ABSTRACT
Readers and contributors of Language and Intercultural Communication are familiar
with the idea that culture and identity are not fixed and static concepts, but rather
situated in, and constantly changing and evolving according to, the many
communicative situations that form a part of living in a highly malleable globalized
society (e.g. Hua, 2010). In over a decade of scholarship, Language and Intercultural
Communication has published a wide range of theoretical work and empirical studies
that promote the idea that culture and identity should be examined as highly
complex concepts (Holliday, 2010). For example, Jackson’s (2011) examination of a
study abroad trip demonstrates that perceptions of self and others are in a
continuous state of negotiation, and even stereotypical assumptions of cultural
practices are infinitely expandable by interactants (cf. Brandt & Jenks, 2011). The inherently complex nature of culture and identity is a reflection of
technological advancements and migratory trends. While people have migrated for
millennia, technology is now so intertwined with social interaction that commu-
nication across great geographical distances is no longer difficult for most developed
communities and nation-states. Globalization and technological developments have
thus blurred many cultural boundaries, and have forced researchers to reconsider
concepts that were once understood as binary and divergent:
In today’s globalising cultural environment it is increasingly difficult to determine what is truly ‘local,’ ‘indigenous’ or ‘individual’ . . . the compression of time and space that characterises late modernity offers ever greater possibilities for interacting with new ‘Others’ and creating of new ‘Selves.’ (Grimshaw, 2010, p. 256)
The issue of culture and identity is particularly interesting in today’s highly inter-
connected times, as a person can live in one physical place but be in constant
exposure to people from many different parts of the world (Brandt & Jenks, 2011). In
a similar vein, it is not uncommon for geographically dispersed interactants to use
social media and other Internet-based platforms to form and/or maintain commu-
nities (cf. Broughton, 2011). When people are exposed to cultural diversity or use
technology to maintain relations with people that share similar cultural interests,
they are often compelled to evaluate who they are and how this identity is positioned
in relation to their immediate social environment. Flavia Monceri (2009, p. 49) shares
a similar observation in her discussion of a ‘transculturing self’:
. . . the self is not a product but a process, the process namely through which the individual perspective continuously changes together with the world it creates, without any possibility of solidifying as an entity since it is inserted in the flux of becoming . . . The expression ‘transculturing self’ aims to evoke the picture of the individual perspective in the process of its own changing . . .within infinite different contexts and through infinite and reiterative interactions with both internal and external diversity.
