Intercultural and Cross-Cultural Communication Research: Some Reflections about Culture and Qualitative Methods

Abstract

This article attempts to offer a response, from a general perspective, to the question of how culture reveals itself in the application of qualitative research methods in intercultural communication. When we use the term "culture" it is important to bear in mind that culturally attributed social interaction processes are themselves the result of socially constructed processes. They are part of an individual-collective dialectic with multiple potential meanings, which are emergent and in constant reformulation from a wide variety of social and cultural perspectives. Much of the recent research in intercultural communication has been directed towards the study of these systems of culturally related meanings. The literature we review offers perspectives from a variety of disciplines and insights into the role of culture in communication processes. URN: urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs0901519