The global horizons of professional communication: critical theoretical approaches to the discipline's emerging cultural issues

Abstract

Within the field of intercultural professional communication, the concept of culture has been a professional and ideological cornerstone that has structured the field’s research, practice, and pedagogy. Culture is used to isolate or label the differing communicational assumptions and practices among the world’s diverse audiences, while culture defines the research questions; research sites; and the social, political, economic, and historical aspects of the globalizing world that are considered relevant for examination. However, the importance given to culture often exceeds the concept’s actual usefulness. Culture tends to eclipse other variables that nevertheless shape an audience’s identities and communicational practices, while culture skews the field’s concept of globalization toward questionable “global village” or “flat world” metaphors that undermine the field’s commitments to promoting effective communication, preparing students for a global economy, and ensuring the field’s global relevance. I propose that the field consider new disciplinary strategies and perspectives that can better respond to the professional and ideological contingencies of the globalizing world. These strategies include reimagining and deemphasizing the concept of culture, recentering audience analysis around the concrete yet flexible concept of community, and developing a more inclusive perspective on the globalizing world.