Intercultural communication in Asia: current state and future prospects

Abstract

This article provides a critical review of intercultural communication research in or on ‘Asia’ over the past 20 years. Intercultural communication became a noticeable sub-area of Asian communication studies only in the 1990s. Awareness of Asian intercultural communication scholarship has been hampered by the limited number of Asian countries that have generated relevant research. In recent years, however, there have been some major developments of the landscape in intercultural communication contributed by Asian scholars. First, this review will discuss the development of the academic field of intercultural communication in Asia. Then, I point out three commonly shared challenges of intercultural communication research in the region. First, the cultural level analyses (e.g., accounts of Asian communication styles) tend to paint all ‘Asians’ with the same broad brush as collectivistic, and thus reserved and indirect. Second, some argue that the representation of Asian communication systems in intercultural communication literature functions partly to ‘manage’ and ‘perpetuate’ power relations between the West and non-West. Third, there is a growing awareness of the limitations of intercultural communication theories so steeped in Eurocentrism that they oversimplify the complexity of the ‘rest of the world’. In dealing with these challenges, recent research trends in intercultural communication in Asia call attention to: (1) the complexity and increasing heterogeneity of Asian communication styles; (2) the traditions of Asia as sources of concepts in intercultural communication; and (3) the reconsideration of the Western research paradigm. This review discusses the possibilities and challenges we face, thus contributing to a better awareness and understanding of intercultural communication research in Asia.