Essentialism In Intercultural Communication

2.1 Intercultural communication

2.1.1 Essentialist of culture which leads to stereotyping Intercultural communication is viewed as the interaction among individuals from diverse cultural background (Jandt, 2007). However, the definition of the term “culture” seems to be questionable either in scholarly work or daily life. According to Kubota (2012), “culture” is a widely used term that possesses an illusory and problematic concept. In fact, the definition of “culture” depends on the researchers’ viewpoint and the word does not possess any substantive existence (Wikan, 2002). The concept of culture is thus more likely to be misused (Eriksen, 2001). Due to its intangibility, it is problematic to define the concept of culture clearly when browsing

In addition to essentialism, this example is also noted by othering which occurs when the contrasted images of Self and Other are being highlighted. According to Holliday (2011), othering is a process that involves the construction or imagination of a “demonized” or negative image of “them”, or the Other, in order to uphold the perception that the image of “us”, or the Self, is ideal. The idealization of Self will reinforce the positive features of the perceiver and underrate the less positive features of the

Many recent studies in intercultural communication reject cultural essentialism and overgeneralization but engage with diversity of culture (Holliday, 2011). Opposing to the objectivist vision of culture proposed by the essentialists, non-essentialists view culture as an abstract notion and not a reified object which can be classified clearly. The culture hence does not induce behaviour but summarizes a non-prescriptive abstract idea from people’s behaviour (Baumann, 1996). In other words, people do not possess or belong to a certain culture but the culture is constructed from the discourse of people (Piller, 2012). Consequently, since culture is summarized from the behaviour performed by people, the behavioural differences of each individual in particular social interaction should be taken into account when understanding culture. As everyone is special and diverse, an individual cannot be considered as a model that represents the identity of a social (Machart et al., 2014). Therefore, interculturality is viewed as negotiation of people from different contexts (Dervin,