ABSTRACT
Scholars have emphasized the necessity for improving intercultural competence and skills, given the continued expansion of the global marketplace and increases in the numbers of tourists and students in study abroad programs (e.g., Cushner & Brislin, 1996; Gallois & Callan, 1997). This necessity is further magnified by expanded conceptionsof intercultural communication to embrace awider variety of intergroupcontexts, including communication with the elderly (e.g., Fox & Giles, 1993; Harwood, Giles,&Ryan, 1995), between thoseof different sexual orientations (seeHerek, 1991), or genders (e.g., Tannen, 1990) and with persons who are physically challenged (see Emry & Wiseman, 1987; Fox & Giles, 1996), such as the deaf (see Shearer, 1984), to name a few. Given these trends, this chapter is an attempt to enrich our understanding of intercultural communication competence, in part by systematically applying models derived from intergenerational communication. The resulting framework is a culture-general, theoretical alternative that may be successfully invoked to analyze communication between various social and cultural groups. The development of new intercultural communication theory is important given the view that theory in this area of inquiry is underdeveloped, leading a number of scholars to propound the need for more robust frameworks (e.g., Gudykunst & Nishida, 1989; Kim, 1988; Wiseman, 1995).
