ABSTRACT
In chapter 1, we introduced the idea that culture is enacted in conversation by a community that has knowledge of the behavioral code. Members of the community are said to act competently if they behave in an appropriate and effective fashion. In this chapter, we explore African American communication competence and cultural identity negotiation in both intra-and intercultural settings. First, definitions and approaches to general communication competence are presented and adapted to a cultural perspective. Then we explore the basis for an African American model of competence and examine how this code operates in both intra-and intercultural contexts. Finally, we discuss why the research on communication competence is most apropos for communities outside of the United States and how recent research has introduced a more effective paradigm for explaining intercultural communication in the United States. The paradigm is cultural contracts theory, which considers Ting-Toomey’s extant identity negotiation paradigm to be the metatheory that guides the new approach. This approach is dis-cussed in chapter 6. Power as an interceding variable in human interaction is a key development in the cultural-contracts paradigm. This component seems to have been overlooked in much of the communication competence research to date. We have two goals in this chapter: to explain the code(s) or system(s) of symbols, meanings, and norms by which members of the diverse composite African American community tend to evaluate and enact competent conversation; and to elaborate on how social categorizations and social constructions of race and culture inhibit and/or enhance interaction.
