Critical Intercultural Communication Pedagogy

281 Pages·2017·1.278 MB·English

by  Ahmet Atay (editor), Satoshi Toyosaki (editor)

i
Critical Intercultural
Communication
Pedagogy

Critical Intercultural
Communication
Pedagogy
Edited by
Ahmet Atay and Satoshi Toyosaki
LEXINGTON BOOKS
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Chapter 12: Gloria E. Anzaldúa (2015)
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Contents
Introduction vii
SECTION I: LOCATING CRITICAL INTERCULTURAL
COMMUNICATION PEDAGOGY 1
1 Demarcating the “Critical” in Critical Intercultural
Communication Studies 3
Rona Tamiko Halualani
2 Making a Place: A Framework for Educators Working
with Critical Intercultural Communication and
Critical Communication Pedagogy 11
Jennifer Sandoval and Keith Nainby
3 Intercultural Communication, Ethics, and Activism Pedagogy 27
Leda Cooks
SECTION II: DOING CRITICAL INTERCULTURAL
COMMUNICATION PEDAGOGY 47
4 (Critical) Love is a Battlefield: Implications for
a Critical Intercultural Pedagogical Approach 49
Bernadette Marie Calafell and Robert Gutierrez-Perez
5 Engaging Historical Trauma in the Classroom:
Ethnoautobiography as Decolonizing Practice 65
S. Lily Mendoza
6 Pedagogies of Failure: Queer Communication Pedagogy as
Anti-Normative 81
Benny LeMaster
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vi Contents
7 Pedagogy of the Taboo: Theorizing Transformative
Teaching-Learning Experiences that Speak Truth(s) to Power 97
Mark P. Orbe
SECTION III: UNDERSTANDING THROUGH CRITICAL
INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION PEDAGOGY 113
8 Obstructing the Process of Becoming: Basal Whiteness and the
Challenge to Critical Intercultural Communication Pedagogy 115
Gust A. Yep and Ryan M. Lescure
9 Performing Otherness as an Instructor in the Interracial
Communication Classroom: An Autoethnographic Approach 137
Tina M. Harris
10 Encountering Karma: The Transgressive Adventures
of a Korean-born TCK Pedagogue in the US South 159
Jieyoung Kong
SECTION IV: THINKING THROUGH CRITICAL
INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION PEDAGOGY 177
11 Mediated Critical Intercultural Communication 179
Ahmet Atay
12 Addressing Cultural Intersections: Critical Feminist
Communication Pedagogy 195
Amy Aldridge Sanford and Jennifer V. Martin Emami
13 Dialogue and Intercultural Communication Pedagogy 217
Alberto González and Linsay Cramer
14 Critical Intercultural Communication Pedagogy from
Within: Textualizing Intercultural and Intersectional
Self-Reflexivity 227
Satoshi Toyosaki and Hsun-Yu (Sharon) Chuang
Index 249
About the Editors and Contributors 257
Introduction
Critical Intercultural
Communication Pedagogy
Satoshi Toyosaki and Ahmet Atay
We began our journeys (separately and together) with intercultural commu-
nication long before we took our first intercultural communication courses
in the late 1990s and the early 2000s, and of course long before our concep-
tualization of this book. It is not accidental that our intercultural encounters
within and outside of the United States, particularly in the higher education,
led us to a particular path, a particular type of scholarship. We found cultural
spaces in our intercultural communication courses wherein we were able to
articulate our experiences and issues in relation to race, ethnicity, national-
ity, gender, sexuality, class, ability, and linguistic privileges. The more we
learned about the critical intercultural communication and its commitments to
uncover social and cultural inequalities and unmask oppressive systems and
domination, the more committed we became to interrogating the hegemonic
discourses, practices, and systems in our society, particularly in the US higher
education.
Over the years, we read and worked with critical intercultural communica-
tion and critical communication pedagogy pedagogues, some of whom are
featured in this book. Their ideas, individually and collectively, have been
guiding us as we pave the pathways of this book. In essence, we wanted to
create a fusion of critical intercultural communication and critical communi-
cation pedagogy. Hence, critical intercultural communication pedagogy bor-
rows from these two separate but overlapping areas of scholarship.
In November 2014, after a hectic day at National Communication Asso-
ciation’s annual conference, we met to talk about our frustrations with
issues we had been facing in our classrooms, current and future directions
in intercultural communication and communication pedagogy research, and
finally the lack of scholarship that bridges the gaps in critical intercultural
communication and critical communication pedagogy. That day, we outlined
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viii Introduction
the basic premise of this book: Looking at the different directions or turns
in critical intercultural communication pedagogy. We sketched out the four
critical turns or pillars of critical intercultural communication pedagogy as
we conceptualized the present and the future directions of our scholarship:
Postcolonial, Queer, Feminist, and Mediated turns. We wanted to address
issues of intersectionality, whiteness, languagism, race, nationality, gender
and sexuality, and other identity categories or markings that impact one’s
being and learning in the classroom and higher education. The main question
that guided us was, what are the ways in which we can use the tools of critical
intercultural communication studies in the classroom as pedagogical tactics to
unmask and uncover oppressive systems in our classrooms, our own teaching,
and beyond educational walls?
For this collection, we borrow the two most important commitments of
critical communication pedagogy (Fassett & Warren, 2007), dialogue and
self-reflexivity. This collection conceptualizes them as the heart of critical
intercultural communication pedagogy. In order to empower marginalized
voices, and perhaps bring those voices of the peripheries to the center, we
employ auto-methods and narrative-based research. Finally, in our envision-
ing, critical intercultural communication pedagogy is a dialogic, self-reflexive,
performative, decolonizing approach that aims to highlight oppressive sys-
tems, even in our own thinking and teaching, promotes civility, and commits
to social justice and activism to create positive change.
GENERAL GOALS OF THIS BOOK
Recent critical intercultural communication researchers’ efforts are col-
lected and found in the Handbook of Critical Intercultural Communication
(Nakayama & Halualani, 2010) and other anthologies (Gonzalez & Chen,
2015; Sorrells & Sekimoto, 2016). A recent publication of Critical Autoeth-
nography: Intersecting Cultural Identities in Everyday Life (Boylorn & Orbe,
2014) exemplifies intercultural communication researchers’ ongoing efforts
in capturing, understanding, and possibly changing social worlds from the
critical and intersectional perspectives. Critical intercultural communication
research continues to gain its momentum and legitimacy in the field of inter-
cultural communication, advancing our understandings of plural, diverse,
and political social worlds. Despite some of the abovementioned examples,
monographs or edited collections in critical intercultural communication are
far and between while some journals, such as Journal of International and
Intercultural Communication, are open to critical work.
In order to create a space for critical discussions and to conceptualize
pedagogy(ies) that emerges out of and/or is informed by critical intercultural
Introduction ix
communication theories and research, we edit this anthology. Earlier works
done by Cooks and Simpson (2007) and Warren (2003), among others, have
paved this path. We along with the authors in this collection hope to continue
the labor. The general goals of this collection are:
• This book opens and nurtures a space for pedagogical discussions and
innovations informed by and informing critical intercultural communica-
tion studies.
• This book locates critical intercultural communication pedagogy on the
ongoing scholarly discussions of critical intercultural communication stud-
ies, critical communication pedagogy, and critical pedagogy.
• This book shows embodied practices of critical intercultural communica-
tion pedagogies.
• This book identifies emerging challenges from (critical) intercultural com-
munication classrooms and explore pedagogical responses to them.
• This book also makes various approaches and guidance/cautions of critical
intercultural communication pedagogies available to those who are new to
and continuously innovate their implementations of critical intercultural
communication pedagogy.
CRITICAL INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION PEDAGOGY
Critical intercultural communication pedagogy is a field simultaneously of
interdisciplinary research and practice, founded, envisioned, and struggling
at the productively intertwined intersections among critical intercultural com-
munication studies (Nakayama & Halualani, 2010), critical pedagogy (Freire,
1970), critical communication pedagogy (Fassett & Warren, 2007), critical
theory, feminist theory, postcolonial theory, and many others. We agree with
Jones and Calafell (2012) that critical intercultural communication pedagogy
focuses on “discussions of power in our scholarship and teaching” (p. 961).
Critical intercultural communication pedagogy aims to understand, critique,
transform, and intervene upon the dynamics of power and domination embed-
ded inside and outside classroom walls through careful, complex, nuanced,
and intersectional analyses of educational practices and our identities.
In so doing, critical intercultural communication pedagogy moves back
and forth among multifaceted and interdependent layers of macro, meso, and
microanalyses. In other words, critical intercultural communication pedagogy
embraces an opportunistically interdisciplinary approach while locating the
communicative as modes of analyses, interpretations, transformations, and
interventions. Our disciplinary focus on the communitive in critical intercul-
tural communication pedagogy is important exactly because “power . . . is a