on the micro-level of face-to-face interaction.
In a wider sense, however, the term is also but less frequently used to refer
to direct or indirect interactions or contacts between ethnic groups, na?
tions or cultures, thus denoting culture contact and cultural exchange on
the meso- or macro-level. Whatever the definition and the level of analysis,
there is general agreement that culture and communication as "symbolic
exchanges of meanings" are very closely related (Hall 1959; Leach 1976).
The question we want to address is whether Intercultural Communication as
an academic discipline focusing on the application of theoretical knowl?
edge to social practice should be a matter of concern for the ethnological
disciplines.1 More often than ever before in history, individuals with differ?
ent cultural backgrounds interact with each other on a daily basis, not only
as a result of the emergence of multicultural and multinational states and
the end of the East-West divide, but mostly as a result of worldwide migra?
tions, economic and political globalization, and mass tourism. There can
be no denying that the study of the social consequences of this increased
culture contact by the ethnological disciplines is necessary; the question is
whether they should go beyond pure research and get involved in the
application of their research findings.
In Europe and the U.S.A., the field of Intercultural Communication is
presently taken care of by several disciplines. In the U.S.A., it is mostly
located in Speech Communication (Gudykunst and Kim 1984; Gudykunst
and Ting-Toomey 1988), whereas in Europe it is often part of Pragmatic
Linguistics and foreign language teaching. Both in the U.S.A. and in
Europe, Cross-Cultural Psychology and Social Psychology are actively in?
volved in Intercultural Communication (Brislin 1993; Hofstede 1980,1993;
Thomas 1991); this interest also extends to such practice-oriented disci?
plines as Education, Business Administration ("Intercultural Management,"
cf. Adler [1986] 1991), Law, and Medicine, which all face problems arising
from increased intercultural contact. From yet another angle, the field has
been approached by scholars of Regional Studies in an attempt to extend
JournalojFolkloreResearch,Vol.36, Nos. 2/3, 1999
Copyright? 1999bythe FolkloreInstitute,IndianaUniversity
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Cultural Brokerage: Forms of Intellectual Practice in Society 207
their curriculum of teaching language, history, and topography to incorpo?
rate the dimension of everyday culture.
The variety of these approaches and vested interests obscures the fact
that Cultural Anthropology actually constituted Intercultural Communica?
tion as an academic discipline and contributed heavily to its theoretical and
methodological foundations. It was as early as the 1950s that the cultural
anthropologist Edward T. Hall developed the field out of his own experi?
ence and from the anthropological theories of Franz Boas and Ruth
Benedict, which he combined with theories of descriptive linguistics (Ed?
ward Sapir, Benjamin L. Whorf), sociology (Georg Simmel), ethology, and
psychoanalysis (Sigmund Freud, Erich Fromm). All this was formulated in
his groundbreaking 1959 book The Silent Language, which is rightly consid?
ered the founding document of Intercultural Communication (see Rogers
1997)}
Other anthropologists such as Clyde and Florence Kluckhohn (C Kluckhohn
and Murray 1948; F. Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck 1961) also contrib?
uted to the theoretical foundations of the new discipline, and linguistic
anthropologists such as Dell Hymes and John Gumperz explored the
relationship between language and culture. Likewise, American and Euro?
pean folklorists and ethnologists made advances in the "Ethnography of
Speaking" (Bauman and Sherzer 1974; Abrahams 1970, 1974) and in non?
verbal communication (Niederer 1975, 1976; Gyr 1994); they presented
numerous studies of migratory folk tales and proverbs, of ethnic slurs
(Dundes 1975) and stereotypes (Bausinger 1988; Gerndt 1988), of folk
ideas (Dundes 1971) and mentalities (Daun 1996), studies of emigration,
expulsion, work migration and culture contact (Greverus et al. 1988), of
interethnic relations (Schenk 1988; Weber-Kellermann 1967; Volbrachtova
1988; Georges and Jones 1995) and international tourism (Bausinger
1991), nation-building and national identity (Lofgren 1989; Ehn, Frykman,
and Lofgren 1993), and other fields which are directly or indirectly rel?
evant for Intercultural Communication. In the 1970s, Roger Abrahams,
Richard Bauman, Judith Irvine, Susan Philips, and others were actively
involved in the East Texas Dialect Project at the Center of Applied Linguis?
tics of the University of Texas, Austin, which aimed at developing guide?
lines and textbooks for teaching and coaching in multiethnic contexts in
the U.S.A.
It has yet to be elucidated why the ethnological disciplines did not
continue to expand these advances in Intercultural Communication in a
systematic way rather than leave the field to other disciplines for almost two
decades. Several reasons prompted the withdrawal of cultural anthropol?
ogy. According to Everett M. Rogers, one of them is to be found in the
person of Edward Hall himself, who did not incorporate Intercultural
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208 Bad Homburg Symposium 1998
Communication in his own academic teaching, never institutionalized it or
established a school, and never actively promoted it as a new discipline; in
addition, his approach was criticized by cultural anthropologists as being
too biological and deterministic and as viewing man as a social animal. It
seems unlikely, though, that the attitudes and actions of one person alone
can explain this withdrawal. It is more likely that there are other reasons.
One of them could be the negative attitude of many cultural anthropolo?
gists and folklorists of the 1970s toward the application of ethnological
knowledge.3 Later, as a result of constructivism, symbolic interactionism,
and the "writing culture" debate, it was the critique of the very concepts of
"culture" and "ethnicity" that worked against an involvement in Intercul?
tural Communication. Focusing on culture and cultural differences was
considered to be an expression of "culturalism" (cf. Kaschuba 1995b). As
for the American folklorists, the reason could be their experience with the
application of ethnological knowledge to social practice: the Texas project
mentioned above concentrated on the verbal and non-verbal behaviors of
ethnic and racial groups in the U.S.A. and on their sensitive interrelations
in a very troubled period of growing ethnic self-awareness and tensions.4
Over the last twenty-five years, scholars in speech communication, prag?
matic linguistics, psychology, and education have produced a tremendous
amount of research and developed valuable theories and methods for
Intercultural Communication, not to mention the large number of text?
books and other publications. While these achievements are fully acknowl?
edged, the absence of the ethnological disciplines has made itself felt more
and more. The approaches to Intercultural Communication by the abovementioned
disciplines are determined by their disciplinary interests, theo?
ries, and methodologies. Speech Communication and Pragmatic Linguis?
tics focus almost exclusively on language, discourse, and discourse strate?
gies, assuming that (as a linguist put it at a conference) "everything is in the
language"; psychology stresses the role of perception, identity, the indi?
vidual experience of otherness, and culture shock, while education focuses
on the concrete problems in the multicultural classroom. The regional
studies approach is limited by its focus on one region or culture.
In contrast, placing the broad concept of "culture" in the center of their
approach, the ethnological disciplines have developed concepts, theories,
and methods that are the most comprehensive and complex ones for the
study of intercultural communication. They can deal with all aspects of
intercultural interactions, i.e., both with their micro-contexts and their macrocontexts,
with their synchronic and their diachronic dimensions, with their
verbal and their nonverbal dimensions, with the culture brought in and the
culture brought about, and with culture-general and culture-specific approaches
to them. Above all, the ethnographic methodh?iS proven to be a powerful tool
for research and for teaching. At an international conference of interThis
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Cultural Brokerage: Forms of Intellectual Practice in Society 209
culturalists (in Fullerton, California) in 1998, participants deplored the
absence of the ethnological sciences, particularly given the fact that ethno?
logical concepts, theories, and methods are regularly employed by nonethnologists,
but often in a rather mechanical way.
The ethnological disciplines have made important contributions to In?
tercultural Communication and should therefore expand their activities in
this field to complement the other disciplines. In 1989, this rationale
inspired a joint project of Volkskunde (Folklore/European Ethnology) and
Volkerkunde (Ethnology/Cultural Anthropology) at Munich University to
develop an entire curriculum for teaching Intercultural Communication
to university students; in 1993, the project was joined by pragmatic linguists
of German as a foreign language. As of 1996, Intercultural Communica?
tion is an officially recognized discipline (as a minor subject) with a
professorship and some 500 students from a great variety of disciplines.
Dissertations and conference proceedings are published in the series
"Munich Contributions to Intercultural Communication."
Ten years of experience have demonstrated that the ethnological disci?
plines can indeed contribute immensely to research and teaching of Inter?
cultural Communication. Their contribution consists of theories that have
become essential for Intercultural Communication (e.g., cognitive anthro?
pology) or approaches that can be applied to it; basic concepts such as
"culture," "enculturation," "acculturation," "ethnicity," "cultural identity,"
"culture change," "context," "emic/etic perspective," etc., which have mean?
while become part of the basic terminology of Intercultural Communica?
tion; a highly developed methodology, mainly the ethnographic method of
participant observation, narrative interviews, and oral history with its focus
on empathy, change of perspective (emic/etic), and reflection which is piv?
otal to the ethnological approach to Intercultural Communication; and
finally, the established y^/ds of study and. experience as well as the accumulated
knowledge of the ethnological disciplines about the cultural variation of
behaviors, customs and rituals, of folk narratives and material culture, of
values and norms, beliefs and attitudes, folk ideas and world views (cf.
Dundes 1971). Furthermore, folklorists and European ethnologists have
much experience with studying their "own" culture or nation, while cul?
tural anthropologists and ethnologists usually study "other," "exotic" cul?
tures. For Intercultural Communication, both perspectives on culture are
equally relevant, but in view of the increased culture contact and the
blurring of boundaries between "us" and "them," they have to be regarded
as complementary rather than exclusive of each other. As a consequence,
the ethnological disciplines should cooperate to study intercultural inter?
actions as well as the perceptions and stereotypes guiding them. They have
to be aware of the challenges of a world in which the "own" and the "other"
are no longer neatly separated, if they ever were.
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210 Bad Homburg Symposium 1998
The field of Intercultural Communication is confronted with many
epistemological and theoretical as well as practical and didactic problems
which can be indicated only briefly. Many of them can be described in
terms of dichotomies or oppositions. First is the question whether modern
societies will develop in the direction of cultural homogeneity ("world cul?
ture," "McDonaldization") or of cultural diversity, universalism or cultural
differentiation, globalization or regionalization or even cultural funda?
mentalism.
Second, Intercultural Communication has to define its position between
the extreme views of culture and ethnicity as primordial or merely instrumen?
tal, essential or random constructs, between regarding ethnic or national
cultures as "natural" or as skillful constructions of elites ("inventions of
tradition"). In other words, Intercultural Communication has to define its
place somewhere in the middle between the Scylla of essentialism (and
culturalism) and the Charybdis of postmodern voluntarism (cf. Eriksen 1993).
Third, in its theoretical approach to teaching, Intercultural Communica?
tion has to determine its position between the cognitive anthropology of"Ward
Goodenough, which departs from the assumption that cultures (like lan?
guages) have a "grammar," and symbolic interactionism (Clifford Geertz);
while the first has proven to be a useful basis for teaching, the application
of the latter appears to be more difficult because of its focus on the
interpretation of symbolic creations and the complex dynamics of elusive
personal interactions at the expense of environmental factors (cf. Schweitzer
1999:1 If). The approach also pays less attention to the "culture brought
in" by the interaction partners, but experience has shown that particularly
in stressful intercultural encounters people usually fall back on stereotypi?
cal behaviors and the reliable "basics" of their culture.
From this follows that, fourth, Intercultural Communication has to pay
equal attention to the culture brought in by the participants of an interaction
and to the culture brought about in the actual process of interaction, as John
Gumperz phrased it, i.e., between the relatively stable and collective "cul?
tural baggage" everyone has acquired in the process of enculturation and
the actual communicative interactions, the "intercultural performances"
and their dynamic micro-contexts and situational factors. In other words,
both the cultural background and individual disposition of the actors and
the actual communicative process have to receive attention. The ethnologi?
cal disciplines have a strong tradition of looking at the historical, political,
economic, and socio-cultural contexts of interactions and performances,
and at the relevant power relations. It is particularly the contextual and the
communications approach in American folklore and cultural anthropol?
ogy, on the one hand, and the interethnic relations and migration studies
approach in German Volkskunde, on the other hand, that benefit Intercul?
tural Communication.
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Cultural Brokerage: Forms of Intellectual Practice in Society 211
Fifth, due to the experience and the expertise of the ethnological
disciplines, and their complementarity to pragmatic linguistics, the focus
of the ethnological approach to Intercultural Communication is more on
the non-verbal parts of communication, i.e., on the actions, behaviors, and
artifacts as well as on the underlying perceptions and assumptions, values
and norms, rather than on the verbal parts of communication.
Sixth, Intercultural Communication has arisen out of the needs of
modern societies and, from its beginnings, has always had a strong orienta?
tion toward social practice. As a consequence, it focuses not only on
research, but also on the application of its findings, i.e., the application of
knowledge about culture and communication to teaching and practice.
Although there are many different fields of practice and application, it has
become habitual to differentiate between two major frames, the domestic
and the international. Even if it is not always possible to separate them
clearly, they have proven to be relevantly different contexts for intercul?
tural interactions. In the domestic arena of homogeneous nation-states,
intercultural communication is limited to small numbers of experts, whereas
in the historical multinational states (such as the Habsburg or the Ottoman
Empires), ethnic groups and individuals developed social habits and every?
day skills of interethnic coexistence and intercultural communication.
Today, such habits and skills are needed in modern multicultural countries,
where intercultural interactions occur on an everyday basis at the work?
place, in schools and hospitals, in courts of law and in other institutions.
They are needed much more, however, in international interactions, i.e., in
worldwide communication, business, politics, diplomacy, international or?
ganizations, development aid, technology transfer, tourism, sports, cultural
exchange, and other fields. For Intercultural Communication, it is of great
importance that cultural difference is much more readily assumed and
accepted in the international than in the domestic arena, even in
multicultural countries.
Another important difference in the frames of intercultural interactions
is that between goal-oriented organizations or institutions and private or
public life in multicultural societies, where cultural difference is often
considered a necessary evil. Empirical experience shows that making inter?
cultural relations work and solving cross-cultural problems is much easier
in organizational contexts (Moosmuller 1998:89).
The application of research findings to intercultural learning is based on
the premise that knowledge about other cultures and about communicat?
ing across cultural boundaries can be taught and learned. That this is
indeed possible is an observation that Edward Hall made already in the
1950s: just as we learn our own culture in the process of enculturation, we
are also able to learn other cultures in adult life, although in a different
manner. However, because cultures are extremely complex and dynamic
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212 Bad Homburg Symposium 1998
systems, understanding and mastering them demand a lot of motivation
and many years of intense cognitive and experiential learning from the
adult learner. Practical experience has shown, though, and globalization
and the multicultural reality of (post) modern societies demand, that the
acquisition of "perfect" knowledge of entire cultures is neither possible nor
necessary. Consequently, intercultural learning does not aim at knowing
entire cultures. Instead, it is a process of acquiring theme-oriented and
goal-oriented knowledge of relevant areas of given cultures and of ways of
recognizing, understanding, and handling cultural differences and of us?
ing this knowledge for acting adequately in intercultural situations. In
other words, it tries to develop a degree of intercultural competence, i.e., a
variety of social and communicative competence.
There is agreement in the ethnological sciences that "the essential core
of culture consists of traditional (i.e., historically derived and selected)
ideas and especially their attached values" (Kroeber and Kluckhohn
1952:181). Accordingly, the ethnological approach to Intercultural Com?
munication emphasizes the non-verbal and invisible side of culture, i.e.,
behaviors, ideas, values, and assumptions. On the basis of this value-centered,
approach, some scholars have discovered a (limited) number of value orien?
tations or culture dimensions in which cultures display variations between
each other and, of course, within themselves (Kluckhohn 1961; Hall 1959,
[1966] 1969; Hofstede 1980).
Culture as a system of daily orientation, perception, and interpretation
of reality involves not only the mind but the person as a whole. Accordingly,
intercultural learning first addresses the cognitive side of the learner, but it
must also address the affective-emotional experience of the self and of other?
ness, and it aims, finally, at the behavior ofthe learner. All these are aspects
that concern the relationship of the individual to all other cultures, to
cultural otherness in general. Therefore the ethnological approach to
Intercultural Communication and to intercultural learning is of necessity
culture general, not culture specific.
The Munich curriculum of intercultural learning for university students
is based on these premises. It has five major goals and proceeds in five steps
(cf.J. Roth 1996):
1. The backbone of teaching is a solid basis of theoretical knowledge about
culture and communication; this includes knowledge about the relation?
ship between culture and behavior and between culture and language,
about value orientations (culture dimensions) and their variation, and
about perception, attribution, and stereotyping.
2. Methodology is of greatest importance. The students are taught the
ethnographic methods of participant observation and interviewing, of
empathy and change of perspective. With the help of these methods they
learn to make pertinent observations and ask relevant questions in order to
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Cultural Brokerage: Forms of Intellectual Practice in Society 213
understand intercultural situations. In principle, they are taught "to learn
how to learn," i.e., how to observe, to describe, and to interpret informa?
tion (J. Roth 1996:264), instead of learning ready-made rules, "cultural
standards," or tool kits of cultural "do's and don'ts."
3. Generating cultural self awareness, i.e., making the students sensitive to
their own culture and the extent to which they are influenced by it is a
difficult but indispensable step. It involves the students' identity and a
reflection on themselves and their behavior. Our experience shows, how?
ever, that cognitive intercultural learning produces much better results if
the students are addressed and involved as cultural personalities and can
relate their theoretical knowledge to their everyday experience (J. Roth
1996:260).
4. Generating cultural awareness, i.e., an awareness of cultural difference, of
"otherness" and "alienness," is a prerequisite for intercultural learning.
Making learners acquainted with, and used to, the "signs of culture,"
sensitizing them to the behavioral consequences of variations in value
orientations and enabling them to "read" them, and making them tolerate
ambiguity and develop flexibility?these are goals that are not easy to
achieve. The students have to learn to detect those variations in values that
are relevant for actual misunderstandings, to organize and evaluate their
impressions, and to search for explanations and?in conflict situations?
for solutions or alternatives.
5. The application oj theoretical knowledge either to intercultural research or to
social practice is the final goal of the curriculum. The acquisition of ways
and means of analyzing intercultural situations and of adequately handling
differences or mediating conflicts is achieved in the classroom through the
application of the general skills to specific cultural interfaces and to real
contexts, for example to bicultural marriages (Waldis 1998), to institutions
such as schools or courts of law, or to organizations such as companies with
a multinational work-force (Kartari 1997; Moosmuller 1997).
Social anthropology (or ethnology) developed as a colonial discipline
that studied colonized "primitive" peoples, while folklore (and ethnogra?
phy) grew as a "discipline of one's own people" in the service of the
emerging nation-states. In view of this history of subordination of ethno?
graphic knowledge to the goals of colonial rulers and nationalist or socialist
states, it is understandable that ethnologists are reluctant to make yet
another attempt to apply their knowledge. However, past misuses should
not preclude necessary applications, but should lead to more care and
circumspection. The social problems of (post)modern societies concern
the ethnological disciplines in a very direct way. On the one hand, there is
a growth of ethnic self-awareness and a "culturalization" of social and
political conflicts, of new nationalism and regionalism (cf. Lindner 1994;
Kaschuba 1995b). On the other hand, globalization has resulted in a
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214 Bad Homburg Symposium 1998
dramatic increase in culture contacts. To an unprecedented degree, mil?
lions of people are expected to manage cultural diversity in everyday life,
mostly without being prepared for it. In other words, cultural difference
has become a major social problem.
But neither are the relevant disciplines prepared to contribute to the
necessary "reconciliation of differences" (Adorno 1951:130). On the con?
trary, as Rolf Lindner (1997) recently deplored, ethnologists, folklorists,
and cultural anthropologists appear to have abandoned the concept and
field of "culture" at a time when social, political, and economic reality is in
growing need of the concept?and of a discipline taking care of it; Werner
Schiffauer (1996) even noted an "angst of the difference," a disturbing
tendency among cultural anthropologists (resulting from constructivist
ideas and political considerations) to deemphasize alterity and Otherness.
The use and application of ethnological knowledge to social practice
thus appear to be necessary, but in view of past experience, the ethical
implications of this kind of research and cultural management have to be
addressed very openly (cf. Jones 1985; Amborn 1993). The ethical stan?
dards for the application of ethnological knowledge must be defined in
accordance with the goals and tasks of the discipline in modern society.
Ethnological knowledge should be used to facilitate interethnic coexist?
ence, to contribute to better understanding between individuals and peoples
belonging to different cultures, and to develop strategies for managing
cultural diversity. Accordingly, the discussion of the ethics of intercultural
learning is an important aspect in the Munich curriculum. Building upon the
analysis of systems of values and norms in given cultures and the problem of
particularistic vs. universal ethics and using existing professional Codes of
Ethics (cf. Fluehr-Labban 1991), the curriculum addresses the questions of
cultural relativism vs. universalism and of ethics in cross-cultural research, in
intercultural learning in the classroom and in training, and in the practical
application of cultural knowledge. In view of the fact that intercultural interac?
tions almost always occur in hierarchical or power relations, the dangers of
the misuse of cultural knowledge receive special attention.
Let us conclude by saying that ethnology and folklore as disciplines that
focus on culture should contribute their expert knowledge to easing the
social consequences of globalization and increased culture contact. More
than other disciplines, they can take into account both the complex sociocultural
contexts and the historical conditions of intercultural interactions.
Ten years of experience with teaching Intercultural Communication to
students at Munich University have produced ample evidence of the posi?
tive uses to which this knowledge can be put. Incorporating Intercultural
Communication in the discipline s' domains of research, teaching, and
application will certainly benefit both society and our disciplines.
Munich University
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Cultural Brokerage: Forms of Intellectual Practice in Society 215
NOTES
1. In this paper the term "ethnological disciplines" is used to refer to the
disciplines of Folklore, Ethnography, Ethnology, Cultural Anthropology, and So?
cial Anthropology; we are well aware of the differences between them, but want to
stress their commonalities vis-a-vis the other disciplines engaged in Intercultural
Communication.
2. Cf. Edward T. Hall's 1968 article on "Proxemics" and its critical discussion by
seventeen anthropologists.
3. Michael Owen Jones (1985:235) critically comments on Richard Dorson's
statement that "it is no business of the folklorist to engage in social reform," which
Dorson made in the special issue of FolkloreForum entitled Papers on Applied Folklore
(1971). Jones strongly argues in favor of interventionism and application in the
example of organizational culture.
4. Ed. Note: Klaus and Juliana Roth respond here in writing to the vigorous
discussion following the oral presentation of this paper. Roger Abrahams, while
clarifying that "intercultural communication" as a field never flourished, did point
to the work of the East Texas Project of the 1970s, designed by Americo Paredes,
Richard Bauman, and himself. Fieldwork-based programs were designed to en?
hance the education of minorities. Abrahams also pointed out that the folklore
center at the University of Texas always contained the word "intercultural" in its
title and considered its mission one of working between cultures.
Regina Bendix with Elliott Oring
The Compromises of Applying Theories in the Making:
Response to Klaus Roth's Orally Delivered Paper
Elliott Oring, who unfortunately was not able to join the conference, pro?
vided a stimulating response abstract that I in turn used as the basis for a more
impromptu reaction to Klaus Roth's paper.11 will elaborate on three points.
Roth asks why Edward Hall's example was not followed more vigorously
at the time. I would argue that the failure to take up Hall's lead was due not
only to the provocation and singularity of his work, but also to the fact that
the superficial quality of Hall's writing created discomfort. Many of Hall's
examples have actually entered public discourse. For instance, the proxemic
issue in encounters between Latin and Nordic individuals makes for
graphic illustration beyond the classroom, and many children know about
the difference in eating noises and what they mean in China and the U.S.A.
I would describe Hall's Silent Language (1959) as an early example of essentializing
culture in the interest of brokering ethnological knowledge. As Oring
pointed out for us, the text was considered appropriate for an introduc?
tory course in cultural anthropology, but it did not constitute a systematic
program to sensitize populations toward intercultural communication.
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