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PPP IC101 Session 6

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25 views13 pages

PPP IC101 Session 6

Uploaded by

saedaaltalafeeh
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Intercultural Communication (IC 101)

Summer Semester 2024

Markus Schmitz

Markus Schmitz

School of Applied Humanities and Social Sciences


GJU
Intercultural Communication (IC 101)

Session 6:
Chances and Predicaments
of Intercultural Communication
Predicaments of Intercultural Communication:
The Desire for Certainty and the Problem/Need of Uncertainty

We wish to believe that one can calculate how to act interculturally


effectively in what we identify as intercultural encounters. And we like to
believe that there is a sufficient toolbox of prescribed information on
other cultures and the appropriate skills to communicate with these other
cultures (this is still dominant notion of “intercultural competence”
represented by scholars like Hofstede). Therefore, most mainstream
textbooks, workshops, trainings, and university courses on “intercultural
communication” thrive on this presupposition and purport to help readers
or participants to effectively communicate, accommodate, or integrate
across so-called cultural boundaries.

➢ Problem: such instrumentalist approach to intercultural communication


understood as a fixed set of skills to be mastered for practical purposes,
clearly does NOT allow for uncertainty!
The Desire for Certainty and the Problem/Need of Uncertainty

The problems of this strictly instrumentalist understanding of intercultural


communication result from the need of certainty regarding other cultures. It inevitably
leads to essentializing conceptions of cultural difference.

However, if intercultural communication is about bringing humans together based on


mutual respect and honesty, it needs to be conceptualized as a field against essentialism.

Instead of fueling and feeding on presupposed “cultural boundaries” and the bigotry,
intolerance, discriminations, and identity politics related to these boundaries, it needs to
open-up the opportunity to accept unknowability in dialogic interactions across so-called
cultural divides.

➢ A true and worthy field of intercultural communication studies, needs to


counter the one-sided certainties (and often unquestioned surities) at work
in instrumentalist essentialisms of all kind!
The Benefits of Uncertainty

Intercultural communication is communication

“before the fact” or “after the fact”

(Hongbing Yu, “A skeptic’s guide to ‘intercultural


Communication’”, Lang. Semiot. Stud. 2023; 9(2): 163–184)
The Benefits of Uncertainty

Intercultural Communication is communication

“before the fact” or “after the fact”

(Hongbing Yu, “A skeptic’s guide to ‘intercultural


Communication’”, Lang. Semiot. Stud. 2023; 9(2): 163–184)

Now, what does that mean?


Intercultural Communication as Communication “before or after the fact”

… needs to acknowledge the dialectics of intercultural communication

(See Session 5!)


Dialectics of Intercultural Communication
The Dialectics of Intercultural Communication and the Hijab-Debate

The competing perceptions and interpretation of Islamic veiling have long been turned into
both, an intracultural and intercultural controversy:

In many Western societies, the hijab has sparked debates about religious freedom, gender
equality, and social integration. Some view it as a symbol of male oppression, while others
see it as a female expression of personal and religious freedom. The debate often serves as
a symbolic platform for broader public and legal discussions about multiculturalism,
integration, and the rights of minority communities...

The dominant Western discourse (in mass media, politics, and public debates) revolving
around the hijab still explains the practice of veiling as the most visible marker of the
intrinsic difference and inferiority of Islamic societies. The hijab long advanced to a symbol
of Islam’s and Islamic cultures’ degradation of women or the backwardness of Islam.
The Dialectics of Intercultural Communication and the Hijab-Debate

In its politically and legal dimension the debate led to:

▪ the ban of the hijab in French schools and public administration


▪ the ongoing debate about the niqab in Britain
▪ the debate about veiling as an indicator of failed assimilation/integration in Germany
▪ its instrumentalization by way of presenting the liberation of veiled women as a justifying
pretext for the American war on Afghanistan
▪ …

However, the question of veiling is NOT only a controversial issue between Western
Islamophiles and Islamophobes, but also emerged as a contentious matter among Muslims
in the Middle East, where the meanings of the Hijab and proper ways of female dressing are
interpreted in a variety of ways.

➢ How to place oneself and argue within such highly ideologized and
controversial debate from a dialectical point of view?
The Dialectics of the Hijab-Debate
Comments & Questions
Thank you very much!

ّٰ ‫ِإ ْن شَا َء‬


See you tomorrow ‫ٱَلله‬

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