Nishizaka1995

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Nishizaka1995
BibType ARTICLE
Key Nishizaka1995
Author(s) Aug Nishizaka
Title The interactive constitution of interculturality: how to be a Japanese with words
Editor(s)
Tag(s) EMCA, Intercultural communication, Japanese, Membership categorization
Publisher
Year 1995
Language
City
Month
Journal Human Studies
Volume 18
Number 2–3
Pages 301–326
URL Link
DOI 10.1007/BF01323214
ISBN
Organization
Institution
School
Type
Edition
Series
Howpublished
Book title
Chapter

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Abstract

This paper starts with questioning the “traditional” approach to the so-called intercultural communication. Most students of intercultural communication, it seems, use the categories characterising a cultural or ethnic identity, such as ‘Western’, ‘Indian’, ‘European’, ‘Aboriginal’ and the like, as parameters by reference to which some distinctive phenomena observed in conversational materials should be explained. Even though they may apply these categories correctly, they do not take into account the relevancy of these categories in each interaction.

The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that being a Japanese is achieved interactively and that “interculturality” of intercultural communication is constituted in and through the actual course of the interaction. In the analysis of interviews conducted with foreign students in Japan, it can be seen that the interviewer and the interviewee had to keep on coordinating their conduct throughout the development of their interaction in order that they could be a Japanese and a foreigner relevantly. In this way, what, in the studies of intercultural communication, is presupposed to be simply given, that is, the fact of a person being a Japanese or the like, is shown to be analysable and investigable as an interactive phenomenon in its own right.

Notes