This author explores the intricate relationship between the individual, culture, and social structures, drawing from extensive experience teaching and developing English language programs internationally. His prolonged engagement with Iran and the broader Middle East has cultivated a keen awareness of the global politics shaping these dynamics. The work critically examines the profound lack of Western understanding of non-Western realities, even amidst vast information proliferation. His writing is deeply informed by his academic trajectory and a fascination with the interplay of sociology and language education in a globalized world.
Through an auto-ethnographic lens, the author recounts their experiences in 1970s Iran to challenge the dominance of essentialist grand narratives in intercultural discourse. The narrative highlights the complexities of cultural interactions and the ongoing struggle against oversimplified representations of identity, emphasizing the importance of personal stories in understanding intercultural dynamics.
'Intercultural Communication' introduces the key theories of intercultural communication and explores ways in which people communicate within and across social groups.
In this book we wish to find a new way of talking about, connecting and operationalising the third space, narratives, positioning, and interculturality. Our purpose is to shake established views in what we consider to be an urgent quest for dealing with prejudice. We therefore seek to draw attention to the following: How Centre structures and large culture boundaries are sources of prejudice How deCentred intercultural threads address prejudice by dissolving these boundaries How, in everyday small culture formation on the go, the cultural and the intercultural are observable and become indistinguishable How agency, personal and grand narratives, discourses, and positioning become visible in unexpected ways How we researchers also bring competing narratives in making sense of the intercultural How third spaces are discordant and uncomfortable places in which all of us must struggle to achieve interculturality This book is therefore a journey of discovery with each chapter building on the previous ones. While throughout there are particular empirical events (interviews, reconstructed ethnographic accounts and research diary entries) with their own detailed analyses and insights, they connect back to discussion in previous chapters.