Intercultural Communication

With the increased global flows of people, media, and goods characteristic of the current phase of globalization, understanding intercultural communication has become more important than ever before.

Exploring how people from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds communicate and what the social consequences of their interactions are has been a long-standing research focus of the Language-on-the-Move team.

Our Intercultural Communication research calls attention to the context-specific nature of language and culture contacts. Grounded in sociolinguistic ethnography, we focus on the use of different languages and/or language varieties as a central aspect of intercultural communication, and aim to illuminate the differential prestige of languages and language varieties, and the varying access that speakers have to them.

Research blog posts documenting our research in this strand are collected below. The main focus is on empirical research examining intercultural communication in the workplace, in education, in healthcare, and other domains. Contributors include established and novice researchers from around the world.

To learn more, Ingrid Piller’s monograph Intercultural Communication provides an up-to-date overview of the field of intercultural communication. The book explains intercultural communication in context using two main approaches. The first treats cultural identity, difference and similarity as discursive constructions. The second, informed by bilingualism studies, highlights the use and prestige of different languages and language varieties as well as the varying access that speakers have to them.