Intracultural Communication and Intercultural Communication: Are They Different?

Abstract

The paper discusses the differences between intracultural communication and intercultural communication from a socio-cognitive perspective that treats this relationship as a continuum rather than a dichotomy. Movement on the continuum, and differences between the two phenomena are affected by different factors that will be discussed in the paper. The hypothetical left end of the continuum is intracultural communication and the right end is intercultural communication. Neither exists in pure form. The question is to which end a given communicative situation is closer to and what characteristics it is dominated by. While moving on toward the right end communication becomes less dependent on standards, norms, frames, core common ground and formulaic language and is characterized more by emergent common ground, ad hoc generated rather than formulaic expressions, norm creating attempts and individual creativity in solving communication problems.