Coming to terms with cultures
My principal research project is expressed in the title to this section, “coming to terms with cultures.” After forty years studying cultural codes of communicative conduct, and theorizing about the force of culture in social life, now I turn to a practical matter, how people can come to terms with the cultures of their life worlds.
For an introduction to what I mean by coming to terms with cultures, and to my approach to that subject, you can access the PDF version of the Carroll C. Arnold Lecture that I delivered to the National Communication Association in San Diego in November of 2008. I am now working on expanding this lecture into a different form. This involves an intensive working through of issues and cases, and I am always interested in finding published or unpublished cases that in some way help me to develop my ideas on the subject. I am also interested in constructive critiques of the stance I take toward the subject in the Arnold lecture. If you have such a critique, please send it to me.
You can view a video of the presentation by clicking CTTWC/San Diego.
For the Arnold lecture, I had several slides and several photographs. I include some of the photographs here, of people who are subjects of the four case studies: Dr. Kathryn Hendrix, the fictional Stephanie (as drawn by Susan Philipsen), Richard Rodriguez, and a contemporary version of the fictional character Achilles from Homer’s the Iliad.
I have given earlier versions of a “coming to terms with cultures” lecture at several places, but the Arnold lecture represents my best—and most current—take on the subject. I will be giving further versions of the lecture in the future. I am also working on a way of teaching the subject of the lecture in a more interactive way, and to that end have prepared a study guide, that can be accessed here: CTTWCs Study Guide 2010. Like the lecture, the study guide is a work in progress, and I am interested in responses to the guide as well as to the lecture itself.
The lecture, the guide, and some reading among the sources cited in the lecture should give you a good idea of what is at stake in the project and how I am proceeding. The four photos are important too. Each one personifies a story, and the subject, method, and practice of the coming to terms with cultures project all seem to focus on stories.
In the near future I hope to offer undergraduate and graduate classes or study groups on the subject of coming to terms with cultures. Let me know if you are interested in this.
“Coming to Terms with Cultures” builds upon some of my earlier work, especially, “The Prospect for Cultural Communication,” In D.L. Kinckaid, ed., Communication Theory from Eastern and Western Perspectives, 1987 Academic Press, pp 245-254.
“Cultural Communication,” In William Gudykunst and Bela Mody, Eds., Handbook of International and Intercultural Communication. 2002. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. 51-67.