Culture was seen as the larger umbrella under which communication was covered. Culture was described as a "blueprint", "road map", "imprint" and even "collective unconscious". Culture was seen as particularly important in guiding three critical variables in communication: verbal communication, nonverbal communication, and perception.
Culture provided the meaning for the various forms of communication behaviors, such spoken language or nonverbal gestures, as well as the rules and norms that governed when and how these behaviors should be used. Culture's influence on perception provided clues on how messages were structured and interpreted. As numerous intercultural scholars noted, each culture had its own unique "world view" or means for making sense of the world. (Chen, G. and Starosta, W. 1998).
Perhaps nowhere is the potential for shared growth--or lost insights--more evident than in communication. Since its inception, the multi-disciplinary nature of communication has made it ripe for multi-specializations. While the number of specializations is not surprising, what is surprising is the rate of their growth and the degrees of separation that they are assuming. Increasingly, they appear to be more and more isolated from each other.
Two such fields that on the surface may appear to have little in common are intercultural communication and international public relations. Intercultural communication had its initial birthing pains in the fifties and progressed through a series of self-definitions, theoretical platforms, and methodological debates. Its research focuses on exploring culture's impact on communication behavior at the individual or interpersonal level. International public relations, on the other hand, have only recently emerged as the "hot topic. Finally, while intercultural communication has its roots in the academic field of anthropology, international public relations is very much a product of a practicing profession.
On the surface, the two appear very different. Their degrees of separation are pronounced. One........
