Locating Diversity in

Communication Studies
AMARDO RODRIGUEZ Syracuse University
DEVIKA CHAWLA Ohio University
There is a common perception in academia that overly generous affir-
mative action programs have given rise to remarkable diversity on college
campuses. Tbe reality, of course, is anything but so, as every report con-
tinues to show that historically marginalized and disenfranchised peoples
face daunting obstacles both inside and outside the university (Antonio,
2002; "Educating," 2003; Milem, 2000; Viernes Tumer, 2000). In
Communication Studies, the situation remains bleak, with many major
communication departments yet to promote and tenure a minority candi-
date. The arguments, of course, are many, such as the supposedly thin
pool of viable candidates who can flourish in supposedly the most rigor-
ous programs. But only a few persons can continue to take these argu-
ments seriously (Hu-DeHart, 2000).
Our position in this paper is that the diversity problem tbat faces
Communication Studies is much more profound than merely a numerical
lack of historically marginalized and disenfranchised persons. We focus
on the ordinary ways that the status quo in Communication Studies
undermines a richer and fuller understanding of diversity. Although we
acknowledge the need to increase the number of persons from historical-
ly marginalized groups in Communication Studies, and support every
program available to do so, we believe that the diversity problem is fun-
damentally epistemological ratber than merely racial. It is about a disci-
plinary unwillingness to allow Other understandings of Communication
Studies that reflect Other worldviews to flourish, as such understandings
inherently challenge the status quo within the field. These Other under-
standings and worldviews are by no means purely reflective of different
minority groups. In our view, this is a dangerous assumption that per-
vades diversity discoursesthat is, reducing diversity to differences, to
something one possesses by merely being of a different race, ethnicity,
33
34 Intercultural Communication in a Transnational World
sexuality, and so forth. We can theoretically add such differences but yet
achieve no diversity (Hu-DeHart, 2000). What emerges is plurality.
Plurality looks like diversity, and can even behave like diversity; but unlike
diversity, plurality neither pushes us to look at the world anew nor enriches
the human experience. Diversity as a process is inherently organic, where-
as plurality is fundamentally inorganic. A few more distinctions must be
made about these two processes.
Plurality is about addition, accommodation, and inclusion. For this rea-
son, it poses no threat to the status quo by undermining the openness and
suspicion (of our own truths) that is vital to look at the world in new ways,
including those that are in every way contrary to our own. An example of
pluralistic thinking is aptly seen in the recent call for papers in the Journal
of Intercultural Communication Research (JICR): "JICR publishes qualita-
tive and quantitative research that focuses on the interrelationship between
culture and communication. Submitted manuscripts may report results
from either cross-cultural comparative research or results from other types
of research concerning the ways culture affects human symbolic activities."
By embracing both qualitative and quantitative research, the joumal
undoubtedly appears to be inclusive of different kinds of research.
However, it makes no mention of research that falls outside of this tradition-
al axis, such as thinking that is against method and thereby has no discov-
eries or results to report? In fact, what about research that rejects the dual-
ity of theory and method and therefore makes no distinction between the
theoretical and the empirical? Such scholarship would most likely come
from persons who come from non-dualistic cultural orientations. How is it
that such research, and the persons who embody such research, are unwel-
come in a joumal about culture and published by the World Communication
Association (WCA), where members "are convinced that to maintain peace
throughout the world there must be a mutual understanding among people
of the world that grows from individual and group interaction." Indeed,
WCA believes "that one effective way to begin this worldwide exchange is
by establishing individual and scholarly contacts among people and across
all national and cultural boundaries." Unfortunately, the WCA undermines
this important mission by downplaying or simply missing the rich and
boundless diversity that resides within the human experience and within
supposedly homogenous groups.
More importantly, how and why did the study of culture come to be
reduced to either cross-cultural comparisons and interactions or the ways
that culture affects our symbolic activities? Again, what about types of
scholarship that reject the assumptions that guide this research program.
Locating Diversity in Communication Studies 35
such as those investigations that view culture as a mode of spiritual
embodying rather than merely a tool of meaning-making (Anzalda, 1987;
Bhabha, 1994; Conquergood, 2002; Rodriguez, 2001). That is, what is the
possibility of scholarly contacts where there is no nurturance of Other mod-
els of scholarship, especially those that challenge the status quo? Our posi-
tion in this paper is that diversity is about disruption, confrontation, and rev-
olution. It poses a threat to the order of things by pushing us to promote
rather than merely accommodate, tolerate, and bridgenew ways of being
that affirm life. Promoting diversity involves, among other things, disman-
tling structures and arrangements that block such processes, as well as pro-
moting environs and practices that invite modes of being that are yet to
form. Therefore, diversity is about possibility and the forces that promote
possibility.
We contend that the diversity project has been co-opted by the plurality
project and, as a result, has been depoliticized and neutralized. Even though
more communication departments may come to have increasing numbers of
historically marginalized and disenfranchised persons, and thereby claim
diversity, such additions can also potentially work to mask our own com-
plicity in promoting a status quo that is hostile to diversity. Indeed, the goal
of inclusion constitutes the most insidious threat to diversity by promoting
and even reifying the belief that inclusion is possible without dismption,
confrontation, and evolution. We believe that such a reality is ecologically
impossible. Inclusion outside of dismption, confrontation, and evolution is
moral regression. This regression consfitutes the neutering and assimilating
of that which makes us most different from one another.
In this paper we look at the ordinary ways that the status quo in
Communication Studies undermines diversity and disguises plurality as
diversity. Our analysis is twofold. In the first section, we show how job
descriptions in Communication Studies, including those for intercultural
communication positions, limit diversity in the field by perpetuating an
impoverished understanding of culture. In doing this, we interrogate the
supposed divide between communication scholarship and intercultural
communication scholarship. Our contention is that communication schol-
arship is never acultural. Moreover, how does this illusion work to promote
stmctures and ideologies in Communication Studies that are hostile to
diversity, such as the illusory divide between communication theory and
intercultural communication theory? We confine our analysis to the social
science sub-disciplines of Communication Studies, as these constitute most
of the job positions each year. Also, these sub-disciplines warrant focused
examination and critique because they often identify themselves as the cen-
36 Intercultwal Communication in a Transnational World
ter of the field, or are commonly viewed as such, and therefore play a dom-
inant role in framing communication studies.
The second section of this paper looks at how intercultural communica-
tion textbooks legitimize these structures and ideologies by perpetuating the
division between communication theory and intercultural communication
theory, by re-legitimizing a narrow view of diversity, and by promoting
models of communication that hinder diversity. Our analysis, in some
ways, parallels another conducted by Ashcraft and Allen (2003), who
recently scmtinized the construction of race in organizational communica-
tion textbooks and found that "the field's most common ways of framing
race ironically preserve its racial [white] foundation" (p. 5). In the third
section of this paper we introduce an emergent framework that allows us to
make a theoretically rigorous distinction between diversity and plurality.
We conclude the essay with a discussion of communication and diversity.
As we begin our analysis, we want to emphasize that we do so with great
respect for our colleagues in the field of Communication Studies, the
authors of the textbooks we review, as well as colleagues in our respective
institutions. In fact, it is because we use and value these processes and texts
that we have chosen to represent them in this analysis. Moreover, we main-
tain that we are often complicit in promoting similar ideologies of differ-
ence and diversity; yet we continue to consider them problematic, and there-
fore have decided to present a critical analysis of the discourses of power
which frame diversity and difference in job descriptions and textbooks. Our
goals here are mainly to illuminate, explore, and thereby provoke conversa-
tions about these matters across the field.
Job Descriptions and the Field of Communication Studies
Job descriptions in any field or discipline provide us with an overview
of a field's terrain and topography. In Communication Studies, as in any
other field, job descriptions give us a sense of the kind of faculty who are
required, preferred, and even encouraged to join academic programs. These
descriptions are also about how resources are distributed within colleges
and departments. Moreover, job descriptions control academic access to the
outside world and are a sieve through which appropriate candidates are
screened and categorized.
At the same time, job descriptions give us a good idea about the people
who will get appointments and the type of scholars who will be supported.
They reveal also the type of research that will be welcomed at an institution,
how curriculums will be stmctured, what courses one might teach, what
L o c a t i n g D i v e r s i t y i n C o m m u n i c a t i o n S t u d i e s 3 7
kinds of instructors students will be exposed to in a classroom, and how dis-
sertations and theses will be guided. Job descriptions also give us the tra-
jectory of a field by setting in place various push and pull forces, as in
revealing what areas of study are in vogue and what graduate students
should be studying. In fact, we know from the way job descriptions are
written what might be expected of us in terms of teaching loads and other
obligations. Where one gets a job often tells us whether a person will be
able to sustain a research program or whether one might get caught up in
overwhelming teaching assignments that leave no time or room for an aca-
demic to pursue research.
In a Focauldian sense, job descriptions may be considered the gatekeep-
ers of a discipline. Inasmuch as they are ordinary and mundane artifacts,
they enact the most entrenched institutional discourse about any field by
being the most visible descriptions about how a discipline is constituted
(outside of periodicals and textbooks). These descriptions perform a disci-
plining function by demanding that the status quo be adhered to. For exam-
ple, minority candidates tend to be professionally boxed as persons of color
who are casually cast as experts in all matters intercultural, and, too often,
only invited for positions that focus on race, ethnicity, and intercultural
communication (Hu-DeHart, 2000). Such persisting experiences reinforce
our belief that job descriptions remain a vital discourse in the examination
of how a field defines diversity, culture, and cultural practices. In job
descriptions we see institutional discourses of power on displayin terms
of who gets the jobs, what and who are cast as mainstream, ways in which
difference and diversity are defined, and in tum how these inevitably
become replicated in textbooks inside the classroom (a matter examined in
the second portion of this paper). Job descriptions can be considered mech-
anisms of deflection that departments develop in order to propagate one
view of diversity, culture, and communication.
Our analysis uses communication job descriptions for the last three aca-
demic years (2003-2006) from two sources^/jecira, the monthly newslet-
ter published by the National Communication Association, and CRTNET
(Communication Research and Theory Network), an online information
service facilitated by NCA (number of job advertisements = 75, 25 from
each year). Specifically, we analyzed job advertisements spanning all types
of positions within the social science sub-disciplines in communication
studies, including health communication, organizational communication,
social influence, intercultural communication, and interpersonal communi-
cation. Our goal in the analysis was, first, to look at the ways in which
diversity was framed in all the job descriptions and, second, to look closely
38 Interculturl Communication in a Transnational World
at the intercultural communication job descriptions to see how well these fit
with the dominant discourses about diversity that are perpetuated in 'main-
stream' advertisements. Finally and broadly, we sought to show tbe inher-
ent contradiction present in the descriptions, which claim to seek diversity
yet control and limit it by promoting overly rigid epistemological and
methodological guidelines for candidates.
We first assessed how diversity was mentioned across all job postings
and made a few early and obvious observations. Every job posting bad
paragraphs that expressed the university's commitment to diversity and
encouraged minority persons to apply. Indeed, more than 80 percent of
these postings contained the phrases, "Women and minorities are encour-
aged to apply," and/or this University is "an equal opportunity employer."
Others took it one step further and offered caveats that tend to give tbe
impression that minority candidates will be favored, such as the following:
[Our university] is an equal opportunity educational institution and as such does
not discriminate on grounds of race, color, sex, national origin, age, sexual ori-
entation, or status as a disabled or Vietnam era veteran. X is committed to
increasing the diversity of its faculty and senior administrative positions.
***
[Our university] is committed to excellence and actively supports cultural diver-
sity. To promote this endeavor, we invite individuals who contribute to such
diversity to apply, including minorities, women, GLBT, persons with disabilities
and veterans.
***
[Our university] is committed to a pluralistic campus community through affir-
mative action and equal opportunity, and is responsive to the needs of dual career
couples. We assure reasonable accommodation under the Americans with
Disabilities Act.
These sentences and caveats reveal many serious implications about the
way that diversity is cast, understood, and perpetuated inside most commu-
nication departments. In our reading of tbese job descriptions, diversity is
understood as difference, as access to people from Other worlds who differ
from the mainstream in color, ethnicity, and/or sexuality. There seems to be
a notion that diversity can only be achieved by the addition of people who
take responsibility for intemational and intercultural perspectives, thereby
meeting the various pedagogical and social needs of minority students.
Difference is related to physical shape, space, place, geography, and sexual
orientation rather than to a relational, interactional, and communicational
process. It becomes merely a function of category, an added category.
Locating Diversity in Communication Studies 39
It follows from the way that diversity is framed that it is these Other folks
who will diversify a department, while the rest already there are 'mainstream.'
Yet, this is a threshold of diversity because even though Others are strongly
urged to apply, every applicant must 'fit' with the ideology of the department
in terms of theory, methodology, and so on. For instance, most job positions
that include caveats for diversity, equality, affirmative action, and so on, seek
only candidates whose scholarly and teaching interests align with the status
quo of the respective programs. There is no apparent recognition that no epis-
temology can ever be unhinged from an ontology (Bhabha, 1994; Minh-ha,
1989; Ong, 1988; Rodriguez, 2006). To insist that an epistemological posi-
tion be upheld or remain privileged is to insist that an ontological position also
be upheld and privileged. Therefore, to demand that Other peoples uphold a
certain epistemological orientation or suffer punitively in terms of resources
and opportunities undermines any possibility of diversity. Ashcraft and Allen
(2003), who propose a similar argument in their analysis of race in organiza-
tional communication texts, tell us that "the ways in which we routinely frame
race preserve the Whiteness of the field, even as we claim to do otherwise"
(p. 6). They suggest that complex accounts of race will continue to elude
organizational Communication Studies unless its scholars problematize the
ways in which the "dominance and invisibility of Whiteness" (p.7) is con-
structed. In the context of the framing of culture, consider the specifications
for the following two positions:
The Department of Communication at the University of X is seeking to hire fac-
ulty members in two areas: (1) intercultural communication; (2) persuasion and
social influence.
Position 1. Assistant or Associate Professor in Intercultural Communication.
The successful candidate will have expertise in quantitative approaches to inter-
cultural communication. In addition, the successful candidate will have the abil-
ity to teach quantitative research methods, statistical analysis, and/or mathemat-
ical modeling of communication processes.
Position 2. Assistant, Associate, or Full Professor in Persuasion and Social
Influence. The successful candidate will have expertise in quantitative
approaches to persuasion and social influence (e.g., negotiation and conflict
management, political communication, message design and production, compli-
ance gaining). In addition, the successful candidate will have the ability to teach
quantitative research methods, statistical analysis, and/or mathematical model-
ing of communication processes.
***
The School of Communication invites applicants for multiple tenured and
tenure-track faculty positions. Candidates may be generalists or have specializa-
tions in one or more of the following contexts: Mass Communication;
40 Intercultural Communication in a Transnational World
Interpersonal Communication; Communication Technology; Health
Communication; Political Communication; Organizational Communication.
While we already have a firm presence in these areas, we are looking for col-
leagues who have an interest in helping us develop an even stronger program.
The School is committed to empirical, social-scientific research on communica-
tion processes, either basic or applied.
Accompanying these advertisements were also standard caveats about the
university's commitment to diversity. In these cases, the departments have
devised job descriptions that promote plurality by disallowing persons who
bring fundamentally different epistemological perspectives to the study of
the advertised areas. This formal disallowing of Other perspectives is a
devaluing of those perspectives. Indeed, what is most striking about these
ads is the unwillingness of these departments even to consider Other possi-
ble ways of studying and theorizing about the advertised communication
areas. Prominent across all job descriptions, this pattern reinforces the gate-
keeping funcfion these job ads perform and shows clearly that these descrip-
tions function as a control mechanism that ultimately requires Others to
comply with the overarching ideology of a department. Such advertisements
lead to creating win-win situations for departments if job searches are suc-
cessfulacademic units are applauded and often rewarded for making diver-
sity/minority hires, while the status quo in these units remain intact. Adding
categorically diverse faculty merely constitutes 'demographic diversity,'
which does nothing to ensure racial, ethnic, gendered, or cultural equality in
the workplace (Daniels et al, 1997; Zak, 1994). This practice also does
nothing to produce epistemological diversity.
However, what is arguably most compelling is the fact that this ideologi-
cal and epistemological disciplining is found in many advertisements for
intercultural communication positions, such as the following:
We are seeking faculty to teach and conduct research in Intemational and
Intercultural communication, particularly related to health and risk communica-
tion. Qualified applicants should have a social scientific focus, a background in
quantitative research methods, and expertise to teach both graduate and under-
graduate courses. We are seeking candidates with strong potential for a success-
ful career in grant-supported research and who will provide mentorship for grad-
uate students.
***
Tenure-track Assistant Professor in Intercultural Communication, to begin Fall
2006. Basic requirements: Ph.D., active research program, collegiate teaching
experience, and ability to teach undergraduate/graduate courses in intercultural
Locating Diversity in Communication Studies 41
communication, inu-oductory courses in theory and/or research and courses in
area of specialization.
***
Assistant Professor in Persuasion and Social Influence or in Intercultural
Communication. The successful candidate will be able to teach and engage in
research in persuasion and social influence from a cognitive approach (e.g.,
negotiation and conflict management, political communication, message design
and production, compliance gaining) or in intercultural communication. The
successful candidate will have the ability to teach quantitative research methods,
statistical analysis, and/or mathematical modeling of communication processes.
Expertise in health communication or risk communication is desirable.
The above intercultural communication job descriptions show quite clear-
ly the gate-keeping role that job descriptions play in the everyday life of a
communication department. These jobs ads are all written in ways that limit
the scholarship that can potentially occur in these departments by requiring
applicants to adhere to an epistemological stance as dictated by the depart-
ment. With these ads there is simply no opportunity for persons with differ-
ing worldviews to present an alternative way of understanding these areas.
These departments have already determined what type of epistemology is
superior and the worldviews to which students in these departments will be
introduced. By hierarchically imposing a certain epistemology, these depart-
ments are also dictating which human practices will be conceptualized and
theorized, including what will be defined as communicative behavior. Yet,
from an epistemological standpoint, every way of framing negates other
ways of framing. Thus to insist or promote one way of understanding is to
block the growth of other ways of understanding.
But intercultural communication positions should arguably allow for the
most epistemological and methodological fiexibility, as intercultural com-
munication should at least begin with the premise that the world is rich with
peoples who hold different views, including different systems of under-
standing, experiencing, and framing the world. Accordingly, the study of
these peoples may most likely involve epistemologies and methodologies
that are different from those in the mainstream of Communication Studies.
Thus, any commitment to understand the world's many different peoples
must at least refiect an openness to the epistemology and methodology that
is most amenable to the understanding of different groups. In this regard,
intercultural communication should demand the most epistemological and
methodological diversity. It is also hurt the most by the lack of such diver-
sity. In fact, when communication departments and schools undercut diver-
sity by insisting on only recruiting persons of a certain epistemological and
42 Intercultural Communication in a Transnational World
methodological orientation, these departments and schools undercut tbe
mission of our discipline to introduce our students to all the possible epis-
temologies and methodologies necessary to understand and leam from dif-
ferent peoples, and to be a discipline that welcomes peoples from all cor-
ners of the world who come to the study of communication from different
epistemological and methodological persuasions.
Another fallout of these stringent epistemological boundaries is the cre-
ation of a bifurcation between 'mainstream' and 'cross-cultural' job posi-
tions, which manufactures a cultural dividea. divide that is by no means
balanced because one group is privileged over another. Culture begins to
get isolated into a separate realm, leaving intact the illusion that mainstream
courses and scholarship are acultural. In this way, these job announcements
further reify a division of labor among academicsthose who do cultural
work and those who do mainstream work. The strongest implication of
such maneuvers is that culture gets assigned to certain classes. It also gives
license to 'mainstream' faculty who teach the so-called mainstream cours-
es, which merely give a nod to 'multicultural' perspectives. On a resonat-
ing note, Ashcraft and Allen (2003) report that in organizational communi-
cation studies, race is relegated to a portion of tbe class and often postponed
to be covered at the end of a text. They further assert that "when race is dis-
cussed it appears to be the unique interest of the people of color, manifest
as a static identity variable with relatively predictable effects on one's per-
spective and behavior" (Ashcraft & Allen, 2003, p. 10). We wholehearted-
ly concur with these authors; our assessment of diversity as addition show-
cases bow diversity is depoliticized and neutralized. In the context of cul-
ture and communication, this addition and division have grave intellectual
implications for communication theory, because both operate on the
assumption that there is theory and then there is intercultural theory, and
that mainstream theories cater to one singular culturein this case, the
dominant mainstream.
There are various other implications of this cultural divide. In too many
cases, persons of historically marginalized groups, when interviewed and
hired, are placed in tbe category of 'intercultural experts' who will take care
of and guard the diversity curriculum. Indeed, any cursory look at most
departments of cotnmunication finds such persons covering the diversity
courses. Once again difference is simplified into ontological categories of
people, places, courses, and so on. Difference becomes diversity, tolerance,
and multiculturalism. It is rarely acknowledged or investigated as a process
Locating Diversity in Cotnmunication Studies 43
created by communicative, rhetorical, and performance practices. This lack
of interrogation allows communication departments to maintain a status quo
tbat surely will face no threat from the rise of fundamentally new ways of
understanding and experiencing the worid. In this case, diversity is sacri-
ficed for the promise of predictability. Our analysis revealed the persistence
of this ideology within the job advertisements. In fact, only one out of 75
positions framed diversity in intellectual and relational ways, thus giving us
a glimpse at some possibilities, yet all the while reinforcing how scarce
such a worldview is within the field:
[Our university] seeks an associate professor in the area of race/ethnicity and com-
munication in the Department of Communication. We seek faculty committed to
our department's principles of intellectual and cultural pluralism, interdisciplinary
theorizing, diverse methods of inquiry, public scholarship and community engage-
ment, and innovation through collaboration among faculty and students.
This advertisement was the exception. In nearly all the Interculturai
Communication positions under review, diversity was dealt with as a cate-
gory of difference, and culture as something that occurs outside of our
human interactions. In a majority of descriptions, culture and diversity are
constructed as nouns rather than verbsthat is, as stable processes versus
continually occurring natural processes which constitute all persons in any
society. These advertisements never seem to recognize or acknowledge tbat
all categories leak, change, and evolve (Minh-ha, 1989). There is no men-
tion of or concern with what is commonly referred to in most disciplines as
a cosmopolitan perspective in wbich diversity is "more wary of traditional
enclosures and favors voluntary affiliations. It is a movement that promotes
multiple identities, emphasizes the dynamic and changing nature of many
groups, and is responsive to the potential for creating more cultural combi-
nations" (HoUinger, 1995, p. 3).
At the same time job advertisements are not the only places where
Communication Studies undermines diversity and disguises plurality as
diversity. Interestingly, many intercultural communication textbooks also
engage in tbis undermining and disguising by perpetuating many question-
able assumptions. What emerges is an intercultural communication theory
and pedagogy that lacks the rigor and sophistication to deal generously with
the increasing diversity that the world is imposing on us as our spaces and
distances collapse and implode. We explore this matter in the following
section of this paper.
44 Intercultural Communication in a Transnational World
Intercultural Communication Textbooks
Textbooks are arguably the most important books in our society.
Disseminating the knowledge that is vital to maintaining the status quo,
textbooks are required to be read and leamed, for students must acquire the
education necessary to succeed in our society. Moreover, textbooks are
ubiquitous, covering nearly every subject and every level of education. In
fact, as they define and perpetuate what is appropriate knowledge and, in so
doing, shape what is appropriate and possible, textbooks are guardians of a
society. In this way, textbooks are crucial objects of analysis because they
"disseminate a field's canon of knowledge" (Ashcraft & Allen, 2003, p. 7;
see also Altbach, 1991; Kuhn, 1970; Litvin, 1997). Further, textbooks inad-
vertently take on the role of disciplining "undergraduate and graduate stu-
dents with respect to the field's dominant theories and interests" (Ashcraft
& Allen, 2003, p. 7). Agger (1991), a sociologist who undertook a critical
study of sociology textbooks, concluded that introductory texts socialize
both the students as well as the faculty members who teach them.
Exploring this relationship. Agger (1991) points out:
many graduate students and junior faculty members are acculturated to our com-
mon disciplinary assumptions by teaching through the chapters of the introduc-
tory books. In this sense, pedagogy merges with professional socialization,
underlining the disciplinarily constitutive nature of textbooks. The books not
only reflect the discipline, they also help to reproduce it in the way in which they
expose graduate students and faculty to the consensus underlying the dominant
approach to epistemology, methodology and theory, (pp. 107-108)
However, textbooks generally manage to avoid the scrutiny that should
come with such infiuence. Then again, textbooks achieve this invisibility
by seeming to be objective, authoritive, and neutralthat is, texts devoid of
human subjectivity.
It is precisely this neutrality that makes textbooks so problematic. No
book, even a textbook, is devoid of human subjectivity. Every textbook
refiects a vision of how the world is and how the world should be. Also,
every textbook, especially an intercultural communication text, through
reinforcing and promoting a vision of the world, reinforces various struc-
tures and arrangements of power and privilege that are complementary to
such a vision of the world. In this way, the power of textbooks can be found
in what is never addressed in our textbooks. That is, what visions of the
worid are never introduced, and what is the cost to the worid of these exclu-
sions?
Locating Diversity in Communication Studies 45
In order to focus our analysis, we chose eight textbooks based on a few
guiding criteria. All the textbooks were book-length manuscripts that syn-
thesize intercultural communication and frame it as a field. Second, we
chose texts that target both undergraduate and graduate students. For
instance, our sample ranged from texts that include introductory theoretical
frames meant primarily for undergraduates to other more sophisticated text-
books that could potentially be used in graduate-level classes. All of these
chosen textbooks are widely used in the discipline. Finally, and most
importantly, these textbooks represent many different methodological and
conceptual perspectives on intercultural communicafion. We believe that
surveying this plurality of perspectives is vital to understanding the arche-
ology of intercultural communication theory. In this section we focus upon
how intercultural textbooks also undermine diversity and disguise plurality
as diversity by re-legitimizing assumptions that align our understanding of
diversity with physical places and spaces.
Our review of numerous intercultural textbooks (including Hall's Among
Cultures; Gudykunst's Cross-cultural and Intercultural Communication;
Gudykunst and Kim's Communication with Strangers; Weaver's Culture,
Communication and Conflict; Rogers and Steinfatt's Intercultural
Communication; Gudykunst's Theorizing about Intercultural
Communication; Cooper, Calloway-Thomas, and Simonds' Intercultural
Communication; Klopf and McCroskey's Intercultural Communication
Encounters; Martin and Nakayama's Intercultural Communication in
Contexts; Neuliep's Intercultural Communication; and Samovar, Porter,
and McDaniel's Intercultural Communication, and Communication
Between Cultures) found many common themes and assumpfions. All these
texts begin with the assumption that cultures make for differences, such as
peoples' sharing different beliefs, values, fears, norms, expectations, truths,
and, ultimately, different behaviors. For example. Klopf and McCroskey
(2007) contend that "Unless we know the rules of other cultures' practices,
we will discover it is almost impossible to tell how members of other cul-
tures will behave in similar situations" (p. 22). Many textbooks focus on
how peoples are different as a result of being of different cultures that are
either collecfivist or individualist, monochromic or polychromie, high con-
text or low context, acfive or passive, vertical or horizontal, universalist or
particularist, masculine or feminine, instrumental or expressive, associative
or abstractive, and so forth. The texts also share a strong emphasis on how
cultures are learned and acquired, and communicafion is commonly cast as
a tool that allows us to navigate and bridge our different cultures.
The goal of most of these textbooks is to make us communicatively pro-
46 Interculturl Communication in a Transnational World
ficient by knowing how cultures are different and how best to use various
communication skills and techniques to navigate and bridge such differ-
ences. For example, McDaniel, Samovar, and Porter (2006) claim that "The
intemational community is riven with sectarian violence arising from ideo-
logical, cultural, and racial differences" (p. 15). Neuliep (2000) echoes
Arthur Schlesinger's warning that "history tells an ugly story of what hap-
pens when people of diverse cultural, ethnic, religious, or linguistic back-
grounds converge in one place" (p. 2). Finally, many intercultural commu-
nication textbooks emphasize that changing global demographics, econom-
ics, and pragmatics make being interculturally proficient vital to human
beings in the contemporary world. As Rogers and Steinfatt (1999) note, "If
individuals could attain a higher degree of intercultural competence, they
would presumably become better citizens, students, teachers, businesspeo-
ple, and so forth. Society would be more peaceful, more productive, and
generally a more attractive place to live" (p. 222). Moreover, "Individuals
would be better able to understand others who are unlike themselves.
Through such improved understanding, a great deal of conflict could be
avoided; the world would be a better place" (p. 222). In short, in nearly all
of these textbooks, the focus is on discourses of plurality that encourage tol-
eration and accommodation. Such a thread also persists in many discus-
sions of language.
Although language receives significant attention in most of the textbooks
under review here, these discussions also perpetuate assumptions that limit
diversity, and, in so doing, keep us bound to a set of fears and beliefs that
maintain our suspicion and distrust of those who seem most different from
us. The common assumption is that a common language is vital for com-
munication between peoples of different cultures. For instance. Samovar,
Porter, and McDaniel (2007) write that "language diversity presents a prob-
lem in the United States" (p. 182). Although Samovar et al. "do not
endorse" legislative "proposals to make English the official language of the
United States," they do believe "that knowledge of English and the ability
to communicate in English are essential in American society" (pp. 182-
183). However, the position that "language diversity presents a problem in
the United States" still perpetuates the assumptionand the attending fear,
anxiety, and paranoiathat diversity needs to be carefully managed so as to
avoid chaos and social devolution. This position is similar to the proponents
of English-only legislation and other ballot measures to limit linguistic
diversity. It merely constitutes a gentler and milder versionone that
seems progressive and even supportive of diversity, yet still perpetuates the
hegemony of English.
Locating Diversity in Communication Studies 47
History makes no case that language diversity threatens stability and
social evolution. In fact, the world's most horrendous crimes have occurred
in placessuch as Germany, Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Iraq, Turkey, and
Somaliathat actually experience language homogeneity. Moreover, in
focusing on issues, such as language diversity, that really pose no threat to
the ability of different peoples to find harmony and understanding, many
intercultural communication texts are able to side step other issues that do
threaten harmony and understanding. What of, for instance, the widening
gap between rich and poor, or our reckless and selfish plundering of the
planet's natural resources? How did these and other such issues come to
present no problem to intercultural relations in the United States, and hence
come to be elided from most intercultural communication textbooks?
Indeed, the disguising of plurality as diversity can be seen in the omission
of any discussion of poverty and inequality in most intercultural communi-
cation textbooks. In fact, plurality is most compellingly seen in the goal of
most intercultural communication textbooks merely to make us intercultur-
ally competent. Such proficiency is comfortable and unthreatening to the
status quo. It in no way pushes us to wrestle with the larger ideological and
institutional forces that make for a widening gap between rich and poor and
thereby heighten our anxiety over immigrants supposedly taking away jobs
and draining precious resources. The goal of communication proficiency
never allows us to reckon with the fallout of our reckless plundering of the
world's natural resources on the quality of life of different peoples, such as
the native peoples of Alaska, whose homes are disappearing into the ocean
as the ice caps melt. It also downplays and even misses how our heavy
dependency on foreign oil has made many persons in the Middle East har-
bor a deep hostility to the United States.
Language is by no means the most important component in communica-
tion. Yet language achieves this status when one begins with the assump-
tion that communication is fundamentally linguistic and symbolicand it
is this linguistic and symbolic-based definition that pervades many intercul-
tural communication textbooks. For instance, Neuliep (2000) asserts,
"Intercultural communication occurs whenever a minimum of two persons
from different cultures or microcultures come together and exchange verbal
and nonverbal symbols" (p. 18). Likewise, Klopf and McCroskey (2007)
hold that "cotmnunication is the process by which persons share informa-
tion, meanings, and feelings through the exchange of verbal and nonverbal
messages" (p. 34). For Samovar, Porter, and McDaniel (2007), "communi-
cation is the process through which symbols are transmitted for the purpose
of eliciting a response" (p. 12). Indeed, most intercultural communication
48 Interculturl Communication in a Transnational World
textbooks forward definitions of communication that assume no profound
relationship between communication and the human condition, or even
between communication and the condition of the world. Communication is
cast as a tool to share our thoughts and emotions, and communication com-
petency is about mastery of various skills and techniques. But this orienta-
tion masks the implications of different communication practices on tbe
human condition (Rodriguez, 2006; Thayer, 1987). To recognize the pro-
found relationship between communication and the human condition is to
recognize that communication is fundamentally moralour communica-
tion practices and environs shape and define our humanity and the humani-
ty of others, and the condition of our humanity affects the condition of the
worid. Communication is both human making and world making.
Our point is that the definitions of communication that are found in most
intercultural communication textbooks lack the expansiveness to help us
flourish in a world that is increasingly showcasing diversity more as a verb
and less as a noun. In a worid where spaces and distances are collapsing
and imploding and there are no longer boundaries between the local and the
global, increasing numbers of persons are unwilling to yield to simplistic
and reductionistic categories (Conquergood, 2002). Sucb a worid requires
a new definition tbat characterizes communication as a mode of being and
becoming rather than a means of relaying and sharing of messages between
static bodies (Rodriguez, 2006). In this emergent definition, communica-
tion is about being vulnerable to the humanity of others. This emergent def-
inition of communication promotes modes of being that "lessen the threat
of our differences" by pushing us to understand and embody the worid from
new and different positions. In assuming ontological or ecological continu-
ity between human beings, our communication competence is now defined
in terms of our capacity and willingness to enlarge our humanity. This
move exceeds commonly held definitions of communication competence
that stress proficiency in executing various skills and techniques that sup-
posedly make for effective communication. Indeed, to look at communica-
tion in terms of vulnerability is to recognize that language diversity poses
no threat to progress and social prosperity. What ultimately undermines
social evolution is our lack of compassion for those who seem most differ-
ent from us: those we create from our own deepest anxieties, insecurities,
and paranoia. However, although Martin and Nakayama (2007) offer a gen-
erous discussion of forgiveness, and Gudykunst and Kim (2003) an interest-
ing discussion of community, most intercultural communication textbooks
make no mention of compassion. Ultimately, love, mercy, compassion,
selflessness, tenderness, and forgivenessall notions that pertain to vulner-
Locating Diversity in Communication Studies 49
ability and are necessary for the fiourishing of diversityremain on the
periphery of communication theory, inquiry, and pedagogy (Chase, 1993;
Goodall, 1993; Kirkwood, 1993; McPhail, 1996; Ohlhauser, 1996;
Rodriguez, 2006; Thayer, 1987; Tukey, 1990).
Our analysis of both job announcements and intercultural communication
textbooks arguably shows that Communication Studies has yet to arrive at
a rigorous understanding of diversity and to understand what is at stake in
the struggle for diversity. The field is compromised by this deficiency, for
diversity would mean that Communication Studies is evolving and acquir-
ing new epistemological resources that enrich our understanding of the inte-
gral relation between communication and being human. It would also mean
that historically marginalized persons are teaching courses and doing schol-
arly work that is respected by peers. But, of course, such is hardly the case
(see Allen, Olivas, & Orbe, 1999). Many job announcements under review
show that many of us cannot even get the opportunity to present a different
epistemology for consideration, for many departments remain off limits for
the only reason that our worldviews are different, and thereby our ways of
understanding and theorizing about communication are different. Even
many intercultural communication announcements give us no opportunity
to present a different story, a different reality, a different possibility of being
in the world. Moreover, many intercultural communication textbooks hard-
ly help our plight as they promote diversity as plurality.
The rigid epistemological guidelines of many job announcements really
mean that there is no opportunity for communication among peoples of dif-
ferent woddviews in the departments that are seeking to fill openings. This
is the interesting irony about the lack of diversity in Communication
Studiesthe undermining of communication by persons who are supposed-
ly committed to the study and promotion of communication. Yet this irony
reminds us why communication is integral in the promotion of diversity.
Communication sustains the possibility of diversity and most distinguishes
diversity from plurality. Communication puts our differences in commun-
ion with one another. It allows us to demystify one another, to understand
the origins of the different forces that make us human, and to reckon with
these forces. Ultimately, communication allows us to demystify ourselves,
thereby releasing us of the anxieties, insecurities, and paranoia that cause us
to dehumanize, brutalize, and criminalize one another. Given these various
concems, in the following section we introduce an emergent framework in
which to cast diversity, and show how Communication Studies can begin to
embrace a more rigorous definition of diversity.
50 Intercuitural Communication in a Transnational World
An Ecological Approach
Most intercultural communication textbooks under review offer different
frameworks upon which to view intercultural relations. For instance, Kloff
and McCroskey (2007) offer a functional approach, Neuliep (2000) offers a
contextual approach, and Martin and Nakayama (2007) offer a dialectical
approach. In the funcdonal approach, the goal is to understand how differ-
ent cultures make for different communication behaviors. The contextual
approach aims to understand the cultural, tnicrocultural, environmental, per-
ceptual, and sociorelafional contexts in which intercultural communication
occurs. According to Neuliep (2000), "A context is a complex combination
of a variety of factors, including the setting, circumstances, background, and
overall framework within which communication occurs" (pp. 18-19). The
dialectial approach "emphasizes the processual, relafional, and contradicto-
ry nature of intercultural communication, which encompasses many differ-
ent kinds of intercultural knowledge" (Martin & Nakayama, 2007, p. 69).
Ukimately, the goal of these models is to promote tolerance by giving us the
means to better understand one another's differences. As Neuliep (2000)
writes about the benefits of intercultural cotnmunication, "Communicating
and establishing relafionships with people of different cultures can lead to a
host of benefits, including healthier communifies; increased intemational,
nadonal, and local commerce; reduced conflict; and personal growth through
increased tolerance" (p. 2). But tolerafion, as even the staunchest proponents
of toleration acknowledge, is a morally and theoretically tenuous nofion
upon which to build a diversity politics. Even though all differences are
incomparable, most intercultural communication textbooks refrain in every
possible way from broaching this politically perilous subject. The result is
an orientation to intercultural communication matters in most textbooks that
never engages the most contentious issuessuch as women's seemingly
subordinated and even oppressed positions in many culturesthat currently
surround discussions of diversity and culture. The result also is an impres-
sion that these issues stand outside the realm of theory.
We believe that Communicafion Studies needs a framework that moves
beyond the goal of merely accommodating, tolerafing, and bridging differ-
ences. Such a framework should be able to help us know which differences
should be encouraged and which ones should be discouraged. On the other
hand. Communication Studies can also benefit immensely from a frame-
work that moves discussions of diversity away from a paradigm of utility
and necessity, such as when most intercultural communication textbooks
begin with how being interculturally proficient is necessary for business
success in a global economy, or when support of immigration (and affirma-
L o c a t i n g D i v e r s i t y i n C o m m u n i c a t i o n S t u d i e s 5 1
tive action) is cast as being economically good. How did this become a
morally sound way to defend some of the most vulnerable groups among
us? Evidently, Communication Studies needs a framework that can funda-
mentally expand our understandings of borders, citizenship, and regional
cooperation, for immigration and diversity are in every wayand every
placeumbilically intertwined.
We believe an ecological framework can enlarge Communication Studies'
understanding and framing of diversity. This framework begins on the
assumption that social, cultural, and communicational processes, as organic
phenomena, are ecologiesrelationships among organisms sharing an envi-
ronment. Since every ecology must abide by the same algorithms and
axioms or simply perish, this framework gives us a rigorous moral and the-
oretical calculus to understand diversity. One such algorithm and axiom is
that ecologies are either e v o lv i n g o r d e v o lv i n g either promoting or under-
mining life. No ecology is ever morally neutral. On the other hand, though
the proclivity of every ecology is to aifirm life, evolution is difficult, even
perilous. It requires an embracing of ambiguity, mystery, and complexity,
and thereby an unwillingness to be seduced by the illusion of certainty. In
other words, evolution requires ecologies to possess the muscularity,
resiliency, and capacity to deal with high levels of ambiguity, as in our open-
ness to new ways of knowing and experiencing the world. In this way,
social, cultural, and communicational processes that promote and promise
certainty, besides undermining innovation and evolution, promote crippling
fears, anxieties, insecurities, and paranoia about that which is unknown, dif-
ferent, and complex. By undermining diversity, we undermine life, includ-
ing all the life forms that share our ecology. When it is no longer innovating
and evolving, and thereby promoting diversity, a culture faces decline and
ruin as reason gives way to desperation, relationships give way to structures,
and communication gives way to information (and expression).
But cultures undercut ambiguity, mystery, and complexity by insisting on
rigid and redundant structures, such as job announcements with rigid
methodological and epistemological guidelines and curriculums with strin-
gent requirements that lessen the opportunity for new course offerings. By
promoting conformity and homogeneity, such structures actually heighten
our fear of that which is different. Simply put, such structures heighten our
fear of our own humanity. When such structures are pervasive, dysfunction-
ality lurks, communication ends, and diversity is undercut. Yet cultures in
states and modes of evolution have flexible arrangements, meaning that
such ecologies function through relationships rather than structures. It is
these relationships that allow ecologies to change, innovate, and evolve.
52 Intercultural Communication in a Transnational World
Ecologies also evolve by promoting relationships with many different kinds
of ecologies. This is the axiom of embeddedness. Ecologies survive and
flourish by being embedded within as many other ecologies as is physical-
ly possible. This is why, for instance, joint appointments are necessary for
the evolution of Communication Studies. It is also why Communication
Studies needs to continue to promote interdisciplinary, cross-disciplinary,
and multidisciplinary initiatives, and amply reward such work. In fact,
embeddedness undercuts the notion that "because [our] view of the world is
shaped by the perspective of [our] culture, it is often difficult to understand
and appreciate many of tbe actions originating in other people, groups, and
nations" (Samovar, Porter, & McDaniel, 2006, p. v). It does so by showing
that cultures and peoples who are evolving, innovating, and changing are
highly embedded; they are so significantly influenced by other cultures and
peoples that assuming cultural boundaries is all but meaningless. High lev-
els of embeddedness make for a belonging and understanding of multiple
ecologies. In this way, embeddedness enlarges our humanity and also quilts
our humanity with other peoples and cultures. On the other hand, the rela-
tional promiscuity that promotes embeddedness also promotes permeabili-
ty, which is another reliable measure of ecological prosperity. Permeability
allows for the back-and-forth movement of resources, knowledge, and
expertise between and among ecologies. For Communication Studies, per-
meability is about inviting colleagues from other departments to be on our
search committees; encouraging scholarship that appears in joumals and
venues outside of mainstream communication outlets; allowing job candi-
dates to present new models of excellence in research, service and teaching;
and instituting tenure and promotion procedures that encourage these differ-
ent models of excellence.
Our point is that distinct attributes and processes distinguish an evolving
ecology from a dying ecology. Ultimately, the latter is afraid of the world's
ambiguity, mystery, and complexity. It is beholden to the past and bent on
promoting isolation so as to avoid contamination from outside influences.
It is also hostile to other ecologies, especially those that supposedly threat-
en pollution, contamination, and chaos. In contrast, ecologies on the evolv-
ing side of the continuum move courageously into the world's ambiguity,
mystery, and complexity. These ecologies look towards the future with
hope and possibility, and aim to maintain harmony with other ecologies by
sharing resources and expertise. In short, these ecologies recognize tbat the
virtues of cooperation exceed those of competition.
To look at cultures as ecologies is to recognize tbat all cultures are bound
by a common set of axioms and algorithms. Cultures that promote ways of
Locating Diversity in Communication Studies 53
being that undermine evolution and innovation by disrupting leaming will
always face decline and ruin. The notion that a culture can be preserved by
religiously holding on to tbe ways of the past is simply contrary to what is
necessary for preservation. But preservation is by no means the only notion
that this emergent framework changes. Again, most intercultural communi-
cation textbooks focus on the need to understand our many differences; the
origins of our differences; the implications of our differences; the need to
respect our differences; and how best to navigate, negotiate, and bridge our
differences. The assumption is that our differences ultimately make for
strife and conflict. Our differences are cast as a set of dangerous and per-
ilous rapids that demand vigilant and sensitive navigation. Any wrong act,
movement, bebavior, or word can send us crashing into the rocks and cur-
rents of discord. But framing cultures as ecologies moves us away from this
approach by emphasizing diversity rather than difference, and thereby
reminding us tbat only communication ends aggression. Also, the language
of culture suggests, as is seen in most intercultural communication text-
books, that cultures are relatively stable and have well-defined boundaries.
This premise is foundational to intercultural communication theory, inquiry,
and pedagogy. However, this language tends to mask the tremendous ten-
sions, conflicts, and dissent that are found among supposedly homogenous
peoples. In actuality, our differences pose no threat to discord and conflict.
Our supposedly intercultural problems are really ecological problems
problems that stem from the undermining of evolution. Put differently, our
supposed diversity problems are fundamentally ecological in origin: they
reflect a lack of permeability, diversity, embeddedness, and harmony in our
social, cultural, and communicational processes. No amount of sensitivity
or respect for one another's differences can save us from the anguish that
promise to come from cultures that disrupt leaming. The pervasive hostili-
ty to that which is different, complex, and unknown will always produce
strife and discord. In this way, such cultures, and the differences that come
from these cultures, should neither be tolerated nor accommodated. To look
at cultures as ecologies is to look at diversity in terms of evolution, with
evolution implying disruption, confrontation, and even revolution. It is
about promoting emergent models of communication that can pusb us to
evolve, innovate, and change, rather than merely acconnmodate, tolerate,
and bridge. For, regardless of our infinite differences, only evolution, and
models of communication that promote evolution, will ultimately save us
from ourselves and one another.
54 Intercultural Communication in a Transnational World
Conclusion
The struggle for diversity has long been cast as a struggle for space
specifically for spaces that will shelter and nourish the best ambitions of
historically marginalized and disenfranchised peoples. In this regard, the
struggle has always been about inclusion. But inclusion depoliticizes diver-
sity. Job announcements in Communication Studies show that many who
are already marginalized and disenfranchised will remain marginalized and
disenfranchised as inclusion demands submission and our promise to aid
and abet no forces that might disrupt the status quo. Unfortunately, this
promise often translates to the marginalized and disenfranchised being
complicit in helping perpetuate and reify the illusion of separation between
communication theory and intercultural communication theory.
This illusion is foundational to maintaining the status quo in
Communication Studies, including keeping historically marginalized and
disenfranchised peoples confined to jobs, convention panels, journals, and
anthologies that focus upon intercultural communication and other matters
that supposedly deal only with race, culture, ethnicity, and sexuality. The
impression that emerges is that communication theory is devoid of race, cul-
ture, and privilege, and thereby beyond the limitations of human subjectiv-
ity. It is outside of history and culture, and, consequently, superior to inter-
cultural communication theory. But no theory escapes history and culture.
Theories describe as well as reinforce a vision of the world. But what mat-
ters is the illusion of objectivity, for without this illusion the hegemony
found in Communication Studies will implode. So the status quo in
Communication Studies does have a stake in maintaining this illusion,
which means, ironically, continuing to support traditional intercultural com-
munication theory so that historically marginalized and disenfranchised
peoples can claim to have a space in Communication Studies.
But inclusion blocks any rigorous scrutiny of the dominant worldview
that rules communication theory, inquiry, and pedagogy, and thereby the
jobs and textbooks that help maintain this hegemony. In our view, the par-
adigm of inclusion, toleration, and accommodation needs to be displaced by
a paradigm of evolution, innovation, and confrontation. Without this dis-
placement, the disenfranchised and marginalized will remain marginalized
and disenfranchised. But ultimately, all of us will bear the burden of this
unfortunate condition, as Communication Studies will simply lack the
resources to evolve and thereby achieve any relevance in a world that is
increasingly diverse and faces many perilous scenarios. Thus by reducing
diversity to merely the inclusion of differences, what is lost is the fact that
our mainstream theories and modes of inquiry lack the expansiveness to
Locating Diversity in Communication Studies 55
deal with the world that is now upon us, as well as the capacity to help us
imagine new and better wodds. The struggle for diversity is ultimately a
struggle for life.
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