ABSTRACT
IN her essay, Kim seeks to elaborate a truly comprehensive framework integrating concepts from various disciplines with a view to describing interethnic relations from a communication viewpoint. While subscribing to the boundary assumptions of a pragmatic-systemic approach, she seeks to describe interethnic communication “in the most general and simplest way so that isomorphic patterns among various existing concepts across disciplines can be ‘seen’ without being prematurely restricted by specificity” (p. 516). Whereas we welcome attempts at multidisciplinary integration, we feel un- comfortable about the particular directions taken by Kim if they are accepted uncritically. The lack of rigorous “specificity” may result in limited heuristic usefulness. Nevertheless, we share her interest in developing conceptual road maps and our position, which follows our critique of Kim’s below, is com- plementary to the spirit of hers.
