Intercultural Narrative Research Articles

Cross-cultural Narrative in Romantic Comedy by Chinese-American Director -- Take the Case of 'The Half of It'

Chinese-American groups have always existed as "marginalized" in the Western cultural context, and this article uses the romantic comedy "The half of it" as the research object to explore its cross-cultural narrative strategy. With the dual cultural identity of director Alice Wu as the entry point, the film narrative space is divided into three parts of family life, campus life and table tennis platform as a cross-cultural intersection of Chinese and Western culture, focusing on the film's character image design and the cultural phenomena behind the film, from Audio-visual design, plot structure and value connotation of three aspects to assist intercultural narrative of the film, explore the background of the cultural differences between China and West. The focus on the marginal groups highlights humanistic care, directs implicit, humorous narrative technique, so that the film shows more inclusive and provides ideas for the cross-cultural narrative of Chinese-American films.

Stereotypical Elements in the Narrative Structure of the Nationally “Other” in Contemporary Polish and Ukrainian Cinema

This paper researches topical Ukrainian and Poland cinema narratives related to interaction with the representatives of other nationalities in the territory of one country. The purpose of the research is to analyse changes in intercultural narratives related to the national stereotypes in contemporary films. The current development stage of the world culture requires new narratives –signals about that appear in the world and Ukrainian cinema. For Ukraine, these narratives become especially relevant after 2014. Now, the Ukrainians are thinking over their history and their relationship with those who the history united them with in a new way. This is perfectly illustrated by the films under analysis, Why I Am Alive (Ukrainian title: Chomu ya zhyvyi) (2015) and Shchedryk (2022), where the characters build a new discourse of their value-based existence by getting released from national stereotypes. Some stereotypes are analysed extensively in relation to films Lessons of Farsi, The Pianist, The Jew (Żyd).

Translingualism and intercultural narratives in Kiana Davenport’s “House of Many Gods”

Language and culture contacts resulting from the migration of population, as well as current geopolitical and technological processes, enhance the increase of translingual works that reveal symbiotic phenomena of languages and cultures in contact. However, there are still many unsolved problems in defining the translingual discourse and linguistic devices for creating it. The article discusses intercultural narratives in a novel by Kiana Davenport, an American author of Hawaiian descent, whose literary creative translingual work is enhanced by intercultural phenomena related to the contacts of American English, Hawaiian, and Russian languages. The article aims to describe linguistic devices for creating translingualism and to characterize the processes that take place in assimilation and language alteration in contact situations. The research has revealed that translinguality characterizes not only texts that are written in a second language, as is a traditional point of view, but also writings of a bilingual with two native languages enhanced by a third one. Translinguality can be reached by various linguistic tools comprising lexical borrowings, including endonymic toponyms and culture-specific concepts, loan translations, allusions, as well as pidginization of speech and some others. The findings showed that pidginization of speech of different characters results in stylized dialogues with deviated articulation of English words, intentional grammatical deviations, set expressions from Hawaiian Pidgin and wordplay. The results of the paper expand the idea of translingualism and intercultural communication and can be used for further research into linguistic and cultural contacts.

Intercultural dialogue in manga: Building friendships, sharing spaces and values

Manga as a cultural art form delves into various sociocultural issues and narratives, and the representation of diverse cultural contexts in manga has increased over the years. The role of Japanese manga as a site for intercultural understanding and engagement is worth further investigation, and research in this area is still growing. This article explores intercultural dialogue through a case study of the Japanese manga Satoko and Nada Volume 1 by Yupechika, which narrates the friendship between Satoko, a young Japanese woman, and Nada, her Saudi Muslim roommate. It adopts a literary approach to the analysis of the manga and employs textual analysis as the methodology. The manga is analysed through the lens of interculturalism and deep dialogue focusing on the themes of food, fashion and faith. Through the analysis, readers are exposed to the narrative of intercultural engagement as portrayed by the mangaka. Yupechika incorporates pre-existing prejudices in the engagement between the two culturally diverse characters. The narrative arc reveals the importance of empathy, space and value sharing in forging intercultural understanding. This reading into Yupechika’s intercultural narrative is a microcosm of the type of dialogue needed in the world today to overcome the acute racism and xenophobia.

Technik und Science-Fiction in der Vormoderne [Technology and science fiction in the premodern age] ed. by Brigitte Burrichter and Dorothea Klein (review).

Reviewed by: Technik und Science-Fiction in der Vormoderne [Technology and science fiction in the premodern age] ed. by Brigitte Burrichter and Dorothea Klein Matthias Riedl (bio) Technik und Science-Fiction in der Vormoderne [Technology and science fiction in the premodern age] Edited by Brigitte Burrichter and Dorothea Klein Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2018. Pp. 312. This volume emerged from a lecture cycle (Ringvorlesung) at Würzburg University in 2016–17. Ringvorlesung is a German academic tradition whereby scholars from different disciplines establish a broad and multifold panorama of perspectives on a certain topic, in this case premodern technology and science fiction. The research area of medieval science fiction is fairly new, but swiftly growing. In 2016, Carl Kears and James Paz edited a collection of essays under the title Medieval Science Fiction, which focuses on English literature and complements the German volume's more continental perspective. Technik und Science-Fiction in der Vormoderne surprises the reader with an unexpected richness and diversity of materials. The reader benefits from following the sequence of the chapters, arranged by the editors in a meaningful, loosely chronological order. Stefan Petersen lays the groundwork and traces the understanding of mechanica from the seventh to the twelfth century. After Isidor of Sevilla broadly defined mechanics as the "fabrication of things," Carolingian theorists downgraded it to an application-oriented practical science for craftsmen and artisans. Later, Hugo of Saint Victor's Didascalicon emphasized the value of mechanica as a scientific diffusion of the practical arts. A full rehabilitation of the practical arts on equal ranking with the liberal arts occurs only with the discovery of Greek and Arab knowledge in the thirteenth century and the combination of mechanics with mathematics. Siegfried Zielinski's well-illustrated contribution highlights the importance of medieval Arabic-Islamic civilization in furthering technical innovation and experimental culture. Udo Friedrich provides insights into the symbolic function of the automat in medieval political, religious, and cultural representation. He especially points to the "ludic" dimension of technology, a new playfulness emerging from a post-Aristotelian nonteleological understanding of nature and creativity. Three contributions deal with similar sources: medieval romances and epics. All three authors emphasize the prominence of machines and automats in the sources and how this articulates a European awareness of the technological superiority of the orient, exemplified in the intercultural narratives of the Alexander Romances. Yet in this context, technology may also symbolize the protagonist's hubris as an attempted transgression of God's natural order, Susanne Fried writes. Christian Buhr points out that accounts of artisan creativity in the novels may constitute reflections on the [End Page 916] narrators' own creativity. The most magnificent example is a French version of the Tristan epic, where the hero commissions the creation of an entire technological ensemble of automatic figures, representing the emotions in his soul: fears, hopes, dreams, and most intimate desires. Brigitte Burrichter shows that in medieval romances, it is often the women who resort to sophisticated "unethical" weapon technology, as they are excluded from chivalric combat. In the French vernacular Roman d'Eneas, Dido equips the walls of her city, Carthage, with a strong magnetic defense mechanism that incapacitates iron-armored warriors. Often, the imagined weapons go beyond the technological possibilities of the time and constitute a science fiction element. Viola Tenge-Wolf explains Ramon Lull's famous thought machine, which aimed at an errorless thought process that could facilitate the reconciliation of mankind. Stefan Bürger then shows how artistic representations of the Tower of Babel complement written accounts of medieval technology, as they help modern researchers understand the function of tools, the application of techniques, and medieval work processes. Elke Lossin offers a broad panorama of "pious machines" to show how they impacted medieval and early modern religious practice. Hania Siebenpfeiffer's richly illustrated chapter looks into the early modern "art of flying" and shows how the literary imagination of flying machines interacts with paradigm shifts in the sciences. Most interesting is the sociological aspect of early modern "science fiction" literature, as it proves the existence of pan-European networks of knowledge distribution. Arguably, the most thought-provoking piece is the concluding chapter by Wolfgang Riedel. His focus on...

Inclusion, belonging and intercultural spaces: A narrative policy analysis of playgroups in Australia

This article employs narrative policy analysis to examine how community playgroups are constructed in the ECEC policy framework, in order to understand what might exclude families, and how more families can be included in community playgroups. Playgroups are a widespread and important component of early childhood education and care (ECEC) provision in Australia, where parents and carers meet weekly with their babies, toddlers and preschool children. They are sites of social support for parents, together with play-based learning and socialisation activities for the children. Through the lens of intersectionality theory, four narratives are constructed through analysis of interviews with policy elite informants. The classic narrative draws on the enduring model of community playgroups from the 1970s, and the vulnerability narrative centres the supported playgroup model. The belonging narrative and the intercultural narrative indicate possibilities for future policy approaches to community playgroups.

Universal Fairy Tales’ Being Transferred to Local Cinema in Respect to Popular Intercultural Narrative Exchange

Sinemanın popülerleşme sürecinde masallar, romanlar gibi bilindik, tanıdık anlatılardan yararlandığı bilinmektedir. Bu durum kimi zaman olası çok sayıda seyircinin ilgisini çekebilecek filmleri üretebilmek kaygısıyla kimi zaman da yaratıcılık konusundaki arayışları kolaylaştırdığı için başvurulan bir yol olmuştur. Bu çalışmanın amacı 1812 yılında Alman Grimm Kardeşler tarafından derlenmiş ve basılmış bir halk masalı olan Pamuk Prenses masalının popüler kültürlerarası etkileşim bağlamında, Hollywood ve Yeşilçam’da popüler sinema dahilinde beyaz perdeye nasıl uyarlandığını incelemektir. Çalışmanın kapsamına alınan Pamuk Prenses masalı Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs ismiyle 1937 yılında Amerika’da animasyon olarak ve 1971 yılında Pamuk Prenses ve Yedi Cüceler adıyla Türkiye’de kurmaca film olarak sinemaya uyarlanmıştır. Her iki ülkenin masal uyarlaması filmlerinin anlatısal ve imgesel bileşenleri popüler kültürel üretim açısından yapısal bir bakışla karşılaştırılmış, anlatılarda sabit kalanlar ve değişenler eleştirel söylem çözümlemesi yöntemi kullanılarak, kendine ait farklı üretim dinamikleri olan iki popüler sinema üzerinden ortaya konulmuştur. Ortaya çıkan farklılıklar ve benzerlikler ile sinemaya uyarlanan Pamuk Prenses masalının kültürel alışverişten etkilendiği ve yerelleştirilerek sinemaya uyarlandığı tespit edilmiştir.

Narrating African conflict news: An intercultural analysis of Burundi’s 2015 coup

This article adopts an intercultural narrative approach to investigate how the 2015 crisis in Burundi was represented in five online news outlets: The Guardian, the United Kingdom (English); Le Monde, France (French); Le Soir, Belgium (French); The Daily Nation, Kenya (English); and Le Renouveau, Burundi (French). As the analysis demonstrates, all the outlets, including the African ones, adopt essentialised clichés of barbaric perpetrators and innocent victims, embroiled in ethnic conflict. Various configurations of these elements of the story are identified as it travels from one context to another. In general, the international outlets focus on a brutal dictator and a passive, victimised mass, but this narrative is reversed in the government-run Burundian outlet, which assigns barbarism to the protestors and legitimacy to the president. The Daily Nation is unique in framing these elements within a broader international narrative, demonstrating Burundi’s relative vulnerability to international (neoimperial) actors. In the final discussion, the article considers how Western journalism can learn from this cross-cultural analysis, drawing on Venuti’s (1995) concepts of foreignisation and domestication. It is argued that The Daily Nation’s emphasis on neoimperial influence on Burundi may be a form of domestication to Kenyan readers but would undoubtedly be considered a foreignising strategy to Western European readers, as it would alert them to the injustices of supposedly legitimate international (Western) institutions. While recognising the challenges of such a strategy in journalism, it is argued that news outlets should nonetheless consider presenting African conflict news using less stereotyped narratives, informed by a postcolonial interpretative lens.

Intercultural research and social activism

ABSTRACTIn this introductory paper, we argue for a stronger link between language and intercultural communication research, theory development, and social/political action. We aim to reignite the debate about our role as public transformative intellectuals and to let advocacy and empowerment be embedded in our work. This calls for a shift in focus from the elite groups who have dominated the intercultural narrative to disenfranchised groups like refugees and (forced) migrant workers. We also reflect on our multi-positionality as scholars, and we present a dialectics of language, intercultural communication and social activism. Finally, we introduce the 12 papers that comprise the Special Issue.

Locating the Intercultural Discourse of Leila Aboulela’s The Translator; Cultural Compatibility, Clash of Civilization or a Not-yet-told Story?

ABSTRACTLeila Aboulela’s novel, The Translator, animates diverse critical responses in the context of intercultural narratives within literary studies and beyond. The observation of this paper is that a growing body of research undergoes dialectical cultural controversy whether adopting deeply critical position of the novel or otherwise. The purpose of this paper is to examine these responses in the context of the moral philosophy of Mikhail Bakhtin’s dialogism. It takes a further step to address the novel’s dialogic strands and claims that Aboulela’s depiction of intercultural discourse embraces a polyphonic voicedness that is necessary for dialogic negotiations with a difference. With the assumption that intercultural dialogue can reinstate critical cultural awareness as an antidote to “clash of civilizations,” the paper rehearses the “healing” power of dialogism in intercultural narratives. It concludes that moral valuations always exist in “dialogic spaces” that offer moral outlooks for restructuring identities and creating shared orientations.

Leider nur ein Leichtgewicht: Der Text+Kritik-Sammelband zu Christoph Ransmayr enttäuscht

Abstract It has been more than thirty years since Christoph Ransmayr published The Last World to great success despite its intellectually challenging theme, the fictitious search for Publius Ovidius Naso, known as Ovid, who had been sent into exile by emperor Augustus. Ever since then, his writing has attracted the attention of the public, literary critics and scholars alike. Volume 220 of the renowned edition text+kritik has been dedicated entirely to his work. Its editor, Doren Wohlleben, gathered half a dozen contributions meant to map the different intercultural narrative spaces, which are mainly identifiable in the author’s novels and prose writings.

Exploring Intercultural Narrative through Multiple Perspective and Inclusive Approach

본고에서는 다중관점 및 포용적 접근과의 친화성에 주의를 기울이면서 간문화 내러티브의 특징을 살펴본 다음, 다중관점과 포용적 접근을 통한 간문화 내러티브의 구체화 방안에 관해 논의하였다. 이 글에서 강조하고자 하는 핵심명제는 다음과 같이 제시할 수 있다. 첫째, 간문화 내러티브는 간문화적 사이공간에서 존재하거나 작용하는 내러티브라고 규정할 수 있으며, 다중관점 및 포용적 접근과의 친화성을 고려하여 간문화 내터티브의 특징을 명료화할 수 있다. 둘째, 간문화 내러티브와 다중관점의 친화성에서 출발하여 간문화 내러티브의 구체화 방안을 모색하는 데 있어서는, 이주사회와 내러티브의 다양성에 주의를 기울일 필요가 있으며, 여기에 기초하여 다중관점에 지향을 둔 간문화 내러티브를 구체화할 수 있다. 셋째, 문화주의나 문화본질주의적 사고방식에 따른 위험성과 한계를 고려할 때, 간문화 내러티브를 다루는 데 있어서 포용적 접근이 요청된다. 포용적 접근은 평등의 원칙과 다양성의 원칙에 기반을 두고 있다. 이를 교육현장에서 실제적․수행적 차원에서 활용할 수 있는 분석 및 개입의 도구로서 포용적 간문화 내러티브 모형에 주의를 기울일 필요가 있다. 넷째, 간문화교육학의 합의사항을 고려할 때, 간문화 내러티브를 구성하고 활용하는 데 있어서도 자신의 문화적 준거와 인지유형을 성찰할 수 있는 능력을 핵심목표로 간주해야 하며, 간문화역량의 함양․신장에 주안점을 두어야 한다. 다 섯째, 이주사회에서 일상을 규정하는 사회적 상태를 문화주의적 관점에서 이해하고 해석 하려는 경향을 조심해야 한다는 이론적 통찰이 실제적․조작적 수준에서 적절하게 반영되지 못하거나 아니면 의도한 바와는 정반대의 방향으로 작용할 수 있다는 점에서 간문화 내러티브의 역설에도 주의를 기울일 필요가 있다.

Crossing Paths: Intercultural Collaborations

There are unusual elements in this essay. It is a coconstructed intercultural narrative about spaces, places, people, and ideas, about their influence on us and our academic journeys, separately and together. Each narrative considers the intercultural footpaths and bridges that have connected us to one another and to others in the Central States Communication Association (CSCA) and the Intercultural Communication (IC) interest group.

Block and thread intercultural narratives and positioning: conversations with newly arrived postgraduate students

ABSTRACTThis paper considers how, in the process of positioning that is implicit in every interaction, all of us employ multiple and often competing narratives when we talk about cultural identity and our relationships with new cultural environments. In interviews with newly arrived postgraduate students about their experience of travelling to study abroad, the students employ competing block and thread narratives. Block narratives represent an essentialist discourse of culture. As such, they are easily converted into cultural prejudice by blocking the possibility for understanding and sharing at the point of tolerating an Other who can never be like ‘us’. These are default narratives because of the way in which we are brought up in our societies within a global positioning and politics. Thread narratives instead support a critical cosmopolitan discourse of cultural travel and shared meanings across structural boundaries that act against cultural prejudice. Threads need to be nurtured as alternative forms of engagement. Therefore, there is a place for the researchers to intervene with their own thread narratives. This intervention is both allowed within and supported by an understanding that researchers join with their participants in the creative intercultural events of the interview.

Distant Neighbours and Familiar Strangers. The Intercultural Narrative of A Lady’s Visit to Manilla and Japan

Distant Neighbours and Familiar Strangers. The Intercultural Narrative of A Lady’s Visit to Manilla and Japan

A Life in the Sun: Accounts of New Lives Abroad as Intercultural Narratives

Through an analysis of three settler narratives about new lives in Spain, Stewart (1999), Kerr (2000) and Lambert (2000), the paper explores three elements of these intercultural narratives that contribute to the formation of the settler's new sociocultural identity: the physical environment, explorations of the other through signs of the settler's adaptation and the redefinitions of the self this intercultural encounter often implies.

Intercultural Identities in W.G. Sebald's The Emigrants and Norbert Gstrein's Die englischen Jahre

This paper analyses W.G. Sebald's The Emigrants and Norbert Gstrein's Die englischen Jahre from the perspective of intercultural identity. In Sebald's work, intercultural identity emerges as a political crisis that leads to a series of devastating personal crises: Sebald's protagonists’ inability to fully abandon early ethnic and national identifications results in life-long melancholy whose issue can only be death. For Gstrein, the problem of intercultural identity is one of ethnic impersonation. Gstrein explores performative notions of identity, but is alert to the ethical dubiousness and, indeed, potentially regressive aspect of performance, in contradistinction to some contemporary theorists who see the performative approach to identity as emancipatory. In conclusion, the role of the narrator in the texts is examined. Both narrators thematise the question of empathy, from both an ethical and an epistemological point of view. Although they come to different conclusions about the value of empathic identification, their texts represent self-conscious attempts to develop a mode of intercultural narrative that seeks to do justice to the otherness of the other.

Four Authors and a Traveller: Intercultural Narrative in Balkan Prose of the Second Half of the 20th and the Beginning of the 21st Centuries

The paper discusses different approaches to foreign culture in the works of four Balkan writers: Ismail Kadare, Milorad Pavić, Yordan Radichkov and Jadranka Vladova in the context of the works of the English traveller, Edith Durham. It studies the specific function of travel and exploration and the use of different languages (dictionaries) as a reflection of the intercultural (non)translatability. Providing an early, nonfictional Western perspective on the Balkans, Durham's accounts could contextualise the message of Kadare's The File on H. Similarly to Kadare, Radichkov and Pavić regard the encounter between two cultures as a syncopal dialogue. In contrast to Radichkov, Kadare and Pavić, Vladova believes that the foreign is not strange, and that the imbalance in the dialogue between east and west could be avoided. The dictionary, a tool of intercultural discourse, structures Pavić's Dictionary of the Khazars, a reservoir of reshaped pieces of past knowledge which question Balkan cultural identities. The Balkan intercultural narrative has gradually changed from an exploration that questions the (non)translatability of cultures to an intercultural dialogue, in which the classical image of the traveller has been replaced by e-mail writers, whose virtual voices make them ideal interlocutors in a globalising world.

Writing with an Accent: Components of Style in the Intercultural Narrative

The paper that follows is part of a larger project aiming to examine the textual production of writers having access to more than one set of representational resources. It is premised on the notion that access to such dual or multiple resource-bases permits the production of texts that are ‘marked’ in salient and systematic ways.

Ethnic Autobiography as Children's Literature: Laurence Yep's The Lost Garden and Yoshiko Uchida's The Invisible Thread

Ethnic Autobiography as Children's Literature:Laurence Yep's The Lost Garden and Yoshiko Uchida's The Invisible Thread Rocío G. Davis (bio) Ethnic American autobiographies are narratives that highlight the intersection of consciousness of cultural difference from the mainstream and personal development. Many of these ethnic autobiographies have challenged the generic scripts ostensibly required by traditional American autobiography. These revisionary texts center on individual awareness of the subject's ethnic position in relation to other dominant and minority cultural groups, and on the possibilities for its representation, and on how each group occupies certain areas, negotiates historical specificities, and forms communities. Importantly, these texts also subvert some of the traditional narrative structures of autobiography, offering innovative manners of inscribing life: through linked short stories, collaborative autobiographies, shifting or multiple perspectives, among other strategies. The evolution of recent ethnic autobiography for children written by minority groups has tended toward historical realism and toward intercultural narratives that emphasize the varied cultural influences a child growing up in the United States experiences, rather than on depicting that child acquiring a pure heritage identity. Contemporary ethnic literature for children tends to highlight ways of affirming and celebrating cultural differences as they simultaneously seek ways to cooperate and collaborate across different ethnic boundaries. When a constitutive part of that network of concepts involves ethnic appreciation and understanding, the autobiographical text plays a more operative role in articulating the context within which children can engage in a significant process of self-awareness, self-formation, and self-representation. These ethnic autobiographies thus perform a necessary task: by recontextualizing the forms and themes of traditional American autobiography, they enact alternative modes of being and identifying as American, through itineraries marked by separation and difference, rather than by integration. This essay on ethnic autobiography for children, which centers on two Asian American texts, supports the idea that language, immigrant histories, family, and location exist in a relation of dynamic interdependent parts that acquire significance as they are deployed in the representation of highly individual processes of subjectivity and affiliation. Laurence Yep's The Lost Garden and Yoshiko Uchida's The Invisible Thread, both published in 1991, offer multilayered approaches to the act and the art of ethnic life writing. Close readings of Yep's and Uchida's texts illustrate how ethnic autobiographies for children can complicate and enrich traditional conceptions of life writing with a dialogical structure and a heightened concern for metaphor. The protagonists' engagements with bilingualism; their positions as speaking subjects who illustrate Betty Bergland's idea of ethnic subjects as "inscribed by multiple discourses, positioned in multiple subjectivities and situated in multiple historical events" ("Postmodernism" 135); and the evolution of their perspective on immediate reality are paradigms of their process of representation. Interestingly, both Yep and Uchida are among the most prolific of Asian American writers for children, and their autobiographies were published when their status as children's authors had already been established. With almost 100 volumes of children's books between them—including non-fiction, picture books, mythology and folk tales, realist and historical narratives, the majority of which center on immigrant life in the United States—Yep and Uchida represent a vital component of Asian American writing. Reading their autobiographies critically gestures toward the multilayered meaning of their fictional production. The metaphors the writers choose and the often fragmented quality of their narratives thus signify on several levels, communicating specific knowledges and discourses about the lives of Asian American children. Thematic concerns related to the history and the role of Asians in the United States link Yep's and Uchida's autobiographies for children, and both foreground the act of writing as constitutive of the process of discovering or negotiating identity. These texts thus become highly complex engagements with ethnic and artistic reality because both are primarily Künstlerromane that stress their protagonists' process of creative development and describe the genesis of Yep's and Uchida's future literary endeavors. They are, likewise, autobiographies that emphasize how memories and consciousness of ethnicity in the United States inform and nuance their writing. Stuart Hall's description of the two simultaneous axes or vectors that "frame" diasporic identities applies to these texts: "the...