Different frames of reference (or the thing about Dutch windows): A text for engaging students in discussions about (non)essentialism

Abstract

Intercultural communication programs are by nature interdisciplinary, drawing as they do on expertise in a range of scholarly traditions, including communication, linguistics, anthropology, literature, media studies, history, translation, and psychology to name only a few. This chapter provides a text for use in higher education classrooms to engage students in reflexive discussions around the challenge of balancing etic and emic approaches to linguistic and cultural phenomena. It is written it with intercultural communication teachers and students specifically in mind, but with the hope that it could also be useful to students and teachers in the various intra-disciplinary traditions that contribute to intercultural communication education and research.