Acculturation Processes and Communication

Abstract

Acculturation processes and communication is a research area studying how communication changes when two or more cultures meet. Much research has focused on how sojourners or immigrants adapt their communication to meet the demands of a new cultural environment, while some scholars are interested in how the host culture or people change as a result of immigrants’ communication and culture. Communication broadly refers to attitudes, feelings, and behaviors associated with message exchanges in interpersonal interaction and the media. Historically, anthropologists have been studying acculturation among immigrants since the 1930s. Lysgaard and Oberg developed the U-curve model of cultural adaptation that moves from a honeymoon period into culture shock and onto adjustment, while Gullahorn and Gullahorn proposed the W-curve model linking the phenomenon of initial entry culture shock with reverse culture shock at the reentry into the home country. Communication scholar Young Yun Kim started using a communication approach to study acculturation and developed an interactive theory of communication acculturation in the 1970s. Since then, several theories have been developed to examine the role of communication in acculturation processes. Overall, research findings have indicated that longer lengths of stay in the host culture, social contact with the host people, host language competence, host media use, identification with the host culture, and social support from the host people all help sojourners or immigrants improve their attitudes and skills in interaction with the host people and satisfaction living in the host culture. Several factors have also been found to mediate the relationships between acculturation and communication, including uncertainty reduction, intergroup anxiety, intercultural communication apprehension, and personal-enacted and personal-relational identity gaps.