ABSTRACT
Tracing back the history of interest in studying intercultural communication across time is difficult not only for historical reasons, but for the multiplicity of locations, approaches, and scholarly traditions that can be identified as having had research interests in intercultural communication. As Martin, Nakayama, and Carbaugh (2012, 17) put it: “The study of intercultural communication and applied linguistics developed in different ways at different times in various world regions, with scholars in each region following particular research trajectories, including accepted practices as well as disjunctures.” Martin, Nakayama, and Carbough (ibid.) argue that even the works of scholars such as Charles Darwin, Sigmund Freud, and Karl Marx could be viewed as instrumental to laying the foundations of research and thinking in the area of intercultural communication. This overview, therefore, is not intended as a thorough historical review but as simply providing a brief backdrop to traditional research in the area of intercultural communication, as a preamble for the current volume.
