ABSTRACT
In this chapter, Robert Shuter argues for a return to Edward T. Hall’s approach to culture and communication and the restoration of culture to preeminence in theorizing and researching intercultural communication. In his opinion, there is the dearth of investigations on many areas and regions of the world. It is evident from his meta-analysis of published studies that theory validation research based on a nomothetic model dominated the field in the 1980s and the 1990s. Consequently, cross-cultural and intercultural scholarship yielded very few new insights into communication practices of specific ethnic groups, cultures, and world regions. Since 2006, however, the field has witnessed a paradigm shift. With the rise of the critical approach, theory validation research is no longer dominant. Nevertheless, this paradigmatic change did not result in sufficient analyses of world regions such as Europe, West Asia, Africa, and South America. Shuter calls for an intracultural communication imperative, which focuses on forms and functions of communication behaviors of specific co-cultures, countries, and world regions.
