Xiao-Dong Dai
Intercultural Personhood and Identity Negotiation

This paper investigates how intercultural personhood interacts with identity negotiation. Firstly, it defines the concept of intercultural personhood; secondly, it maps out the developing process of intercultural personhood, and finally addresses how intercultural personhood shapes identity negotiation competence. Intercultural persons’ unique qualities lie in their openness to cultural others, the flexible and reflexive thinking, the willingness to negotiate differences, the ability to integrate diverse cultural elements into a coherent whole, as well as the potential to achieve identity extension. Intercultural personhood develops to maturity through three stages: the unconscious, the conscious and the creative. Conscious intercultural personhood constitutes the threshold from which intercultural persons endeavor to go beyond ethnocentrism. In the creative stage, intercultural persons experience a shift of paradigm—from ethnocentric to intercultural, and finally accomplish self-transformation. Mature intercultural persons are competent and creative intercultural negotiators, who can recognize, validate and extend communicators’ identities and enhance mutual growth.


Haibin Dong
Identity Discussion: A Discourse Analysis of the Ingroup Identity Differences Enacted by One Thread of Online Discussions

The current research is a discourse analysis of the enactment of the overseas Chinese ingroup identity through one thread of online discussion on the verdict of a custody dispute between the Chinese biological parents and the American foster parents – the case of Anna Mae. The central topics involve the in-depth ethnographical description of overseas Chinese ingroup identification differences and discourse analysis of how the discursive discourse could reflect, reveal, and reenact intracultural divisions. Through a perspective of implicative interpretation, the saliency and implication of ideology in a context of minimum need for face consideration are discussed in connection with the complexity of cultural identity.


Pinggong Zhang
Rethinking the Impact of Globalization and Cultural Identity in China

Drawing on perspectives of globalization, critical discourse analysis and cultural studies, this paper presents an argumentative discussion on globalization and Chinese cultural identity with a collection of new theoretical and practical evidence from contemporary times. It is believed that neither globalization nor identities are free of the play of power. Both are engaged by the level of participation, inclusion and exclusion of ones over the others. However, a wide range of possibilities of formation of identity can be anticipated in the process of globalization. Changes brought by globalization are of great significance on contemporary Chinese culture, education and social life. It is beneficial not to isolate our culture from other peoples’ culture but to attempt to understand it and relate our own cultural experience to the encountered culture. Doubtlessly, globalization will contribute to human advancement and communication if it makes cultural differences transparent, and thereby, assists in overcoming the revolving problems of cultural misunderstanding, misrepresentation and ignorance.


Chuan-chuan Cheng & Charles Tardy
A Cross-cultural Study of Silence in Marital Conflict

The study investigated the influence of culture on five uses of silence in marital conflict: avoidance of conflict, control of conflict, protection of self-image, protection of other’s self-image, and maintenance of harmony. Data for this study were provided by 146 subjects who have ever been married from Taiwan and the United States. Self-construal only predicted the use of silence to protect self-image. The higher individuals’ interdependent self-construal, the more likely they used silence to protect their spouses’ self-image, and less likely to use silence to protect their own self-image in marital conflict. The effect of culture proved significant on the use of silence in marital conflict, as various other cultural factors accounted for the use of silence in marital conflict. Americans used silence to control conflict and to protect their own self-image in marital conflict. Females more often used silence to avoid conflict and protect their spouses’ self-image than males.


Michael B. Hinner
Culture’s Influence on Business as Illustrated by German Business Culture

National culture influences and determines domestic business culture. This paper focuses on German culture to demonstrate how the national culture has influenced German business culture. Initially, various aspects of German culture are presented including the division and reunion of East and West Germany. With these insights, it becomes clear why German businesses are organized the way they are and why German business people exhibit the behavior they do; hence, demonstrating how culture influences the business culture of a country. The behavioral difference is illustrated with a comparison of German and American approaches to business meetings and problem solving from which it becomes clear that both business cultures exhibit different decision making and communication behavior which can result in misunderstandings.


Aykut Hamit Turan, Selcuk Colakoglu, and Bengu Emine Colakoglu
Perceptional Differences of International News: Western Media Influence on Non-Western Media

The purpose of this research is to present the role of the Western media on non-Western public perceptions. This research focuses on Turkish image and identity in the Korean media. For this study, South Korean English dailies, The Korea Herald and The Korea Times, were classified for three months in 2007 by using content analysis. This period is an appropriate time scale to identify Turkish image in the Korean media. In this research, we used content analysis technique to classify newspaper articles according to mentioned impact types. Our findings indicate that Western media has profound effects on Korean news media and extensively exerts cultural imperialism. Moreover, we found that Western originated news, published in Korean media, communicate less positive message about Turkey. This research clearly indicates that non-Western (Korean) people learn and inquire about another non-Western nation (Turkey) and its identity via Western cultural representation.


Mian R. Wang
An Analysis of Intellectual Property Discourse in Chinese Media

Although attention to intellectual property (IP) in China has increased among Western researchers and policymakers, an in-depth look at the Chinese domestic IP discourse remains desired. By analyzing China’s leading national legal newspaper, Legal Daily, this paper demonstrates the potential wealth of information that can be abstracted from print media on the topic of IP using statistical tools integrated with content analysis. The objectives of this study are: 1) to describe the characteristics of IP discourse in the national legal newspaper; and 2) to identify any trends in the published IP articles. Using exploratory factor analysis, three factors were found to contribute to the underlying structure of IP discourse through published articles in Legal Daily: 1) economic impetus, 2) enforcement structure and practice, and 3) social implementation. Moreover, using Poisson regression models, significant increases in the number of published articles under these three factors and in the overall number of published IP articles were found during the study period.



[Special Section: Conflict Resolution in Chinese Communities]
Guest Editor: Hongmei Gao


Michael David Hazen & Rui Shi
Argument Processes, Harmony and Conflict in Chinese Societies

This paper explores the role of argument processes in contemporary China, beginning with the harmony model of Chinese society, which proposes that people attempt to maintain harmony by avoiding conflict and refraining from engaging in argument especially when it involves disagreement. An examination of recent theoretical and research literature on the role of harmony, conflict and argument in Chinese society leads to the conclusion that the harmony model needs to be more complex to fully explain Chinese society. An exploratory framework is proposed, which uses ideas related to discrepancies between values and behaviors, the role of situations, the dual harmony model, and research on constructive conflict to provide a more nuanced explanation of the relationship between argument, harmony and conflict in Chinese society.


Ming-Yi Wu
Sex, Gender Values, and Expected Leadership Conflict Management Styles in the Taiwanese Public Relations Field

This study examined the relationship among biological sex, gendered values, and expected leadership conflict management styles in the Taiwanese Public relations field. Through the use of a quantitative questionnaire, this study surveyed 104 public relations practitioners (50 male; 54 female) in Taiwan. There is no significant difference in all of the expected leadership conflict management styles, including task-oriented, relational-oriented, and Laissez-Faire conflict management styles, between the two sexes. However, participants’ gendered values, such as gender equality and masculinity, are significantly correlated with expected leadership conflict management styles. The gender equality value is positively correlated with task-oriented conflict management style. The masculinity cultural value is positively correlated with Laissez-Faire leadership conflict management style. The results of this study suggest that practitioners’ gender values, instead of biological sex, have significant influences on expected conflict management styles in the Taiwanese Public Relations field.


Wenshan Jia
The Status of Mediation in Contemporary Chinese Rural Society: A Case Study of Xunyang County, Shaanxi Province, P. R. China

Through the author’s fieldwork and analyses of fourteen cases of mediation sampled throughout Xunyang County, China during the past several years, the Xunyang Model of Mediation is seen to emerge out of a profound integration between traditional Chinese value system and the modern Western culture in the era of great transformations. This model of mediation can be characterized as legally justifiable, economically motivated, harmony-oriented, and rights-minded.. It is a model which strives to both satisfy the people’s needs and gain the government’s trust. It is a bicultural model which is perfecting itself as a subsystem of the Chinese model for development.


Linda M. Johnston & Hongmei Gao
Resolving Conflict in the Chinese and U.S. Realms for Global Business Entities

This paper investigates the differences between American and Chinese conflict management styles and tries to decode areas of cultural differences that can lead to misunderstanding and conflict. In-depth interviews with foreign-born Chinese searching for jobs at American workplace and case studies with executives at American corporations in China were conducted. From analyzing the roots of Chinese culture, Chinese and American cultural differences, American and Chinese conflict management models, the paper proposes two fundamental differences in negotiation: a four-fold difference between the Chinese and Americans that could potentially cause conflict: directness-subtleness, aggressiveness-modesty, courtesy-command, and American-Chinese experiential differences, as well as a difference in the choice of conflict styles and tactics between Chinese and American negotiators. The case study demonstrated that the Chinese subsidiaries of America-based multinational corporations need to be more sophisticated in handling international business conflicts. The findings indicate that there is a strong relationship between Chinese and American value systems and in the choice of conflict-handling styles. Illustrations of how these parameters play out in the workplace and suggestions for both Americans and Chinese in handling conflicts are provided. Examples of how and where disconnects can occur are reviewed, as well as the hierarchy in which the conflict can occur and the potential impact on individuals and conflict resolution systems.

Source: China Media Research