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Directions for inter‐cultural communication researchSamuel L. Becker aa Professor and Chairman, Department of Speech and Dramatic Art , University of IowaPublished online: 22 May 2009.

To cite this article: Samuel L. Becker (1969) Directions for inter‐cultural communication research, Central States Speech Journal, 20:1, 3-13, DOI: 10.1080/10510976909362945

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DIRECTIONS FOR INTER-CULTURALCOMMUNICATION RESEARCH

SAMUEL L. BECKER

Despite a large number of confer-ences, studies, and publicationsabout inter-cultural communica-tion, there are many importantproblems which have thus far, ap-parently, escaped attention. Thepurpose of this paper is to stimu-late discussion which may help touncover some of these problemsand, perhaps, suggest strategies forstudying them.

The Speech Association of Amer-ica, with the aid of the U. S. Officeof Education, recently held an in-terdisciplinary colloquium on com-munication research. Four clearimplications for our thinkingabout inter-cultural communicationresearch emerged from that col-loquium.

i. We must stop thinking of com-munication problems in terms ofa particular mode of address, suchas platform speaking, small groupdiscussion, drama, or mass mediacommunication. This is as fruitlessas beginning one's research by de-ciding to do an attitude changestudy or a diffusion study or a studyinvolving the semantic differentialtechnique. In inter-cultural com-munication research, as in anyother kind, we need to begin withthe analysis of problems and thensee whether and how communica-tion might be made more effectiveto alleviate the problem.

Samuel L. Becker (Ph.D., University ofIowa, 1953) is Professor and Chairman,Department of Speech and Dramatic Art,University of Iowa.

2. The second implication of theSAA colloquium is that much moreof our research must be relevant toour society. Those of us in commu-nication talk much about the im-portance of communication tosociety, and then take pride in thefact that our research is "basic"rather than "applied" which, un-fortunately, we too often define asmeaning that the research is use-less rather than useful. Communi-cation scholars certainly have nospecial wisdom in determininggoals for society, but we do have aresponsibility to acquire a sophisti-cated knowledge of existing goalsand needs and then to design re-search consistent with those needs.This is not to say that we mustforego theoretical research; farfrom it. The theoretical research,though, must have relevance to thesociety and, when developed in thelaboratory, must be tested in thefield. Dr. Rene J. Dubos, professorof environmental medicine atRockefeller University, amongothers, has talked about this neces-sary feedback between practical andtheoretical problems. He has evensuggested that this feedback shouldbe accelerated by the creation ofInstitutions in which relevant the-oretical Ideas are taken to the fieldfor the "acid test" and for the un-covering of new theoretical prob-lems.1

3. The third implication of theSAA project, one that was madeclear at the inter-disciplinary col-loquium by philosopher Richard

1 Rene J. Dubos, "Scientists AloneCan't Do the Job," Saturday Review, De-cember 2, 1967, pp. 68-71.

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Rudner, is that the important andpractical theoretical task facing us—and it is far more difficult thanit may appear—is the identificationand clarification of the key conceptsin our field.

4. The fourth major implicationis that we must depart from thetraditional ways of treating com-munication problems—we muststop trying to study every problemwith the same cookie-cutter meth-ods, we must stop assuming thatthe ways we have always taughtpeople to communicate are thebest ways now, and that the wayswe have taught people to commu-nicate in this country are the bestways for all countries. I will returnto this last point in a moment.

Because of the variety of pur-poses for which cross-cultural com-munication is important and thevariety of cultures within whichthose purposes might be pursued,it is difficult to move from thesegeneral implications to more spe-cific statements about research ininter-cultural communication, butI will try to be as specific as Ican. In doing so, though, I mayoverlook many areas that shouldbe discussed.

There are a number of ways toclassify needed research. I will sug-gest only three. First of all, thereis a key distinction which must bemade between research on the com-munication processes within vari-ous cultures (the sort of work manylinguists and cultural anthropol-ogists and diffusion scholars aredoing) and research on communica-tion processes across various cul-tures. For many types of cross-cul-tural communication problems,something of within-culture com-munication processes must beknown in order to develop hypoth-eses and methods for attacking thecross-cultural problem. I am notsure this is a necessary pre-condi-tion for all cross-cultural commu-

nication research though. I do be-lieve some thought needs to begiven to this problem and strategieslaid out for coordinating intra- andinter-cultural communication re-search and for deciding which mostneeds doing when.

Another important distinctionmust be made between research onintended and on unintended com-munication effects, as, for instance*research about the effect of Voiceof America broadcasts on the imageof America and research about theeffect of the Beverly Hillbillies tele-vision series on the image of Ameri-ca when it is shown by televisionstations abroad. (Obviously, theseeffects are not always separable. Forexample, the same individuals maybe exposed to both the Voice ofAmerica and the Beverly Hill-billies.)

My third distinction is of a some-what different order than thesefirst two, but important nonethe-less. We in the United States tendto look at inter-cultural communi-cation as a one-way circuit; whenwe hear this term, we think aboutthe effect of stimuli from thiscountry on the people of othercountries. We seldom think of theequally important question of theeffect of stimuli from other coun-tries on us. I believe that one couldmake a good case for the proposi-tion that one of the world's criticalproblems today is the image thatpeople in the United States haveof what is going on in a little coun-try in southeast Asia. Closely re-lated to this distinction betweenthe effects of what is coming in andwhat is going out, is the interactionbetween these effects. Communica-tion scholars have just about over-come their conception of inter-per-sonal communication as a simple,one-way stream. We have evenovercome this conception in largepart when thinking about masscommunication within our own

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country. We forget, however, thatinter-cultural communication alsoinvolves feedback or interaction.For example, it seems to me thatone important area for research isthe ways in which our perceptionsof another nation affect the sortsof information we send to them.This is clearly not a static process.As they respond, our perceptionschange, which affects additional in-formation that we send, etc.

Forgetting these various distinc-tions for a moment, I want to sug-gest a few of the inter-cultural com-munication research areas in whichscholars from our field could makeimportant contributions.

1. Just as we have recognized theimportance of developing indig-enous leadership and participationby all community members in de-prived neighborhoods within thiscountry, so we must recognize theneed for the development of lead-ers and wide-spread participationin decision-making in other coun-tries. If this leadership and. partic-ipation are to be other thanthrough force or fear, a high de-gree of skill in communication isrequired for the people in thesecountries. One of the great con-tributions that scholars in our fieldcould make is to study the specifickinds of communication skills andunderstanding needed in varioussorts of cultures and the best meth-ods for helping natives of theculture to develop these skills andunderstandings. As I said earlier,I believe it would be incrediblynaive to assume that we can trans-fer our purposes and methods forthe teaching of speech and othercommunication skills directly toother countries. The immediateproblems to which we need to giveattention are the methods to usein searching for answers to thesequestions and the criteria to beused in assessing "needs" and"best" teaching methods.

2. There is a rapidly increasingbody of knowledge from research inthis country and, to a lesser extent,from a few other countries, aboutthe diffusion of information, ideas,and practices. We are makinggreat progress in pinning down pat-terns of diffusion and influence.However, there are still many un-answered questions. We have farfrom enough knowledge about theextent to which the generalizationsfrom the research done to dateare applicable in other types ofcountries, for other types of in-formation or practice, and for in-fluence between as well as withincountries. We need to understandthe differences among cultures inthe ways in which different types ofinformation are diffused—-the roleof print, the role of electronicmedia, the role of people. In theUnited States, the availability ofmost information is roughly equiv-alent for all men. We tend to for-get that this is not so in ail cul-tures. We also tend to forget thatthe patterns of leadership in somecountries are, in part, dependentupon this differential availabilityof information. We have littleknowledge of the institutions invarious countries which inhibit orfacilitate diffusion. In China, forexample, there was an official two-step flow of information long be-fore anyone had heard of ElihuKa'tz or Paul Lazarsfeld. When theCentral Broadcasting Agency wasstarted in China in 1928, the Kuo-mintang trained a number of partymembers to do "news receiving"work. These trained party mem-bers were sent to different prov-inces, such as Kiangsi, Kwangtung,Honan, and various cities, such asPeiping, Tientsin, and Hankow.They were responsible for receiv-ing and transcribing the newscastsfrom the station and passing thisnews on to local newspapers topublish. Where there were no news-

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papers, the "receivers" would printit themselves and send it to localorganizations or put it on thecommunity bulletin boards. In or-der to make this news transcrip-tion easier, the news was broadcastat extremely slow speeds.2 Quiteanother sort of official diffuser isfound in Great Britain. This is thepaid political party agent in almostevery constituency who acts as amediator between national leadersand the individual voters in theconstituency. These agents serve acritical informational and politicalfunction in a country in which themedia are essentially national, theallegiances of elected officials tendto be essentially national, but theelections of these officials are strictlylocal (the names of the national orregional parties are not even foundon the ballots).3 These unique in-stitutions within each culture mustbe understood if we are to intel-ligently plan inter-cultural commu-nication, or even understand it asit occurs. In addition to dif-ferences across cultures, we need tostudy the ways in which the pat-terns of diffusion are changingwithin cultures over time. For ex-ample, it is possible that, in a cul-ture which is shifting from a pa-triarchal or traditional state, wherethe young or the females are be-coming disenchanted with the sta-tus quo (undoubtedly one of thenecessary conditions for substantialsocial change), the mass media havea more direct effect on these dis-enchanted. On the other hand, it ispossible that these disenchantedsimply find new sorts of mediatorsor opinion leaders. Which is thecase when? In addition, what hap-

2 Fang-Mei Chen, "Broadcasting in theRepublic of China." Unpubl. thesis (Uni-versity of Iowa, 1963), pp. 39-40.

3 Samuel L. Becker, "Broadcasting andPolitics in Great Britain," Quarterly Jour-nal of Speech, LIII (February 1967), 42-43.

pens to these patterns of mediationor leadership if we broaden theavailability of information throughvarious programs of inter-culturalcommunication, such as Voice ofAmerica?

3. We need to study the ways inwhich the media and individual dif-fusion agents in each type of cul-ture screen or supplement or dis-tort the information that comesthrough. We know that, in thiscountry, where we take pride in therelative objectivity of the news, themedia badly distort many eventslargely because of a screening proc-ess. For example, the front pagesand the headlines of newspapershave not accurately reflected thenational, or even the southernprogress in school desegregationwhich in most cases has proceededvery quietly. Because the media inthis country equate news with con-flict, peaceful integration is less"newsworthy" than non-peacefulintegration, and so the latter re-ceives relatively more play in thepress. This treatment does not re-flect racial prejudice on the partof newsmen; it reflects rather theirdefinition of news. We need todiscover the extent to which thissame conception of news exists inother countries, both among in-dividuals in the media and person-to-person information diffusers, ifwe are to understand the ways inwhich our communication effortsare distorted or buried as they crossnational lines.

4. Up to now, I have been dis-cussing research on the communi-cation transmission lines withinand between cultures. It is alsoextremely important for inter-cultural communication to under-stand the behaviors and drives ofthe receiver—what Herbert Men-zel at the SAA research colloquiumlabelled "the culture of informa-tion seeking."

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We may assume that individuals regardsome of the needs for information orcounsel that come up in their daily livesas matters of general wise decision mak-ing, and still others as matters of taste;we may also assume that individuals havedifferent tendencies to seek counsel fromauthoritative experts, from general orspecialized opinion leaders, from tech-nical literature, and so on. We do notknow how these different types of informa-tion seekers are distributed over educa-tional, class, or other groupings, nor dowe know of the cultural uniformities withregard to areas of content that are re-garded as matters of expertise, mattersfor general wisdom, and so on. Worst ofall, we know extremely little about thepossible interlinkages between the dif-ferent types of information seekers inany given area.4

T o summarize these questions onoriginators, diffusers, and seekersof information within and betweencultures, I would say that we oughtto be asking who within each ofthe cultures involved in each typeof communication transaction, useswhat information from that trans-action in what way and with whatpurpose. In other words, to under-stand the processes and effects, weneed to see what functions the in-formation is serving for individualsin each culture.

5. A related problem area is theextent to which and the ways Inwhich the traditions, political struc-ture, family structure, etc. interactwith what seem to be essentiallythe same communication events.For example, I have noted else-where that, although the basic pur-poses and intent of broadcast cov-erage of political campaigns is thesame in Great Britain and theUnited States, differences in thepolitical and broadcasting struc-tures result in quite different kinds

4 Herbert Menzel, "CommunicationThrough Institutions and Social Struc-tures" (paper prepared for the Interdis-ciplinary Colloquium sponsored by theSpeech Association of America, Racine,Wisconsin, October 10-11, 1967).

of political broadcasts.5 We needto pinpoint and describe these andrelated relationships in still othercultures. We also need to study dif-ferences in the relationship of r e terence groups to communicationprocesses in different countries, andwhether different types of referencegroups tend to be salient for inter-cultural communication than aresalient for intra-cultural commu-nication.

6. As one aspect of the questionof reference groups and diffusion,we in communication need to dofar more research on informal andnon-institutionalized forms of com-munication. That this is tremen-dously important in all cultures Isevident from some of the researchon the diffusion of birth controlpractices. In all of the family plan-ning programs in countries wheresome research on diffusion has beenpossible, it is clear that a majorcontribution has been made byinformal discussions among neigh-bors, relatives, friends and acquaint-ances. In one study In Taiwan,three out of four acceptors of amethod of birth control had had nocontact with the official commu-nicators (or field workers) and, bythe end of a year, a fourth of theacceptors came from areas not evenbeing reached directly by the for-mal campaign. In one town inThailand, over half of the womenwho accepted the use of contracep-tives were brought to this accept-ance through conversations withfriends who used them.6

A suggestion that has been madeto the United States InformationAgency is closely related to thispoint. This proposal is that the

5 Becker, pp. 34-43.6 Bernard Berelson, "National Family

Planning Programs: Where We Stand"(paper prepared for the University ofMichigan Sesquicentennial Celebration,November 1967), pp. 15-16. (Mimeo-graphed.)

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communication efforts of USIAcan be most effective if they areused not for direct persuasion butto strengthen existing organizationswhose objectives serve UnitedStates interests and help to createnew organizations whose goals par-allel our own.7 For example, onemight simply put people with sim-ilar values in touch with eachother so that each knows some-thing about what the others aredoing and thus can, to a degree,coordinate activities.

7. Another question that hasbeen raised about the communica-tion and acceptance of some meth-od of family planning, which alsohas relevance to a range of otherinter-cultural communication prob-lems, is whether different commu-nication factors are involved in theacceptance of an idea by individ-uals and by nations. James Faw-cett of the Population Council hy-pothesizes that

acceptance of family planning by individ-uals has been facilitated by a visible coregroup of users and by open discussion viamass media, acceptance by nations hasbeen facilitated by the emergence of agroup of developing countries with na-tional programs and by spread of informa-tion about national programs via newsmedia and particularly international ex-change visits and conferences among highgovernment officials.8

Since many of the purposes of inter-cultural communication involve theacceptance of ideas by both nationsand individuals, Fawcett's hypoth-esis deserves exploration to see (a)if it is so and, if it is, (b) the ex-tent to which it is generalizableacross cultures and across types ofideas.

8. There is at least one hypoth-esis that has been advanced byDaniel Lerner that deserves serious

7 W. Phillips Davison, paper presentedto the U.S.I.A. seminar on communica-tion problems, January 4, 1967.

8 Berelson, p. 3.

study. It grew out of Lerner's studyof the role of communication inthe social changes of developingcountries. His hypothesis is thatthe mass media provide the peopleof these countries with the capacityto conceive of situations and waysof life quite different from thosewhich they have experienced. Thisis an important state for socialchange. Until men can conceiveof something different than theirexisting situation, it is difficultfor them to become sufficientlymotivated to change.9 Again itseerns to me that there are two ques-tions here. One is whether thehypothesis is true. If it is true, thenwe wonder what effect messagesfrom other cultures, such as theUnited States, have on this process.

9» Not only may cross-culturalcommunication aid in the processof learning to project oneself intonon-experienced situations, but thisprotective or empathic ability isalso important in order that indi-viduals may comprehend many ofthe messages which they receivefrom other cultures. We need tolearn what factors in individualsare associated with this empathicability and what means can be em-ployed to increase this ability,,

10. In inter-cultural communica-tion, as in intra-cultural communi-cation, many scholars are interestedin the question of the effects of dif-ferent kinds of media on the audi-ence. A question at least equallyimportant for the communicationscholar is the question of the ef-fects of different kinds of audienceson the media. We know that inthis country the nature of the au-

9 Daniel Lerner, "Comfort and Fun:Morality in a Nice Society," The Amer-ican Scholar, XXVII (Spring 1958), 153-165; "Enlightenment and Communica-tion," in Comparative Theories of SocialChange, ed. Hollis W. Peter (Ann Arbor,Michigan: Foundation for Research onHuman Behavior, 1966), pp. 221-225.

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dience has a great deal of impacton the medium or the source.Whenever one attempts to reach avery large audience, for example.,he becomes in a very real sense acaptive of that audience. The tastesand interests of this audience setlimits within which a medium mustoperate to stay in business. Whateffect does the nature of the audi-ence in different countries haveupon the mass media or the com-munication institutions of any sortin those countries? What effects doa source's perceptions of differentcultures have upon his communica-tion transactions with that country?As a part of this question, it wouldbe interesting to know the per-ceptions that USIA people have ofdifferent countries and how theseperceptions affect the messages theysend to each country.

11. Another important problemhas to do with the factors that af-fect the image which individuals invarious countries have of othercountries, and the effect that thisimage has, in turn, upon their be-haviors with respect to other coun-tries and their policies. Related tothese questions, we need to knowwhat the processes are by which in-formation about one country isgathered, screened, altered, distrib-uted, and used in other countries.

12. One interesting cross-culturalcommunication problem is thatfaced by the government agenciesand industries of the United Stateswhich have offices in other coun-tries staffed, in whole or in part,by individuals from those coun-tries.10 The problems of organiza-tion and communication withinthese organizations, as some ofthese agencies are discovering, are

10 There is a good discussion of thisproblem in Edward T. Hall and WilliamFoote Whyte, "Intercultural Communica-tion: A Guide to Men of Action," HumanOrganization, XIX (Spring 1960), 5-12.

completely different than the or-ganization problems encounteredand widely studied within organi-zations in this country. This couldbe a very important field of re-search.

13. Communication satelliteshave now made ready communica-tion across countries and continentsfeasible. However, the particularnature of the broadcasting systemswithin each country and the ap-parent inability to achieve the in-ternational cooperation necessaryfor such a system to truly workseems to be blocking optimum de-velopment of such communication.I think it important for those con-cerned with inter-cultural commu-nication to do- some applied re-search on how the barriers to such-cooperation might be broughtdown. (By the way, we do not needto look far afield for some of thesebarriers. One might ask what theappeals would be that would causethose who control communicationsatellites in this country to giveother nations an equal amount ofcontrol. One might ask what theappeals would be that would getnetworks and station licensees toagree to direct satellite to receivercommunications.) Even more re-vealing than a study of the issueitself may be a study of the debatewithin each country about the is-sue.

14. We ought to discover andstudy the barriers to other formsof inter-cultural communication*For example, we ought to knowwhat the issues are which deter-mine the proportion of films orradio or television programs fromone country that are imported anddistributed in another country.Have you ever stopped to wonderabout the fact that, although manyAmerican television programs aredistributed throughout the world,you have seen television programsfrom relatively few other countries

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transmitted here? What are themeans for setting these proportions?In some countries, it is done bygovernment or regulatory agencyfiat. In other countries, the onlycontrol is an economic one. Arethere patterns which can be de-tected and studied?

There are certainly other re-search questions in inter-culturalcommunication. However, I believethat we must also attend to anothertype of problem—the problem ofconceptualizing and carrying outthe research to answer these ques-tions. This is a matter of concernat a number of different levels.What, for example, is the most ap-propriate type of question to studyat this point in time? To whatextent is there a need for hypoth-esis testing—for striving for gen-eralizations or laws of inter-cul-tural communication which havesome scope? To what extent is themajor need at this time simply fordescriptive data—to understandwhat is going on—or for work onindividual, immediate, appliedproblems? The answers to thesequestions will vary somewhat withthe problem area to be studied. Forexample, there has already been agood deal of laboratory research byDeutsch and others on modes ofconflict resolution.11 It seems tome that we now have a body ofgeneralizations from that researchwhich needs to be tested in fieldsituations, both intra- and inter-cultural.

Such research poses difficultmethodological problems. It is rel-atively easy to set up and test prob-lems of conflict with games in aroom on a college campus; it ismore difficult, but necessary, to test

11 Morton Deutsch, "Conflict and ItsResolution" (paper prepared for the In-terdisciplinary Colloquium sponsored bythe Speech Association of America, Ra-cine, Wisconsin, October 10-11, 1967).

these matters in the field. We needto know to which kinds of con-flicts the laboratory generalizationsare relevant and to which they arenot, if we hope to improve ourability to resolve such conflicts.

Another important strategy ques-tion is who will do the research ordata collection; what should bethe relationship of researchers topractitioners. That this is a prob-lem is clear from at least one studydone by the United States Informa-tion Agency in which sharp dif-ferences were found in the conclu-sions about the effectiveness of aUnited States exhibit at a tradefair in Yugoslavia drawn by an of-ficial of the exhibit and by an in-dependent research group. The of-ficial observed that the U. S. ex-hibit outdrew all others; the in-dependent survey showed it wasoutdrawn by both the Yugoslav andSoviet pavilions. The official ob-served that it was "winning loadsof kudos"; the independent surveyshowed it produced more negativethan positive impressions of thiscountry.12

Not only is there a question ofthe relationship of researcher tocommunication practitioner, thereis the question of the relationshipof researcher to the cultures in-volved in the research. For manykinds of problems, most notably theobservation and study of informalcommunication, observers native tothe culture must be trained in tasksrequiring familiarity with the lan-guage and other aspects of the cul-ture as well as the ability to ob-serve without one's presence caus-ing unnatural changes in the eventsobserved. We must resolve the prob-

12 "Proceedings of the Seminar on[USIA] Effectiveness, Airlie House, War-renton, Virginia, October 6-8, 1966"(Washington: United States InformationAgency Office of Policy and Research, R-121-66, November 7, 1966), p. 11. (Mim-eographed.)

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lem of how to select and train theseresearch associates.

We must also resolve the prob-lem of identifying the variables inInter-cultural communication sit-uations which are most likely to bethe important—or even relevantvariables. One cannot collect allinformation on all cultures. Noris it always profitable to collect dataon the most exotic or unique aspectsof a culture. Such data are oftenextremely interesting—-they makefor interesting anecdotes in one'sreports and at cocktail parties—™and they are often important ifone is trying to understand a cul-ture. They are not always importantwhen one is trying to understandcommunication within or betweencultures. A good starting place maybe the set of variables which haveproved fruitful in the study of com-munication within our culture.

An extremely difficult problemthat must be resolved before manykinds of inter-cultural communica-tion research can be done is that ofassessing equivalence of meaningsand responses.13 At this point, wecannot even get agreement on whatequivalence of meaning is—how tooperationally define it. In transla-tions, we are generally agreed thatliteral translation does not produceequivalent meaning. The questionis, what does? One might defineequivalence in terms of some be-havioral responses. The only prob-lem is that the responses to allterms or messages do not havevisible components and the samemanifest response may be indic-

13 These problems are explored in twoexcellent papers: Edmund S. Glenn,"Semantic Difficulties in InternationalCommunication," in The Use and Misuseof Language, ed. S. I. Hayakawa (NewYork: Premier Books, 1962), pp. 47-69;"The Semantics of Socialism and Cap-italism" (Washington: USIA Researchand Reference Service, R-64-64, May,1964). (Mimeographed.)

ative of quite different meanings,especially when compared acrosscultures.

Psychologist George Thompson,in the SAA colloquium, noted theneed for procedures to measure"the less obvious meanings ofwords for individuals of differentsocialization backgrounds if we areto hope to understand some peren-nially important social issues/'14

He noted this problem for thosecommunicating across social classesor across the generation gap (aproblem which parents of teenagerscan appreciate). The problem isgreater when attempting to com-municate across cultures—or whentrying to study in some precise waythis communication across cultures.

In attempting to resolve thisproblem, we must not fall into theerror of many linguists and othercommunication scholars and thinkonly of the equivalence of meaningof words. We must go far beyondthe analysis of words. One cannotunderstand, for example, what isgoing on in debates at the UnitedNations if one only analyzes thewords spoken; just as one cannotunderstand the message of theViet Nam policy dissenters onAmerican college campuses if oneonly analyzes what they say oreven^ literally, what they do. Theiracts are symbolic, and must beanalyzed as such. With the risingimportance of visual rhetoric—-film,television, and even the still pho-tograph—we must find means toanalyze the process by which thesestimuli work their effects. I sus-pect that the attitudes of individ-uals in other countries regardingthe United States have been af~

14 George C. Thompson, "Notes andComments for SAA-USOE Interdiscipli-nary Colloquium" (paper prepared for theInterdisciplinary Colloquium sponsoredby the Speech Association of America,Racine, Wisconsin, October 10-11, 1967).

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CENTRAL STATES SPEECH JOURNAL

fected at least as much by the visualimages of aspects of our culture towhich they have been exposed asby the verbal images. Again, aswith verbal stimuli, much of ourresearch on intercultural visualcommunication is dependent uponthe resolution of the problem ofequivalence of meaning across cul-tures.

There has been some research inthe United States on the variancein meaning of symbols when theyare received through different sen-sory channels. It seems to me thatbefore many kinds of interculturalcommunication research can bedone, we need some idea of whetherthe same types of differences arefound in other cultures, or whetherthere is an interaction between typeof difference and type of culture.

The last difficulty with concep-tualizing or carrying out inter-cul-tural communication research thatI want to mention is one that waspinpointed by historian WilcombWashburn at the Speech Associa-tion's recent colloquium when hewas talking about recent race riotsin American cities.

Politicians, social scientists and ordinarycitizens were surprised by the locationand intensity of the recent riots. Why?The ordinary citizen can be pardonedhis ignorance. But when the professionalsmiss, something has been overlooked. 1suspect that one of the factors overlookedby the professional observers has beenthe growing personal, or social, distancewhich separates them from the objects oftheir study.iS

How much greater the distancewhen the objects of study are seg-ments of other cultures! Not onlydo we have the problem of not be-ing able to perceive what is hap-

15 Wilcomb E. Washburn, "Speech Com-munication and Politics" (paper preparedfor the Interdisciplinary Colloquium spon-sored by the Speech Association of Amer-ica, Racine, Wisconsin, October 10-11,1967).

pening in these cultures, we havethe problem of Western values get-ting in the way when we define theproblems that need to be studied*Just as we have the difficulty of theWhite not being close to the Blackin American society, and thereforenot seeing the major questions, soWestern man may not see the im-portant questions in many devel-oping countries. As we definechange or progress, we must guardagainst assuming that the only pos-itive change—the only progress—-is that change which moves a cul-ture toward a United States orWestern model. We must acceptthe fact that the ideals of all cul-tures may not coincide with theideals of our culture. If one acceptsthis fact, and I fail to see how itis possible not to, one is facedwith the interesting problem ofhow one operationally defines "suc-cess" for many classes of inter-cul-tural communication.16

I hope that these comments willstimulate fresh thought about inter-cultural communication and com-munication research. As a start, Ibelieve that there are at least threequestions which should be raised:

1. With what sort of researchshould we begin? Which ques-tions about inter-cultural com-munication are most criticaland, equally important, withwhich are we in communicationbest prepared to make uniqueand meaningful contributions?

16 This idea of unique models of de-velopment for non-Western nations hasbeen discussed at some length by Inaya-tullah, "Toward a Non-Western Modelof Development," in Communication andChange in the Developing Countries, ed.Daniel Lerner and Wilbur Schramm(Honolulu: East-West Center Press, 1967),pp. 98-102. A different point of view onthis issue is expressed in the same workby Daniel Lerner, "International Coop-eration and Communication in NationalDevelopment," pp. 103-125.

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SPRING, 1969 13

2. What must we do to developcommunication scholars withthe background and motivationto do important research in thisarea? In other words, what arethe implications of the prob-lems raised here for the grad-uate programs in our field?

3. Do we have any substantiveknowledge and skills to con-tribute to other cultures or tointer-cultural communicationnow? If so, what are the bestmechanisms through which wecan make our contributions?

One last point. Most of my com-ments have been directed at theextreme complexity of the task ofInter-cultural communication and

Inter-cultural communication re-search. It would be completely un-derstandable if everyone threw uphis hands and said that we mightas well forget It; there really is notmuch that we can do or discover*However understandable, this re-sponse cannot be tolerated. Thetask is too important—the need Istoo great. I believe that we mustfollow the advice of one of thegreat men in the field of speech, mygood friend A. Craig Baird. When-ever a graduate student of Craig'swould encounter a seemingly Im-possible problem In his research,Professor Baird would say, "That'sall right; just keep with it. Just dothe best you can." This seems tome to be good advice.

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