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Artificial intelligence (AI) broadly influences different aspects of human life, especially human communication. One of the main concerns of the broad use of AI in daily interactions among different people could be whether it helps them interact easily or complicates their interactions. To answer the mentioned question, this study assessed the impacts of AI on intercultural communication among postgraduate students in a multicultural university environment. A newly developed survey instrument was used to conduct this study. The participants of this study were 115 postgraduate students from nine different countries. The descriptive statistics, reliability analysis, and Bivariate correlation tests of the 29th version of IBM-SPSS software were used to analyze the quantitative data, and inductive coding and conceptual content analysis were used to code and analyze the qualitative data. Based on descriptive results, the vast majority (93%) of the participants already used and experienced AI in their daily lives, and the majority of them believed that AI and AI technologies connect different cultures, reduce language and cultural barriers, and help people of different cultures to interact and be connected. Based on the results from the correlation test, there were strong positive correlations between AI attitudes and AI benefits, and also between AI regulation and AI benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present article explores the epistemological conditions of intercultural encounters. Based on an analysis of Raimon Panikkar's intercultural hermeneutics, we argue that intercultural encounters cannot take place adequately when they are based on purely rhetorical rationality or rational persuasion. We point to the limitations of grounding intercultural relationships on dialectical dialogue and, therefore, of educating them by simply enhancing discursive capacities. We underline the need for other epistemological conditions that should be fostered in order to move forward on the path to actual interculturality. These can be summarised by what Panikkar calls "conversion", an epistemic framework of love—personal relationality, that goes beyond objectifying rationality—for the communication between (culturally different) subjects. We conclude that the culturally diverse human condition refers to being encountered and being understood on a level that is not merely logical or linguistic. What can be understood of a person with another cultural background goes beyond what can be comprehended by logical rationality or captured by veritative judgements about objects. In other words, in intercultural encounters, ontological, rather than merely logical truth is at stake, which means that the presence of the other can lead to experiences of meaning: it reveals a being that calls for conversion. Conversion demands an ontic action on the part of the subject, not merely an epistemological one, that cancels the violence that rational persuasion might entail. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article systematically reviews the literature (313 articles) on language and communication in international students' cross-cultural adaptation in institutions of higher education for 1994–2021. We used bibliometric analysis to identify the most impactful journals and articles, and the intellectual structure of the field. We used content analysis to synthesize the results within each research stream and suggest future research directions. We established two major research streams: second-language proficiency and interactions in the host country. We found inconclusive results about the role of communication with co-nationals in students' adaptation, which contradicts the major adaptation theories. New contextualized research and the use of other theories could help explain the contradictory results and develop the existing theories. Our review suggests the need to theoretically refine the interrelationships between the interactional variables and different adaptation domains. Moreover, to create a better fit between the empirical data and the adaptation models, research should test the mediating effects of second-language proficiency and the willingness to communicate with locals. Finally, research should focus on students in non-Anglophone countries and explore the effects of remote communication in online learning on students' adaptation. We document the intellectual structure of the research on the role of language and communication in international students' adaptation and suggest a future research agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Forty-two ethnoculturally and gender-matched student focus groups in Nova Scotia Canada were convened at four predominantly white postsecondary institutions to discuss university sexual violence policies and services. We present qualitative data relating to participant perspectives on how campus sexual violence responses should address race, racism, ethnicity, or ethnocentrism shared by students belonging to five racialized cultural communities. All participants cited demonstrated concern about racial or ethnic bias, however their views about the institutional or interpersonal practices that would signal fair rather than biased treatment varied. Practices associated with cultural responsiveness, including ethnocultural matching, were widely advocated. Some participants favoured explicitly race-aware communication from sexual violence responders, consistent with currently dominant anti-racism. In contrast, others preferred that responders not introduce topics of race or racism, instead practicing what might be referred to as colour-blindness. Suggestions linked to the African philosophy of Ubuntu and to cultural humility were also advanced. In conclusion, to address students’ concerns about racism and ethnocentrism, we outline a toolkit approach to the intercultural communication that occurs in the implementation of campus sexual violence policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study discusses a design-thinking approach for a virtual exchange intended to introduce pre-service teachers to global collaboration and empowered learning through the use of educational technology. Principles of design-thinking (i.e., empathy, ideation, and testing) were aligned with broader educational goals of culturally responsive practices and metacognition. Findings suggested that participants in the study (n = 36), pre-service teachers in the US, drew on individual strengths, cosmopolitan interests in global partnership, and problem-solving strategies to leverage educational technology to achieve learning goals. This paper contributes valuable insights, and recommendations for practice, about how to conduct virtual exchanges in higher education and K-12 learning settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, over half a million Chinese students travelled abroad to study, making China the largest source of international students in the global higher education market. A large Chinese population on campus does not, however, generate prolific interactions between them and local students. Language barriers and cultural distance are frequently cited in the literature as factors that hinder communication, yet it is not clear how they actually affect the communication process. To address this gap, we utilise quantitative and qualitative data collected at one Australian university through an online survey (n = 124) and focus groups (N = 16) to investigate how Chinese international students and local students understand and experience intercultural communication. We find that both student groups are quite positive about language and cultural differences but struggle with comprehension problems and low-quality interactions. Intercultural communication requires interlocutors to establish common grounds between language and cultural variations via meaning negotiation. However, being restricted by intracultural practices and norms, students are not able to fully utilise communication techniques to fulfil this need. This, in return, affects their motivations to have further intercultural interactions. The paper concludes by discussing the implications for universities and suggestions for further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nonverbal behavior plays a crucial role in human communication and often leads to misunderstandings between people from different cultures, even if they speak the same language fluently. While translation systems are available for verbal communication, translators for nonverbal communication do not exist yet. We present the conceptual design and an early prototype of a real-time gesture translator using body tracking and gesture recognition in avatar-mediated intercultural interactions. It contributes to the ambitious goal of bridging between cultures by translating culture-specific gestures to enhance mutual understanding. Possible applications of the gesture translator are discussed as a facilitating tool for global business meetings and as a means of technology-enhanced conflict resolution and prevention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Intercultural communication (ICC) between doctors and patients is often associated with misunderstandings and dissatisfaction. To develop ICC-specific medical education, it is important to find out which ICC skills medical specialists currently apply in daily clinical consultations. Methods: Doctor-patient consultations of Dutch doctors with non-Dutch patients were videotaped in a multi-ethnic hospital in the Netherlands. The consultations were analyzed using the validated MAAS-Global assessment list in combination with factors influencing ICC, as described in the literature. Results: In total, 39 videotaped consultations were analyzed. The doctors proved to be capable of practising many communication skills, such as listening and empathic communication behaviour. Other skills were not practised, such as being culturally aware and checking the patient's language ability. Conclusion: We showed that doctors did practice some but not all the relevant ICC skills and that the ICC style of the doctors was mainly biomedically centred. Furthermore, we discussed the possible overlap between intercultural and patient-centred communication. Implications for practice could be to implement the relevant ICC skills in the existing communication training or develop a communication training with a patient-centred approach including ICC skills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This report is meant to summarize the discussion themes introduced in the Fellows Day session of the 9th Biennial Congress of the International Academy of Intercultural Research held in Bergen, Norway June 28, 2015. The report also attempts to summarize some of the participant comments made during the session. Because it is a report and not an original research article, descriptions of concepts are intentionally truncated and referencing is restricted to establishing context more than linking to other contemporary treatments of the issue. Further, the summary of participant comments is necessarily selective and may not reflect the complete intention of the commentator. Participant comments were for the most part informed observations or statements of opinion and are therefore not accompanied by formal references. The Fellows Day session was advertised with the following description: Practitioners of intercultural communication and cross-cultural psychology routinely make the claim that cultural diversity is an asset to teams, organizations, and societies. The more research-oriented among us quote studies that have shown correlations of creativity and heterogeneity of teams, profitability and diversity in corporations, and innovativeness and immigration in societies. These studies serve our purposes, but to what extent are they indicative of a general value of diversity? What is the research that fails to show these correlations or that suggests complex mediating factors? How do we integrate our understanding of immigrant assimilation with the preservation of ethnic diversity? How can we extend the idea of preserving diversity to the realm of mergers and acquisitions in corporations? Is the global village generating homogeneity, or is it really, as McLuhan (Understanding media: the extensions of man. McGraw-Hill, New York, ) put it, that our neighbors will be profoundly different from us? And is that intrinsically good, or do we need to make it good? These and other questions central to our social future are appropriate for consideration by IAIR Fellows. I propose that we do so in three exploratory phases: *The first exploration is of the rhetoric: what we want to believe, what we sell, and how we support that with anecdote and ideology. I am not using "rhetoric" in a pejorative way here; I mean it more like "narrative" or "value proposition" (which is, by the way, the way the term is used by academic rhetoricians). Thus, the idea is to explore the assumptions we are making in claiming that cultural diversity is a good thing. I hope part of this conversation will position our narrative in the largely post-enlightenment, post-modern Western context that is its home, and that is will also explore how the idea of diversity has or has not emerged in other geo/historical contexts. *The second exploration is a more critical view of our claims, seeking both supportive and contradictory theory and research regarding the value of diversity and/or the value of uniformity. I don't mean to juxtapose "reality" in a positive way to "rhetoric." Rather, I mean to invoke the empirical reality of research as a tool to assess and either support or not our rhetorical claims. I hope we can include both quantitative and qualitative and both descriptive and nomothetic forms of research in our consideration, with the goal of seeing how our claims about the value of diversity stand up to systematic observation. * The third phase is reconciliatory, exploring ways to form a dialectic of diversity and unity that would provide us with a more sophisticated guide to practical action in the areas of education, corporate consulting, and intercultural training. In my practical work as a trainer and organizational development consultant, I have observed that no matter how sterling the value of diversity might be, it needs to be reconciled with the frequently more highly valued need for "unity" - shared goals, common procedures, universal policies, etc. Given our discussion of the day, how might we address both sides of this dialectic in practical, effective, and acceptable ways? In other words, where can we go from here... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Fulbright Program, America's flagship educational and cultural exchange activity, has been a much celebrated part of US public diplomacy since 1946. This study examines a tension that has persisted throughout the history of the Fulbright Program between America's information activities and educational–cultural activities. The crisis moments of three bureaucratic reorganisations illustrate this debate: the 1953 establishment of the US Information Agency (USIA), the 1978 creation of the US International Communication Agency and the 1999 closure of the USIA. At each of these moments, the purpose and nature of the Fulbright Program came under scrutiny. An analysis of archival and secondary material reveal the mutually reinforcing relationship between the diplomatic and educational–cultural elements of the programme. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

BACKGROUND: Patients' trust in healthcare providers and institutions has been identified as a likely contributor to racial-ethnic health disparities. The likely influence of patients' cultural characteristics on trust is widely acknowledged but inadequately explored. OBJECTIVE: To compare levels of patients' trust in primary care provider (interpersonal trust) with trust in healthcare organizations (institutional trust) among older American Indians (AIs), and determine associations with cultural identity. DESIGN: Patient survey administered following primary care visits. PARTICIPANTS: Two-hundred and nineteen American Indian patients ≥ 50 years receiving care for a non-acute condition at two clinics operated by the Cherokee Nation in northeastern Oklahoma. MAIN MEASURES: Self-reported sociodemographic and cultural characteristics. Trust was measured using three questions about interpersonal trust and one measure of institutional trust; responses ranged from strongly agree to strongly disagree. Finding substantial variation only in institutional trust, we used logistic generalized estimating equations to examine relationships of patient cultural identity with institutional trust. KEY RESULTS: Ninety-five percent of patients reported trusting their individual provider, while only 46 % reported trusting their healthcare institution. Patients who strongly self-identified with an AI cultural identity had significantly lower institutional trust compared to those self-identifying less strongly (OR: 0.6, 95 % CI: 0.4, 0.9). CONCLUSIONS: Interpersonal and institutional trust represent distinct dimensions of patients' experience of care that may show important relationships to patients' cultural characteristics. Strategies for addressing low institutional trust may have special relevance for patients who identify strongly with AI culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper conceptualizes Hopson's notion of crash moments by exploring an intercultural interaction (between an individual who identifies as heterosexual and another who identifies as homosexual) within a graduate classroom by drawing on cultural schema theory and critical incident analysis. Ultimately, this paper deconstructs a communication breakdown through a self-reflexive process in which the researcher was 'outed' (someone else disclosed the sexual orientation of a lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgendered individual in a public setting) by a classmate-which the researcher deems as a problematic occurrence, making the incident critical and fitting for analysis within an intercultural communication context. This paper also considers the complexities of sexual identity negotiation as an African American female lesbian at a Historically Black College/University. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I propose a few epistemological and methodological reflexions to account for intercultural daily communication. These reflexions emerged during a sociological research in Mendoza, Argentina, with Huarpes Indigenous students at the University of Cuyo. I observed that Indigenous people became quasi 'ethnographers' of diverse environments. To make intelligible their classmates' behavior, and to account for their own behavior, Huarpes follow, in diverse environments and interactions, public rules of meaning. The objective of this paper is twofold: (a) to stress the methodological scope of ordinary communication and ordinary reasoning in order to study understanding between people from different groups and categories, and (b) to contest a kind of 'pessimist' standpoint in social sciences and philosophy according to which the use of ordinary language reduces possibilities for understanding. Interviews, participant observation in natural situations, and a review of literature about language and understanding are the basis of this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

South Africa is 15 years into democracy, but difficult dialogues about race, ethnicity, and other cultural differences are hindered when students are developmentally unprepared to handle them. Although institutions of learning have been painfully aware of the racial, cultural and ethnic divides on their campuses, no real strategies or policies have been put into place to ensure integration. This study started with problems that my colleagues in the Faculty of Science at a university in South Africa were experiencing with the lack of interaction and communication among the first year students in their large and diverse classrooms. They were also concerned that their students did not know how to deal with diversity and they wanted to graduate students who would be successful in their professional careers in a multicultural environment. This study found that using an action research approach was particularly successful in teaching Communication and in encouraging intercultural communication as lessons learned could be built upon or learned from in order to plan the next phase of intervention. The continual interactions during the various phases typical of the action research approach used, enabled the unearthing of feelings, problems and issues which would otherwise not have surfaced in the normal classroom where students are merely lectured. By transforming method and methodology, students and educators were exposed to new and different ways of being. This paper therefore reports on how a course in Communication was developed to facilitate communication and interaction between the different cultures and race groups in a Science classroom using an action research approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study was to examine interactional styles of general practitioners (GPs) in consultations with Dutch patients as compared to ethnic minority patients, from the perspective of level of mutual understanding between patient and GP. Data of 103 transcripts of video-registered medical interviews were analyzed to assess GPs’ communication styles in terms of involvement, detachment, shared decision-making and patient-centeredness. Surveys were used to collect data on patients’ characteristics and mutual understanding. Results show that overall, GPs communicate less adequately with ethnic minority patients than with Dutch patients; they involve them less in decision-making and check their understanding of what has been discussed less often. Intercultural consultations are thus markedly distinguishable from intracultural consultations by a lack of adequate communicative behavior by GPs. As every patient has a moral and legal right to make informed decisions, it is concluded that GPs should check more often whether their ethnic minority patients have understood what has been said during the medical consultation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the ways in which group identifications and stereotypes can inform our understanding of cancer treatment and survivorship, as well as the more general social processes surrounding the communicative experiences of older adult Russians diagnosed with cancer, by providing a theoretical essay (with some modest illustrative data) to shed light on salient cross-cultural health and identity issues. Utilizing an approach grounded in social identity theory, it describes the ways in which understanding primary identities associated with large social collectives such as cultural groups, secondary identities associated with health behaviors and tertiary identities associated with a cancer diagnosis can help explain certain cancer-related social processes. Subtle cultural differences in approaches to health care, particularly with older adult populations, are likely influenced by assumptions embedded in their economic, social, and political systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]