Intercultural Studies

ISSN: 1055-2804

3 publications

Intercultural Studies and Foreign Language Learning

ISSN: 1663-5809

Learning a foreign language facilitates the most intimate access one can get to the culture and society of another language community. The process of learning a foreign language always involves intercultural levels of engagement between the languages and cultures concerned. This process is also a long and arduous one which involves an enormous variety of factors. These factors are located on individual, socio-cultural and linguistic planes. They engage in a complex interplay between any elements of these more general planes and the concrete learning process of the learner. The series Intercultural Studies and Foreign Language Learning provides a forum for publishing research in this area. It publishes monographs, edited collections and volumes of primary material on any aspect of intercultural research. The series is not limited to the field of applied linguistics but also includes relevant research from linguistic anthropology, language learning pedagogy, translation studies and language philosophy.

24 publications

Critical Intercultural Communication Studies

ISSN: 1528-6118

Within Communication, culture is broadly understood as a meaning-making process that evidences itself within discourse, mediated forms, and interactional instances to constitute group autonomy. Within that meaning-making process, intercultural communication considers relationships between institutions and their societies, media and their audiences, and peoples and their communities. The formalized study of intercultural communication has always been problematic; like most disciplines and subdisciplines, its usefulness and limitations emerge from the historical context in which it is studied. Developed after World War II, intercultural communication initially served as an applied area of study to train U.S. governmental and business entities for relationships beyond U.S. borders. Then, out of the struggles of the U.S. Civil Rights era, intercultural communication expanded to concern itself with relationships between differing racial and ethnic groups. By the turn of the twentieth century, some intercultural communication scholars had fully embraced studying the differential power relations between nations, communities, and individuals thus catalyzing a body of research known as critical intercultural communication. Now, heading into the middle of the twenty-first century, critical intercultural communication has come into focus as an area of study that emphasizes, explains, and seeks to resolve power relations within specific contexts, applying theories and modes of inquiry suited to contemporary issues understood within their ongoing historical dynamics. As our institutions and their societies, mediated forms and their corresponding audiences, and communities and their members continue to alter and morph, critical intercultural communication adapts to interpret and envision progressive, socially just ways forward. This series, therefore, invites scholarship that challenges status quo cultural constitutions by recognizing and problematizing hegemonic modes of belonging and being. Spanning a range of contexts, critical intercultural communication considers symbolic and performative orders across local, national, hemispheric and transnational circuits. Moreover, this series fosters interdisciplinary conversations that innovate ontological and epistemological forms, advancing a range of systematic intellectual approaches to cultural transformation and validation. The series is particularly interested in works grounded in BIPOC, decolonial, feminist, queer, crip, and/or kink perspectives that construct claims, knowledges, and theories capable of guiding society toward new social justice knowings.

45 publications