SUMMARY

The present chapter has outlined the ontological, epistemological and methodological tenets of this thesis. With recourse to CDA and Critical Realism and its tripartite

distinction of the real, the actual and the empirical, I have adopted a view of

academic texts as a form of discourse109 (language in use) and instances of a specific genre (conventionalized social interaction in their textual form), tightly linked to a wider network or chain of other academic, institutional and social discourses,

practices, genres and contexts and thus being implicated (through changes in the order of discourse) with and contributing to social change. Given the considerable extent of the latter in the German higher educational system, my hypothesis is that a

concomitant shift in the discourse practices of academics writing in the field of IBC professionals is to be expected.

I defined the criteria of whether a specific text belongs to the specific genre under investigation mostly by text-external indicators, namely the communicative purpose, context, institution and social role the respective writer occupies with the aim of being able to account in a fairly open way for the hybridity and internal complexity of genres-texts and bringing into focus the specific norms, aims and institutional culture that generate these texts.

In the second part of this chapter I have taken up the notion of critique in relation to social research and intercultural communication. While the notion of culture is often used in a way that suggests that cultures correspond in a simple way with nation states and that consensus and harmony prevail among those sharing a national affiliation, I have emphasized its complexity, plurality (including dissonance, conflict and diversity), dialogicality, unsystematicity and contingency. More concretely, I have arrived at a conception of culture as an historically developed ideational system made up of socially and historically generated beliefs, meanings, subjective dispositions and values which serve to create, regulate, approve or disapprove of certain forms of

109

Again, this does not reduce academic work in this field to mere idiosyncratic and socio-political projects of individual academics but acknowledges the fact that the production of knowledge is not an isolated rational endeavour but embedded in particular discourses and historical moments.

behavior, practices, social relations, identities and ways of life in the context of specific structures and relations. Culture is at the same time conventionalized and reproductive and creative and transformative - subjects do not simply act cultures out but position themselves in relation to them - thus allowing the influence of structure

and agency:

Culture is as much about inventing as it is about preserving; about

discontinuity as much as about continuation; about novelty as much as about tradition; about routine as much as about pattern breaking; about norm- following as much as about the transcendence of norm, about the unique as much as about the regular; about change as much as about monotony of production, about the unexpected as much as about the predictable. (Bauman 1999: xxiv)

It has been argued that this ideational system is different from but not discrete from other social, economic or political domains, developing according to its own dynamics and speed but always in relation and response to these structures and relations. This means at the same time that culture is never neutral and can legitimize specific social orders which might be more advantageous for some groups than for others.

In a final step, I have advanced a normative evaluation of the plurality of socio- cultural life and intercultural dialogue as enriching human capacities and freedom by enabling people to develop new cultural emergent powers which might help them to understand themselves and others. A learning process that is, however, not without its pitfalls since understanding others, their ways of interacting, relating and valuing is always dependent on the definition and interpretation of the situation and the recognition - or misrecognition - of the person. It is based on conceptual and normative presupposition influenced by our own experiences in specific social, cultural and institutional contexts, imbricate with particular forms of power. Open- mindedness and critique has therefore to go hand in hand with reflexivity and well- informed analysis in any approach to intercultural learning.

CHAPTER 3

THE FIELD OF INTERCULTURAL BUSINESS COMMUNICATION:

HISTORY, INSTITUTIONALIZATION AND MAIN STRANDS

The aim of the following chapter is to map the complex topography of intercultural business communication at the crossroads of an applied field of training and

consulting and an academic subject area. In order to show the theoretical antecedents and disciplines drawn upon as well as the historical and institutional contexts that have influenced, shaped and brought about the field of IBC as it exists today, I will outline its emergence in its country of origin, the U.S.A., and its implementation and institutionalisation in the German higher education system before presenting currently predominant approaches to intercultural training and consulting. At the same time, this section shows the wide distribution and dissemination of approaches to intercultural education through academic publications, teaching and training both in higher education as well as in other social spheres.

In newly constituted academic fields there is a temptation to construct sanitized stories of theoretical and institutional developments “involving a judicious selection from past events” (Becher and Trowler 2001: 48) which allegedly lead to the establishment of clearly defined disciplines with neat boundaries. Paradigm-shifts and scientific revolutions, both concepts originating in the work of Thomas Kuhn110 are often

110 _{Kuhn argued that}

scientific communities share certain paradigms, i.e. stable, consensual sets of theoretical assumptions, methods and techniques for their application that enable them to pursue their scientific endeavours in certain directions (see Chalmers 1980: 90 and Harré and Krausz 1996: 77-78). He claimed that researchers usually work in this ‘normal’ state of science under a single paradigm up to

welcomed rhetorical devices to, either legitimate a specific school of thought as the dominant one and hence, marginalize non-mainstream perspectives111, or to iron out uneven developments through narrating an imagined intellectual and institutional linearity. With these considerations in mind, I attempt to give a meaningful but unavoidably partial account of a complex, uneven and often discontinuous history, acknowledging that theoretical diversity and contestation is a feature of ‘normal’ science (Lazar 1998: 98).