INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION AND THE WAY WE THINK ABOUT LANGUAGE

The paper argues that research in intercultural communication should change the way we think about language. What standard linguistic and pragmatic theories assume about how things work in communication and language use depends on there being commonalities, conventions, standards and norms between language users. These conventions of language and conventions of usage (Morgan 1978, Searle 1979, among others) create a core common ground on which intention and cooperation-based communication is built. When, however, this core common ground is limited as is the case in intercultural communication interlocutors cannot take them for granted, rather they need to co-construct them, at least temporarily. So there seems to be reason to take up the question of how people go about formulating utterances and interpreting them when they can't count on or have limited access to those commonalities and conventions, and in a sense, they are expected to create, co-construct them (at least a part of them) in the communicative process. An answer to this question may change the way we think about language. In the paper I will focus only on three issues that are especially important: 1) intersubjectivity: shift of emphasis from the communal to the individual, 2) modified understanding of linguistic creativity, and 3) the changing role of context in language use.