Doing gender and building culture: Toward a model of women's intercultural communication

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Doing gender and building culture:Toward a model of women'sintercultural communicationAki Uchida aa Department of Communication, University of California, 8272Regents Road #202, San Diego, San Diego, CA, 92122, USA E-mail:Published online: 27 Feb 2009.

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Doing Gender and Building Culture:Toward a Model of Women's Intercultural

Communication

Aki UchidaDepartment of Communication

University of California at San DiegoSan Diego, CA, USA

The author proposes a model of women's intercultural communication andillustrates how it can be used as a heuristic tool through a case study. The"third-culture building" model is promising in that it extends the view ofculture being constructed through communication to intercultural situations.The notion of gender as cultural practice is also promoted. These 2 perspec-tives are integrated into a model proposing that women participating in in-tercultural communication can be seen as engaging in a culture buildingprocess. This is inseparable from the gendered practices in which the womenparticipate and the creation of gendered meanings that are shared amongthem. This culture building model can guide the analysis of interculturalcommunication events, as is shown through a study of introductions in inter-national wives' support groups, where participants attempt to create a sharedpersonhood using gendered practices as resources of culture building.

KEYWORDS culture building model, ethnography of communication, gen-der, intercultural communication, introductions, personhood

Now . . . rather than trying to improve my English by going to classes, I'd rathermeet people from different countries and learn more about their cultures andcultural differences. . . . I've gradually come to think that I'd like to be able to usemy broken English I've been studying so far to tell people about myself and toknow about other people.

T'his was said by Shoko, a Japanese woman who had been in the U.S. for a year,during an interview in which I had asked about her sojourning experience.She and her two children had accompanied her husband to study in the U.S.

for 2 years. Recalling the anxiety she first felt at not being able to understand nor

Received 12 March 1996; accepted 01 July 1996.An earlier version of this article was presented at the Annual Conference of the Organi-

zation for the Study of Communication, Language, and Gender, Minneapolis, Minnesota, Oc-tober 6-8, 1995.

The author would like to thank Chéris Kramarae for her assistance and William Starostafor his insightful comments on the third-culture building model.

Address correspondnece to Aki Uchida, 8272 Regents Road #202, San Diego, CA 92122,USA. E-mail: [email protected]

The Howard Journal of Communications, 8:41-76, 1997Copyright © 1997 Taylor & Francis

1064-6175/97 $12.00 + .00

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make herself understood and the pressing need to learn English, she described thechange she observed in herself: how the initial focus on learning the languageeventually gave way to being able to use the language for social purposes, in hercase, building meaningful relationships with other sojourning wives in the com-munity. Her comment indicated that although speaking English is problematic forher (i.e., something that she feels she does not do adequately), she saw it as animportant means of relating to people of different cultures and constructing sharedknowledge and understanding. Shoko's experience of intercultural communicationis probably different from that of her husband, Japanese students or professionals,or native speakers of English. Shoko's account of "intercultural communicationexperience" or "women's communication experience" cannot be adequately under-stood without taking into consideration the particular contexts of social interactionin which she participates and the positions from which she experiences them—asa Japanese, a woman, a member of the middle class, a wife, a mother, and anonnative speaker of English. However, there seems to be something identifiableabout Shoko's desire to use opportunities for intercultural communication to ex-change knowledge and expand her horizon. These may not be the top prioritiesfor all, but as ideals, they are understandable in today's world. The ways in whichthis aspiration affects intercultural communication experiences depend on thecontexts and the particular identities of the participants.

Feminist researchers have long recognized the need to look at the interlockednature of constructs such as race, class, and gender in the study of women's com-munication experiences (Henley & Kramarae, 1991; Houston, 1992). There hasbeen a great deal of discussion on the importance of acknowledging and under-standing the differences between women. Few studies actually focus on women'scommunication across such differences (although for an exception, see, e.g., Hous-ton, 1994), and even fewer go beyond the U.S. culture and native English speakersto study the communication between women from different cultural, national, andlinguistic backgrounds. However, with today's developing communication andtransportation technology, geographic distances are becoming less of a barrier, andencounters with culturally different "others" are becoming more "global" in nature.Increasing numbers of women are interacting with women from other parts of theworld, from very different cultures with very different languages and communi-cation patterns, from very different social, political, and economic systems. Raceand class conceptualized only in the U.S. cultural context are not sufficient tocapture the multiple dimensions on which women differ on the global level. Al-though the studies of women's interethnic communication in the U.S. are valuablein their own right, not all the findings can be directly applied to explain othertypes of intercultural communication that occur in the U.S. For example, thedynamics of, and the participants' experiences in, the communication betweenAfrican American women and European American women obviously are verydifferent from those between U.S. American women and non-U.S. Americanwomen for whom English is not their native language. More studies are neededthat consider the various examples and contexts of intercultural communication inwhich women participate in real life. We need models and theories that allow usboth to conceptualize women's intercultural communication and to analyze theparticular, situated instances across as wide a range as possible. In other words,

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Doing Gender and Building Culture 43

we must be able to account for both the generalizability and the particularity ofexperiences such as Shoko's (cited above).

In this article I develop one possible model of women's intercultural commu-nication and show how it can be used as a heuristic tool in a particular case studyof social interaction in support groups for international wives in the United States.In this model, intercultural communication is seen as a "culture building" process,from which the "doing" of gender cannot be separated. First I present the view ofculture as a heterogeneous and dynamic process that is constantly being createdand recreated through communication practices, a view that provides the founda-tion for the model. I then present the model for intercultural communication as"third-culture building" that seems to extend this view of culture and communi-cation, and I discuss its possibilities and problems, including its insufficiency indealing with gender issues.

Second, I argue that "culture" must be centralized in the study of women'scommunication by emphasizing the essential role of culture in the construction ofgender. Gender, as many researchers of gender and language propose, should beconceptualized as "practice," as what individuals do in social interaction and com-munication. Gender as practice can be seen as part of the process where theinterlocked systems of gender, race, and class hierarchies operate in everydayinteraction.

Third, I point out that such dynamic and practice-centered view of cultureand gender often are insufficiently integrated. I stress that the "practice," that is,the "doing" of gender (interwined with race and class) must be studied as situatedin and as being an essential part of the construction and reconstruction of culture.I propose that we highlight the view of gender as culturally situated practice inthe third-culture building model of intercultural communication. This means em-phasizing the possibility that the beliefs and practices that constitute gender aresalient cultural resources and attributes that participants may reject, accept, orintegrate in the course of culture building. I present a revised version of the third-culture building model that proposes that women participating in interculturalcommunication are engaging in a culture building process, part of which involvesthe negotiation of the ways of doing gender, the creation of newly shared meanings,and the construction of shared identities based on gendered practices. The culturebuilding process is inseparable from the cultural and communicative constructionof gender. The model is presented as a heuristic device that can be used to makesense out of what the participants are doing in the interaction from their perspec-tive. It is also a normative model in the sense that they reflect the values and theideal of cultural pluralism and feminism in the United States.

Fourth, I argue that one of the ways in which culture building can be studiedis to focus on the discourse used by the participants to talk about others andthemselves, or the "discourse on personhood" (Carbaugh, 1988b). I discuss theconcept of "personhood," which has been seen as important to culture as a sharedset of meanings that are produced through discursive practices. Attempts madeby interactants to construct a shared personhood through participating in activitiesunique to the intercultural situation can be seen as instances of culture building.

Finally, I present a case study to illustrate how this culture building model canguide the analysis of women's intercultural communication. I focus on one example

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44 A. Uchida

of a speech event observed in a particular kind of intercultural communicationsituation: the introduction and introduction acts in the interaction of supportgroups for international wives, especially from the perspective of particpants whoare Japanese. The act of self-introduction in the support groups is interpreted asa means through which speakers construct themselves as persons using the shareddiscourse on personhood, thereby creating and recreating the shared personhood,which is largely dependent on creating and affirming shared identities based ongender.

Using the ethnography of communication perspective and combining the ob-servation of speech events with interviews of Japanese women participants, I ana-lyze the introduction as a speech event by focusing on the ways in which speakerstalk about themselves and the categories by which persons are identified and de-scribed. My analysis shows how gender is being done in the introduction and howthe doing of gender contributes to the construction of "person" and culture build-ing. I argue that doing gender and building culture are inseparable and that themodel allows one to see gender, cultural differences, and the creation of sharedmeanings working simultaneously in communication.

Culture in Intercultural Communication

In the field of communication research, the area of intercultural communica-tion has evolved greatly in the past two decades; a vast amount of both empiricaland theoretical work is now available. However, the epistemological assumptionsand methodologies used in the studies vary, and one of the dimensions on whichthe differences in approaches can be seen is the conceptualization—definition ofculture (Gudykunst & Nishida, 1989; Hall, 1992). In the so-called "objectivist"(Gudykunst & Nishida, 1989) or "traditional" (Hall, 1992) approaches, "culture"has been treated as being isolatable, internally consistent, and describable withclear boundaries. It tends to be equated with nationality or ethnicity, conceptual-ized in terms of dimensions of cultural variability such as individualism-collectiv-ism, which are treated as variables to measure and predict differences quantita-tively. Thus the approach has also been labeled "culture measurement branch"(González & Peterson, 1993, p. 253). Some of the major theories in interculturalcommunication have been developed in this tradition, such as uncertainty reduc-tion theory (e.g., Gudykunst, 1988, 1989; Gudykunst & Ting-Toomey, 1988),cultural adaptation (Kim, 1988, 1989), communication accommodation theory(Gallois, Franklyn-Stokes, Giles, & Coupland, 1988; Giles & Coupland, 1991), andface-negotiations theory (Ting-Toomey, 1985, 1988).

However, there have been increasing challenges to replace the static and ho-mogenous view of culture with a dynamic and heterogeneous one among research-ers in communication, who have been epistemologically and methodologically in-fluenced by such fields as cultural and symbolic anthropology and ethnopsychology.Here, the emphasis is on the changing and emergent qualities of culture; on thediversity, contestation, and dissonance within culture; and on the practices throughwhich the production and reproduction of culture occur.

The dynamic view of culture has profound implications for the study of com-

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munication. Approaches to communication that take this view, such as coordinatedmanagement of meaning (CMM) (Cronen, Chen, & Pearce, 1988) and ethnographyof communication (Bauman & Sherzer 1989a; Carbaugh, 1988a, 1988b, 1990,1993a, 1993b; Durand & Goodwin, 1992; Goodwin, 1990; Gumperz, 1972/1986;Gumperz & Hymes, 1972/1986; Hymes, 1962, 1972/1986; Philipsen, 1989, 1992;Saville-Troike, 1989; Sherzer, 1977), see the study of socially situated language useas critical to understanding culture. They adopt an emic, rather than etic, per-spective that uses categories that are meaningful to the members of the culturerather than on categories that are developed a-priori for cross-cultural comparisons(Saville-Troike, 1989, p. 130). These approaches seek to understand the relation-ship between communication and culture from the participants' points of view.They rely on descriptive and interpretive methods to analyze the communicationpatterns in the process of meaning making in a speech community. The relation-ship between a culture's communicative activities and the production, transmis-sion, and reproduction of culture is highlighted.

Quite a few studies have been done within this approach, especially under thetradition of ethnography of communication, but relatively few have gone beyondfocusing on primarily one specific cultural pattern to explore situated interculturalencounters. Carbaugh (1993b) has observed that "no ethnographic work has yetbeen done which involves a cultural interpretation of face-to-face, interculturalinteraction" (p. 183; see also the review by Leeds-Hurwitz, 1990, although forexamples of notable exceptions see Gumperz, 1982, 1992; Heath, 1983; Philips,1972; Scollon & Scollon, 1981), and his work on the communication between U.S.Americans and Soviet Russians on "Donahue" is presented as one attempt to rem-edy the situation. Another closely related attempt that proposes to focus on inter-cultural encounters through the study of situated interaction is the third-culturebuilding model of intercultural communication.

Third-Culture Building Model

The third-culture building model has been proposed, discussed, critiqued,and further developed by communication researchers as a paradigm for the studyof intercultural communication (Belay, 1993; Broome, 1991; Casmir, 1993; Casmir& Asuncion-Lande, 1989; Shuter, 1993; Starosta, 1989; Starosta & Olorunnisola,1995). This model contends that through communication processes, participantsengage in a building of a third culture, which is informed by their own culturesbut transformed into a shared, mutually acceptable system through negotiationand integration. This was proposed originally to address appropriately the chang-ing features of international affairs, the "state," "culture," and intercultural contactin the postmodern era. Third-culture building, according to Casmir (1993,p. 420), is "a complex interactive process" that

can evolve out of initial contacts between two or more human beings who find itnecessary or desirable to share limited resources in a specific environment formutual benefits. They do so by developing their own frameworks, value systems,and communication systems for purposes of survival, mutual growth, and enjoy-ment of the life experience.

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Two aspects of the third-culture building model are essential: its focus on inter-action, rather than on cause-effect relationships, in intercultural communication;and its view of intercultural communication in terms of a culture building process,highlighting the dynamic nature of communication and culture. These foci providethe model its strength and uniqueness compared to the previous research in inter-cultural communication.

Interaction focus. One important characteristic of the third-culture buildingmodel is that it focuses on interaction, that is, on the process of interculturalcommunication. A great deal of past research has tended to focus not on theprocess but on the outcomes. For example, Gudykunst and Ting-Toomey's (1988)volume on culture and interpersonal communication has one chapter on intergrouprelationships in which the authors rely mainly on "outcome-oriented research" todiscuss interpersonal relationships between people from different cultures. Thevast majority of the research cited involves, as the authors themselves admit, "self-reports of communication behavior, not observations of actual behavior" (Gudy-kunst & Ting-Toomey, 1988, p. 230). The exclusive focus on outcomes and lackof orientation toward the interaction process in this body of research has beencriticized (e.g., Belay, 1993; Casmir, 1993). Some communication scholars also pointout that the discipline's tendency to rely heavily on the logic of natural sciences, withthe emphasis on cause-and-effect relationships, can be limiting to the understand-ing of human communication (Cäsmir, 1993; González & Peterson, 1993; Spitzack& Carter, 1989).

Culture building focus. The third-culture building model conceptualizes whatgoes on in the process of interaction as culture building. This implies that, becausethe third "culture" is seen as built through interaction, "culture" as a constructmust be seen as dynamic and emergent, not static and pre-existing. As statedpreviously, this departs from the traditional studies of intercultural communication,where "culture" is equated with nationality or ethnicity and conceptualized interms of dimensions of cultural variability. The "culture" created through com-munication cannot be identified nor labeled a priori to the detailed description ofthe talk-in-interaction. Therefore, the third-culture building model shares assump-tions and seems compatible with the perspective provided by ethnography of com-munication and thus may serve as a heuristic model of intercultural interactionwithin this approach.1

Problems With the Third-Culture Building Model

However, the model of third-culture building does have some problems.2 Ofparticular importance here is that the model does not make any clear reference to

1Another model of intercultural communication generated within the work of ethnography ofcommunication is the model of interethnic communication by Gumperz (1982). This has inspired muchwork done on cross-cultural "miscommunication" problems in the U.S., including the "cultural" ap-proach to gender. Gumperz's model suggested that miscommunication and negative consequences resultwhen interactants use their own rules to interpret the other's behavior, assuming that they speak thesame language and that they are unaware of the cultural differences affecting their discourse andcommunicative styles. However, Gumperz's model may not be sufficient to analyze cases where theinteractants are conscious of the linguistic barriers between them and assume cultural differences,although the model may still apply in instances of misunderstandings and miscommunication. (I amindebted to Peggy Miller for this observation.)

2In this article I rely mainly on the version of the third-culture building model outlined by Casmir

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constructs essential for feminist researchers, such as gender, race ethnicity, andclass. As feminist scholars have indicated, one's cultural experience is simultane-ously gendered, raced, and classed (Houston, 1992; Johnson, 1988; West & Fen-stermaker, 1995; Wood, 1994). In the third-culture model that Casmir presented,it is not clear how constructs such as gender, race, and class fit in the "culture" or"third culture." Are gender, race, and class locations within a culture, or do theyconsist of cultures themselves, or both? A woman engaged in the culture buildingprocess is always doing so from a standpoint that is gendered, raced, and classedin multiple ways vis-à-vis the cultures of which she is a member and the culturesof which her interactions are members. A model that adequately deals with genderand intercultural communication must be able to deal with the multiple identitiesone has (Belay, 1993; Chen & Starosta, 1996).

Another problem that must be pointed out is that the model is based on theassumption that a person is "of a single culture before the culture building begins.The term third culture indicates the presupposition that intercultural communica-tion between two people involves only two cultures, one represented by each in-dividual, with the emergent culture being the "third" culture.3 However, it may bemisleading to assume that all individuals are members of, or represent, a singleculture; in fact, the dynamic view of culture would deny that a person could be amember of only one culture. Of course, it should be acknowledged that third-culture building is a model, and as such, it has taken the simplest, paradigmaticcase to represent the phenomenon, and that the third in third culture can be inter-preted as being more symbolic than factual. However, the language implies thatthird-culture building essentially shares the view of culture with the "objectivist"approach—the very view for which it provides an alternative.

As it stands, the third-culture building model is not sufficient for applicationin the study of women's intercultural communication from a feminist perspective.In the following, I propose a modified version of this model that integrates feministconcerns. First, however, I describe the conceptualization of gender and its relationto communication that has become argued for in the field of gender and commu-nication research.

Doing Gender: The View of Gender as Practice

Although a great amount of research has been done in the area of gender andcommunication in the last 20 years, the first decade was mostly spent on examiningthe "sex-related differences" in language use and communication behavior (i.e.,whether women and men "talk differently"). This trend has been criticized byfeminist researchers, as the categorization of gender into either female or male and

(1993). However, several modifications have been proposed that retain the original idea of third culturedevelopment but attempt to address some of its problems (e.g., Belay, 1993; Starosta & Olorunnisola,1995).

3The third-culture building model also assumes a dyadic model of interaction and relationship,whereas communication situations often involve more than two participants. However, I am now inclinedto agree with Starosta (personal communication, July 1, 1996) that the reduction to dyads at the levelof constructing a model of culture building process may be inevitable.

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the treatment of gender in experimental research as an independent variable be-came problematized, and as more context-sensitive, ethnographic research cameto be regarded as producing fruitful results and contributing to an understandingof gender (Thorne, Kramarae, & Henley, 1983).

Using the findings of ethnographic, context-specific studies, especially thoseinformed by the insights of ethnomethodologists and symbolic interactionists whohave long argued that gender is an accomplishment in everyday interaction (e.g.,Garfinkel, 1967/1984; Goffman, 1977; Kessler & McKenna, 1978), gender is nowseen as a dynamic process that is socially constructed through communication. Forexample, Rakow (1986, 1987) has argued that "gender is both something we doand something we think with" (1986, p. 21) and that "gender is communicationpractice" (1987, p. 80). West and Zimmerman (1987), coming from conversationanalytic perspectives, have also maintained that we are "doing gender." Eckert andMcConnell-Ginet (1992), in their recent review of research on language and gen-der, have called for a view of gender as "a community-based practice" and haveproposed that we must "think practically and look locally" (p. 462). What is evidentin this trend is the call for studies of situated communicative practices in order tounderstand how social actors do gender. It is also important to point out that thereis also a growing concern, especially among feminist researchers, to focus ondifferences not only between genders but also within genders. Race, ethnicity, class,sexual orientation, and their interaction create diversity among women even whenthey are all seen as "Americans"—that is, members of U.S. society. Instead ofassuming that all women do "women" (and that all men do "men"), there is moreemphasis on differences among women (and men) and more concern with under-standing the different ways in which gender is done across and between differentraces, ethnic groups, and classes.

Whether we look at similarities or differences, the study of women's commu-nication must acknowledge that women's experiences are necessarily diverse. John-son (1988, p. 39) suggested that to stengthen scholarship on woman and pluralism,culture should be made the central concept for analysis. I restate this statement asfollows: In order to acknowledge the diversity among women in our research,culture must be one concept (along with ethnicity, race, class, and sexual orienta-tion) that must be highlighted in the analysis. This is especially true if one under-stands gender as being cultural practice.

Both gender and culture are constructs that are increasingly conceptualizedas being dynamic and emergent in situated social interaction, as constructedthrough practices in which social actors engage. Although the studies that focuson gender tend to be in different disciplines from those that study culture, thereseems to be a parallel in the way that they are theorized by the respective research-ers who take a similar approach that is interpretive and social constructionist. Ifboth culture and gender are communicatively constituted through locally situatedpractices and internally diverse, what is the relationship between culture and gen-der? Because gender, by definition, is a cultural construction (see review in Wood,1994), it must be seen as situated within, and part of, culture; when social actorsare doing gender, they must be regarded as doing so as a part of creation and re-creation of culture. Therefore, the study of gender is necessarily the study ofculture, or at least a part of cultural production and reproduction. To study gender

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(or the doing of gender), one must approach it from the perspective that one is atthe same time studying culture that is emergent, constantly being created and re-created in social interaction, and heterogeneous.

However, despite the epistemological and methodological compatibility, itseems that the dynamic and heterogeneous view of culture and the dynamic andheterogeneous view of gender have yet to be sufficiently integrated in a study ortheory. In the area of intercultural communication, where there have been rela-tively few studies that analyze situated interaction, studies that focus on gender areeven fewer (although see Günthner, 1992, for an exception). However, in this agewhere not only are "cultures" unstable but constantly coming into contact with andinfluencing each other, it seems important to ask the questions: What happenswhen an individual encounters another whose "culture"—such as language, com-munication practices, and meaning systems—is perceived to be very different? Inwhat cultural processes will the individuals participate in the interaction? How isgender done in these processes? These questions are also important from theperspective of feminist scholarship, because the value of studies that analyze theways in which women communicate across cultural lines with other women hasbeen acknowledged (Johnson, 1988).

A Culture Building Model of Intercultural Communication

As discussed previously, the third-culture building model as presented origi-nally by Casmir is insufficient as a model for studying the gendered nature ofintercultural communication as a process of creating culture. I modify the third-culture building model in a way that attempts to redress these limitations. Threeissues must be raised in the modification.

First, instead of using the term third culture, which implies a one-to-one rela-tionship between an interactant and a culture prior to the culture building, I simplyuse culture to stress that the emergent culture is an open-ended local productionwhose constituents cannot be identified a priori and to de-emphasize the distinctionbetween the "cultures" of the participant and the emergent ("third") culture. It isproblematic to assume an inherent difference between them by labeling one dif-ferently. The "cultures" of which the interactants are members of and bring intothe culture building are also dynamic processes with no a priori, clearly definedboundaries. In the modified version, the culture building model of interculturalcommunication proposes that individuals participating in intercultural communi-cation engage in "culture building." Culture building is a continuous interactionalattempt among the participants to build shared meanings and understandings thatcan become the basis of a shared culture. Participants' awareness of cultural dif-ferences and desire to bridge them through communication are prerequisites forculture building. Culture building does not presuppose an "end product" (i.e., thesuccessful creation of a shared culture). It merely refers to the activity in whichthe participants in intercultural communication may engage in order to createshared meanings by acknowledging the existence of cultural differences and cre-atively finding and exploiting the resources for the creation of shared meanings.

Second, it is stressed that one aspect of the culture building process involves

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the negotiation of how one goes about doing gender, race, class, and other relevantsociocultural constructions. The modified version of the model proposes thatwomen participating in intercultural communication (women communicatingacross cultural-racial-ethnic lines) in the United States can be seen as engagingin a culture building process, part of which involves the doing of gender, negoti-ating the different ways of doing gender, and constructing shared gendered mean-ings. What it means to be women for the participants and the gendered practicesthat permeate their lives may widely differ, and the differences may lead to dispute,dominance, contention, or resistance. However, it may also lead to negotiation andintegration. As a salient construct of culture and category of self—identity, gendermay serve as a basis for identification and sharedness, a possible common groundfrom which shared meanings could be cultivated.4

Third, I propose that this model be used as a heuristic device in order to makesense out of what the participants are doing, or are aspiring to do, or are pressuredinto doing, in the interaction from their perspectives. I do not claim that this is avalue-free model; to the contrary, this is a normative model (Craig & Tracy, 1995)with moral and ideological implications with regards to what is considered "ideal"and "desirable" in the rhetoric of cultural pluralism in the United States. It is basedon the ideal and moral imperative (at least for some) in the United States thatemphasizes unity among diversity and understanding, respecting, and bridgingdifferences. My observations of intercultural communication situations in theUnited States suggest that this belief that diversity is to be valued, and that differ-ences are to be understood, respected, and bridged, seems to be shared or at leastunderstood by non-U.S. American participants in the intercultural communicationas well. It also corresponds with the feminist perspective (implicitly held by many)that although differences among women should be acknowledged and respected,there are also experiences that can be shared or co-constructed as women thatenable them to unite as women. It is important to acknowledge this moral undertonein the model and the possibility that this may at times evoke ambivalence orresistance when power differences (such as class, race, sexual orientation, and otherprivileges) come into play. Furthermore, the model may not always be heuristic ornormative in some contexts outside the contemporary United States. For example,during wars and states of emergency when nations feel the urge to "unite" theirmembers, any "foreign" and "different" elements in the dominant culture areviewed with suspicion, and the rhetoric used to "deal with" them is assimilation oroutright rejection, not integration. Moreover, in the context of unilateral coercion,such as conquest and colonization, culture building is not likely to characterize theideal for intercultural encounters for either party involved.

At this point, the model is still abstract and general. As a starting point ofinvestigation, I select one possible type of discourse that can be observed as a

4However, I am by no means suggesting that there is a core experience shared by all women byvirtue of sharing gender, that gender can be used as a common denominator to unify or generalizeabout all women (for further arguments against this view, see, e.g., Alarcon, 1990; Spelman, 1988;Visweswaran, 1994). Identification and solidarity among women are not givens, but achievements(Spelman, 1988; Uchida, 1996b), just as culture building is not a given, but an achievement. Here, Ipoint to the possibility that gender may be effectively used as a resource for creating shared meaningsby women in intercultural communication. In fact, culture building may be a requisite for identificationand solidarity among women.

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possible culture building activity among those who participate: the ways in whichpeople talk about people. I argue that an analysis of the discourse on personhoodis one way through which the culture building process in intercultural communi-cation can be understood.

Discourse on Personhood and Culture

The concept that inevitably arises in the discussion of communication andculture is "self-identity." Researchers in the communication discipline invariablyagree that "self-identity" is expressed, enacted, and constructed through com-munication. For example, Hecht, Collier, and Ribeau (1993; see also Hecht, 1993)claimed in their study of African American communication that ethnic identity isenacted through discourse. Tracy and Carjuzáa (1993) argued in their discourseanalytic study that participants enact their "intellectual identity" in academic dis-cussions. Anthropologists and cultural psychologists whose work have affectedstudies of communication and culture have maintained that whereas the conceptof "self or "person" exists universally, it varies cross-culturally (Carbaugh, 1988b,1994; Ewing, 1990; Geertz, 1983; Markus & Kitayama, 1991; Rosaldo, 1984;Shweder & Bourne, 1984; White, 1992; although see also Hollan, 1992, and Spiro,1993, for critiques of the taxonomies of "Western" vs. "non-Western" "self). There-fore, the understanding of what constitutes "self or "person" in a given culturehas profound implications on studies that focus on cross-cultural comparisons ofcommunication practices or intercultural communication processes.

However, so far the study of concepts involving "self," "identity," and "person"in communication has been far from complete. The terms self and identity havetended to be used without a clear definition of what they refer to, and often theyare used in such a way that reflects the assumptions of what a "person" is and howwe talk about personhood in the culture in which the researchers themselvesoperate, which in general is the U.S. or "Western" culture. In the U.S., a personis an "individual" with "rights" who makes "choices," who has a "self that devalues"social roles" (Carbaugh, 1988b, p. 18), and what counts as one's "identity" isdependent on the relevant social categories that a person can belong to in thecultural context. For example, Hecht et al. (1993, p. 30) see "African American"identity as an "ethnic identity" which is "the subjective sense of belonging to ormembership in an ethnic culture" and is "defined by the individual." However, thetreatment of the individual as the center of an ethnic construct, as well as theassumption that the category "African American" can be an identity for the indi-vidual, is based on how we talk about "persons" in terms of their ethnic member-ship in the U.S. Their conceptualization of "ethnic identity" may not be applicableto ethnic, racial, or cultural groups elsewhere. Similarly, Tracy and Carjuzáa's( 1993) conceptualization of "intellectual identity" was also dependent on the char-acterization "intellectual" as a relevant aspect of an individual's identity in theculture of academics. The existence of "intellectual identity" reveals the culturalpractice to talk about "intelligence" as a property of an individual that can beclaimed to describe the self or person. Outside the talk of the middle class andeducated class in the U.S. and of academics, "intellectual identity" may not exist.

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52 A. Uchida

Gender, too, is a category that is often discussed in terms of identity. Research-ers frequently use the term gender identity; however, the assumption that gender(whether one is male or female) can constitute an "identity" is embedded in theU.S. culture's discourse and practice about gender and sex. Gender is seen as anessential part of who a person is, it is unchangeable, and it is based on sex difference.Moreover, it tends to be regarded as an independent construct that can be sepa-rated from other social categorization schemes (such as race, ethnicity, class). Asdiscussed above, feminists, ethnomethodologists, and symbolic interactionists haverepeatedly asserted that gender is social and cultural construction that is locallyproduced and reproduced through social interaction; however, there is still a ten-dency to discuss gender separately from societal and cultural practices. Genderidentity has become a construct, used even by feminists, as though it exists univers-ally and generally and as though it is universal and identical across cultures.5 Italso tends to be used to discuss women's "identity" only, because the use of theterm gender has become synonymous with women.

The point is that the way we talk about what constitutes a person is not neutralor culture free and that as researchers who study culture (and gender) we mustbe aware of how terms such as cultural identity and gender identity could be proble-matic in that they may not exist outside our discursive practices. We should alsorecognize that discourse on personhood is situated in everyday cultural practicesand interaction. Through talking about persons—both self and others—partici-pants are creating and recreating an important aspect of their culture. In otherwords, the discursive practices on personhood is one area through which culturebuilding processes (which include the doing of gender, race, class, and other cul-turally salient constructions) can be observed. Therefore, it seems possible to applythe study of discourse on personhood to the culture building model of interculturalcommunication. In this framework, the ways in which discourse on personhood isproduced locally by participants in intercultural communication situations revealone way through which culture is constructed and gender is done.

In the following, I present a case study of a type of intercultural communica-tion situation in which the discourse on personhood was produced through oneparticular kind of recurring, routine speech event, which I call the introduction. Iattempt to illustrate the process of culture building by looking at how personhoodis produced and reproduced through the self-presentations in the introduction inthe interaction of support groups for international spouses. I treat the introductionas an example of a "local mode of self presentation" which must be examined fromthe social actors' own points of view in the ethnopsychological study of personhood(White, 1992, p. 36).

5 Spelman (1988) has shown that this usage in feminist thought is problematic not only because theconcept of a "universal" gender identity is an illusion but also because what is regarded as "universal"in actuality only represents Western, White, middle-class women, effectively excluding others from thecategory of women.

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A Study of "the Introduction" in the Support Groups forInternational Spouses

The present study is a part of a larger project of examining Japanese wives'intercultural communication experiences in the support groups for internationalspouses offered in Orchid Dell,6 a housing area in a large midwestern university.The support groups are sponsored by the housing office of Orchid Dell, to helpthe spouses of international students and faculty who reside there. The majority ofthe residents of Orchid Dell are students and visiting scholars temporarily attendingthe university and their families. About 85% are from countries other than theUnited States, and the central housing office, where administrative tasks are dealtwith and events involving the residents are planned, puts an emphasis on meetingthe particular and immediate needs of international families.

I contacted the staff working at the housing office and obtained permission toparticipate in several support groups that one staff member organized for theinternational wives. The general purpose of these groups is to create a place forthe wives so that they can come out of the house to socialize, meet potential friends,exchange information, discuss their concerns, and practice English in a nonthreat-ening environment. These groups meet either weekly or biweekly, for 1-2 hr. Iattended four types of groups: "MOMS group" (which is a support group forexpecting mothers and those with young children), the English Conversation Class,the "Discussion Group" (where people get together and talk about a particulartimely topic, such as "Columbus Day" in October and "Valentine's Day" in Febru-ary), and the "Friendship Group" (where people get together for coffee and talkabout whatever they want). These groups were open to anyone who wanted tocome, including nonresidents of Orchid Dell, and there were no obligations or feesinvolved. During the time I attended there were participants who came regularly;however, at most meetings there was at least one person who came for the firsttime. The attendance also varied; for some groups (such as the English class) attimes there would be more than 20 participants, whereas in other groups at certaintimes of the year (such as immediately before or after a break), there would be asfew as 4 participants. The participants were mostly women (although some menattended the English class); most but not all were residents of Orchid Dell, and allwere nonnative speakers of English. On average, there were 3 Japanese women ineach group.

Data Collection

I conducted a participant observation of the four types of support groups fromfall 1993 to spring 1994. At almost every meeting I informed the other participantsof the nature of my interest and my objectives in lieu of introducing myself. I tookdetailed notes on what occurred in the groups, especially in terms of talk. Fromthe second meeting I started tape recording the conversation in the groups, afterconferring with the organizer and informing the participants that I alone will have

6All names and certain descriptive details have been altered to provide anonymity for thoseinvolved in this study.

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54 A. Uchida

access to the recordings and that pseudonyms would be used with anyone's state-ments in the write-up (and only after obtaining their permission).7

In addition to the notes and tapes from the support groups, I conducted open-ended interviews with 10 Japanese women who had the experience of participatingin at least one of the groups. The interviews were conducted in Japanese and weretaped with their permission, and each lasted for about W2 hr.8 In addition Iinterviewed the staff member who was the organizer and facilitator for all thegroups that I observed. I also made note of other informal conversations I hadwith participants and staff members, as well as some contents of conversationbetween participants that I overheard during the meetings. I also collected fliersof notices and upcoming events and the weekly newsletter distributed to everyapartment in Orchid Dell (compiled by the housing office), which provides infor-mation about upcoming events, notices, and classifieds.

Data Analysis

The main corpus of the data is the tape-recorded conversation collected duringthe support group meetings. This is supplemented by the tape-recorded interviewswith Japanese women. Both types of data were transcribed. I approached this datafrom the perspective of ethnography of communication, which assumes that it isthe everyday, situated talk-in-interaction and communicative practices that produceand constitute culture and social life and that an understanding of culture fromthe viewpoint of its participants must be obtained through detailed description ofsuch talk and practices (Bauman & Sherzer, 1989b; Carbaugh, 1988a, 1990; Good-win, 1990; Gumperz, 1972/1986; Hymes 1962, 1972/1986; Philipsen, 1989, 1992;Saville-Troike, 1989; Sherzer, 1977). I approached discourse with the assumptionthat the participants are engaged in a process of culture building and that oneway this process can be identified is to examine the situated talk of the participantscreating shared meanings, using the interview data as a secondary source to checkand validate my interpretations.

Through constant comparative method I looked for recurring patterns bothin the structure and content of the talk. It is through this process that I identifiedthe "introduction" as a recurring speech event across different situations in whichthe culture building occurs through the production of discourse on personhood.

7However, this is not to say that the process of collecting data through participant observation andtaping was smooth and unproblematic. Most of the participants were nonnative English speakers, andI often wondered to what extent they fully understood my explanations. Often, people came up to meand asked me what I was trying to do or why I was taking notes, even after I had explained these thingsto the whole group in the beginning of the session. However, overall I was neither aware of, nor calledattention to, any major discomfort felt by the participants throughout the period of my study. For amore detailed account of the researcher's dilemmas and problems regarding the status of being a"participant observer," see Uchida (1996a).

8In this study I interviewed only Japanese women; hence, my analyses are done from the per-spective of Japanese women who participated in the support groups. The ideal would have been tointerview all the women; however, because they were nonnative English speakers, this was impossibleto do in the language in which they would be comfortable and fully able to express themselves. I am anative Japanese speaker, so the Japanese women were the only women I could interview.

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Description of "the Introduction"

For all of the support groups observed, a ritualized routine marked the "be-ginning" of the group. The staff member acting as facilitator (whom I call Vickiein the analysis) would ask for all the participants' attention and suggest that theyall go around the room and introduce themselves. I identified this as a speech event(Hymes, 1972/1986; Saville-Troike, 1989). I called this speech event the introductionand the individual act of introduction each participant gives of herself in her turnas introduction speech act.

The introduction has several purposes from a functional viewpoint. First, ithas the obvious goal of identifying all the participants in the group. Each partici-pant is required to make herself known through the introduction. The emphasisis as much on each person identifying herself as on getting to know everyone else.This meant that the introduction insured that all participants had at least one turnat talk during the speech event. The introduction occurred whenever there was atleast one new participant in a group with more than five people, which was themajority of the case in the groups that I observed. However, not infrequently, itresulted in many participants introducing themselves to many participants withwhom they were already familiar.

As a speech event, the introduction was also identifiable by the participantsthemselves as a relevant unit of discourse with affective implications. For example,Vickie observed:

And, some people then also I guess because they get to know the group betterthan me, urn, we have our own little joke now, about, is it going to be a "long"introduction or "medium" introduction or "short" introduction. And the ones thathave been coming know about this, so they'll just look at me and say, "Mediumintroduction today," and then they know that, kind of just what they should saywithout [being instructed], and, and I think that's great too, because it gives thema, kind of a, a bond or spirit of togetherness there, you know . . . I mean, the factthat we can joke about what length introduction we are gonna do I think is anindication ofthat [the participant's awareness of doing the introduction]. And alsolike, the reaction I had today, uh, when this new lady walked in and I stopped andI said I think we should do an introduction, and they all said "Oh yes, we must dothat." So, obviously, they think it's valuable, important, you know.

Many of the Japanese women interviewed also had something to say about the"introduction" in the support groups. Some identified it as something they regu-larly did in the groups without my prompt, and all knew what it referred to whenasked in the interviews about the "introduction." Many of the interviewees wereaware of the function of the introduction: that it provided all participants anopportunity and an obligation to speak in the group. Some found it stressful andunnerving to be given the floor to speak English on their own for an extendedturn. One woman remembered the first time she attended one of the groups:

A week after [seeing the announcement for the English class in Neighborly News]I went to Vickie's class for the first time. Before that, I happened to meet about

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56 A. Uchida

two Japanese people so I asked them about the class, and they said at the verybeginning the teacher makes us do introductions. So [laughs] I thought, oh no,what am I going to do, and so I had my husband tell me what I should say, and Iworked hard to memorize it, and I went to the class. And of course, since therewere many new people she told us to do an introduction. So I recited in brokenEnglish what I had memorized, and later I told her that actually my husband hadtaught me everything I said beforehand and we had a good laugh (laughter).9

Another woman, whom I had observed in the groups as being very confident andcomfortable, said:

But even in English classes, when the teacher tells us to do a simple introductionor say a little bit about ourselves in a couple of minutes, my hands start shaking(laughter) and my heart's pounding.

Some women had a different kind of ambivalence. One woman, when asked whatshe thought about the introductions, responded: "Well, if you go [to the groups]several times it does feel like a waste of time," and she told me that she knew somepeople in the English class who left because they did not like the introduction.

Some, on the other hand, found the act of repeating the introduction to beuseful in terms of their English. For example:

We do [the introduction] every time, as you know, so, even when you are not sogood at speaking you start getting used to talking about yourself. I think maybethat's what the teacher [Vickie] has in mind too. I myself, when I'm repeating thesame thing over and over again, even though it's only once a week, I don't haveto memorize [laughs], I start getting used to it.

Another woman observed: "So probably I think the people who come [to thegroups], through doing the introduction every time, first become experts in theirown introductions." In this way, both the introduction and introduction act weresalient identifiable units of communication experience from the perspective of theJapanese participants.

Description of the Introduction Act

There was a distinctive pattern in the ways in which a participant performedher introduction. An introduction act consists of conversational moves, or "anystretch of talk or its substitutes which has a distinctive unitary bearing on someset or other of the circumstances in which participants find themselves" (Goffman,1981, p. 24)—in this case, statements that refer to who the participant is, to anykind of aspect of herself. Minimally, an introduction includes the following twomoves:

9 The interviews quoted here were transcribed in Japanese, and then I translated them into English.I have attempted to represent accurately the actual words and phrases used by the interviewees them-selves, rather than aim for smoothness and readability. This may have resulted in some awkwardnessin the English translation.

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Doing Cender and Building Culture 57

1. My name is / I'm [full name or last name]2. I come from / I'm from [home country]

There was no explicit limit on the length of floor or number of moves available forone's introduction, unless Vickie explicitly asked in the beginning to do a "short"introduction, in which only one's name and country were stated. An introductioneither could be done in one turn or could be made up of multiple turns that includeother participants' turns. For example,

1. H: My name is He Gyong Rang,2. I'm from Korea.3. My husband is in the university,4. his major is accounting.5. I have two children.6. My son is fifth grade in Queens School,7. my daughter is in U. Middle School, seventh grade.(English class, 3/23/94)

H gave her introduction in one turn; after her 7th move the floor was passed tothe person next to her.

1. Va:2.3.4.5.6.7.8. V:9.

10. Va:11. V:12. Va:13. A:14. V, Va:15. Va:16. V:17. Va:18.19. V:20. Va:21. V:22. Va:

I m Veronica,I'm from Argentina,ehh, I come here, ehh, 2, 2 months ago,ehh, I stay here for 4, 4 months now,then I come back Argentina,then, and then I come back here, ehh, again, for 4 years,because my husband want study here.So, now your husband is, is working here.He's a visiting scholar.Yes.And he wants to come back to be a student.Yes.Excuse me, 4 years?mm-hmmehh . . .Wh-what do you do in Argentina?ehh, in Argentina, I was a teacher, ehh (?) teacher.In elementary school, eh, schoolA school teacher.ehhmm, here, ehhm, hou- housewife? I'm housewife.mm-hmyes

(Friendship group, 2/3/94)

In this example, Veronica's introduction consisted of seven turns (although 15 "ehh. . ."s is ambiguous as whether it constitutes a turn or not), with Vickie the facilitator(V) and one participant (A) taking turns within Veronica's introduction.

The types of moves that the participants made in their introduction occurredacross different participants, events, and situations. The main types were self-

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58 A. Uchida

identification, self-categorization, reference to family members, reference to per-sonal experience and attributes, and narratives of personal experience.

Self-identification. The term self-identification is borrowed from Schegloff (1972/1986, pp. 353-354), who observed that in the openings of telephone conversationssome self-identification is often appended to the opening "hello." Schegloff definesself-identification as consisting of "a frame" ("this is ," "my name is ," "I am

") and "a term of identification" (names). He noted that "the choice both ofappropriate frames and appropriate self-identification terms varies with the identityand relationship of the two parties" (p. 354). The same applies to the use of self-identification in introductions, which is different from telephone conversations inthat they involve face-to-face interaction, among other things. As Schegloff alsoobserved (1972/1986, p. 353, n2), the frame "this is ," which is frequentlyused in phone conversation, is never used for self-identification in the face-to-faceintroduction except for introducing a third party (mainly accompanying childrenin this case). The frames used in the introduction acts that I observed were invar-iably either "my name is" or "I am," and the terms of identification either their fullname (given name and surname) or first name only. However, there were somevariations in the self-identification terms across different participants and differentsituations. There were the following tendencies:

1. In general, those who were new to the U.S. and had just arrived in thecommunity, seemed to be more likely to use their full names. Thosewho had been in the U.S. longer or had been attending the groups forsome time were more likely to say their first names only.

2. Those who spoke English with more fluency and less difficulty tendedto use their first names only, whereas those who seemed less used tospeaking English tended to say their full names.

3. The participants from East Asian countries (China, Japan, Taiwan,Korea) tended to use full names (given name first, surname last),whereas people from South America and Europe tended to use onlyfirst names.

4. Those who knew more people in the group tended to use their firstnames only, whereas those in a group where there were not many peoplethey knew tended to use their full names. For example, one Japanesewoman I observed used her full name in the English classes wherethere were over 20 participants from various backgrounds, but she usedonly her first name when she was in MOMS group with fewer than 10other mothers, half of whom were Japanese women with whom shealready seemed to be well acquainted.

Self-categorization. Self-identification was usually followed by moves describingoneself in terms oí membership categorization device (Sacks, 1972/1986, p. 332), whichrefers to "any collection of membership categories, containing at least a member."The participants identified themselves as members of several different categoriesin the introduction.

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Nationality. Together with self-identification, identifying one's nationality wasa requirement in the introduction act. When the move was omitted from the firstturn of the introduction, there was usually an attempt by a participant (usually,but not always, Vickie) to redress the lack:

1. K:2.3.4. V:5. K:6.7.8. V:9. K:

10. V:11.12. K:

I'm Kaori Shoji,I have, urn, I have come here on Augustand I will be, I will be stay next August.uh-huhI have two children, urn,they are going to nursery school in the morningso I come here.mm-hmThat's all.Okay.And you're from Japan.Yes.

(Discussion group, 10/4/93)

The move typically took the form of stating where one was from ("I'm from / Icome from [a country name]"). This was interpreted to mean that the speaker wasa member of the culture of the country and not simply that the speaker hadphysically come from the country to the U.S. A person who categorized herself asa member of a particular nation was expected by other participants to speak thenation's language and to know its customs and culture.

Occupation. Another membership categorization device used in the introduc-tion was occupational status. A move frequently made in this category was thestatement referring to oneself as a housewife:

1. E: My name is Emiko Nakamura.2. I'm from Japan.3. Last week I came here with my husband and my son.4. My husband is a visiting scholar5. and we want to stay here for about 1 year.6. I'm just housewife,7. and my son is, is second grade in elementary school, Queens

School.8. He's now with Queens School and studying.

(English class, 3/30/94)

One's occupation in one's home country was sometimes mentioned as well. Thisoccurred mostly in the English classes when Vickie had an agenda to discussoccupations as part of the day's lesson and specifically asked the participants totalk about their jobs back home; however, after such English classes, I also observedsome participants mention their occupation in the introduction in other groups.

Other categories. Several other membership categories devices were used forself-categorization, most of which were associated with the institution of marriage

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60 A. Uchida

and family. Although not as common, there were several instances where a speakerself-categorized herself in terms of her marital status: "I am married," or "I havea husband." However, because the majority of the participants were spouses andthis was taken for granted as the norm, referring to marital status was not regardedas a necessary move in the introduction.

On the other hand, it was much more common to make reference to one'sparenthood: whether one was childless ("I have no children"), expecting a child("I am X months pregnant"), or already had a child or children ("I have X child/children").

Reference to family members. Often moves that were not direct statements aboutoneself were made in the course of the introduction. Most often they were state-ments about significant others, such as their children and husbands, who wereidentified and described.

It was quite common for participants who identified themselves as havingchildren to talk about their children during the introduction. Most commonly theirsex and age was mentioned (occasionally the age was substituted or supplementedby the type of educational institution that the child attended or where the childwas at the moment).

. 1. M: My name is Masumi Sasaki.2. I came from Japan.3. I arrived here last August.4. So, I have a child,5. my daughter is 7 years old.


Statements about one's spouse were also common in the introduction. Theywere mostly referred to in terms of their status in the university (professor, re-searcher, student) and departmental affiliation.

1. J: My name is Jana.2. I came from Australia,3. my husband is a visiting professor.

(Discussion group, 9/20/93)

1. H: My name is Hui Hua.2. I'm from China.3. I'm here for, I'm here for 8 months.4. My husband is study biochemistry in university.


It seemed that in general the department to which the spouse belonged was ofmore importance than the status or the area of research. This may be related tothe fact that many international students' and scholars' social life is centered aroundthe department, which provides social support networks that extend to spouses. Itis possible for one to get involved in one's husband's department and befriend hiscolleagues' wives.

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Reference to personal experience and attributes. The introductions frequently in-cluded moves that referred to particular aspects of the speaker's life, especiallythose that derive from her experience of being a foreigner in the U.S., notablyone's length of stay, and one's English ability.

How long one has been in the U.S. and the community and how long one isscheduled to stay were frequently stated in the introduction:

1. M: My name is Minako Ide,2. I come from Japan,

[pause]3. I arrived here . . . 3 months ago.


Another move observed in the introduction, although not as frequently, wascomments about one's English:

1. S: My name is Soo Ryan.2. [a response from unidentified participant: "Soo Ryan?"]3. S: yeah [laughs]4. I came from Korea.5. same country [indicates previous introducer]6. I've been here 1 xh year7. so my English is not good [laughs]8. J: No, I don't think so9. V: That's okay.


The speakers here seem to be concerned with their ability to use English as ameans to communicate. Initially I considered the possibility that the statement wasan expression of modesty, but it did not seem to be the case here. Those who saidthey could not speak English or that their English was not very good did seem tohave trouble with English in their introduction; their struggle in putting what theywanted to say into words and phrases in English and their frustration at thedifficulty they were having were quite visible. They had a lot of pauses and fillersduring which they searched for the right word and used shorter phrases that oftendid not have the "grammatically correct" verbs and prepositions:

[A, the speaker, is a woman from Kyrgyzstan attending with her 9-month-old daughter. She has already said her name and country,which invoked some interest among the participants]

1. A: My husband study in the university,2. he, he is economic program.3. My daughter, she is 9 months,4. seven, Februa- February, (?)5. V: ah6. A: 9 months (?)7. V: okay,8. A: Today is three (?) of February,9. V: Today is . . . third, of February.

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10. Seventh of February is . . . next week11. A: ahh, next week, yeah . . .12. (pause)13. A: nnn I am nnn, 4 months, in USA14. V: mm-hm15. A: My English is uh (laughs)16. V: That's okay, not a problem


It seems as though statements referring to English ability were made to explainthe struggle and inability to self-express clearly in the introduction. When oneperceived her performance as inadequate, the reference to communicative com-petence was made. Therefore, it is also possible to see this statement as a metacom-municative statement that functions to frame one's performance of the introduc-tion, rather than as a part of the introduction. However, the move not only framesthe immediate talk (the introduction) but also the speaker herself; her acknowledg-ment that her English is not good and that she realizes it applies to her subsequenttalk as well as the introduction. In other words, the speaker is making a statementabout herself, not only about her talk. Therefore, this utterance should be treatedas an introduction move.

Narratives of personal experience. In general, the introduction consisted mostlyof "factual" statements. However, in some occasions, especially when there werefewer time constraints in doing the introduction, participants included stories ofpersonal experience in their introduction (or used their introduction to tell storiesof personal experience). The narratives usually described an incident or an ex-perience that occurred in the past (although there were some that referred toanticipated events, such as planning a birthday party or expecting a visitor) thathad direct relevance to the present.

[S, the speaker, is a woman from Japan who has been here for almost 1V2 yearsand who will return in less than a month. She has said her name, her country,length of stay, and the ages of her two children.]

1. S: mmm soon for a while (?) after we came here,2. we had a uh, hard time, to live here,3. uh, I cannot speak English (laughs),4. [laughter]5. not at all,6. and mmm not used to live here,7. and very hard,8. but now,9. got more comfortable, mmm


[The speaker is ST from Taiwan. She has said her name, country, the lengthof her stay (been here for 1 year and 1 month) and said that she has twochildren]

1. ST: The big one is 3, 3 half old, years old,2. and she was in Orchid Dell nursery school last winter

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3. and last summer session,4. urn because it was very cold and they played outside5. he, she used to caught cold last year.6. So I uh, (inaudible)7. V: Decided not to send her.8. ST: Uh-huh. not to send her to school in (?) this season.9. Later if there is space maybe I will send her back again.

10. And uh, in December (?)11. when I came here last year12. I cannot speak English very well13. and it's very cold,14. in Taiwan it's hot,15. urn not so cold,16. it's not hot but not so cold,17. and we can't used to this climate here18. so we didn't go outside,19. and till last August I went out for some, looking for something20. and I feel comfortable more comfortable now,21. and I can speak some things to other friends


The stories above are experiences of difficulties that the two speakers had duringtheir first year in the U.S. (both having been here for more than 1 year). They arealso stories of their solving and overcoming their difficulties and becoming "morecomfortable" with their lives. Both are success stories, stories of achievement andtriumph. "Becoming comfortable" was a common theme in the stories told in theintroductions. Another common theme was "making new friends across cultures."

Analysis of Personhood in the Introduction and Introduction Acts

Having identified the descriptive features of the introduction, I will now do apreliminary analysis of the shared discourse on personhood that the participantsattempted to produce through the introduction. The normative ways in whichparticipants introduced themselves reveal what a person consists of, what the rel-evant features of a person are, and what it means to be a person in this particulargroup. The introduction is seen as a means through which the participants jointlyengage in the creation of shared personhood by applying the discourse to theirown biographies. The participants' moves that present themselves in terms ofcategories, attributes, and experiences that they have in common, therefore, arepart of a culture building process. The introduction can be seen as a culturebuilding speech event.

As the description and the categorization of moves in the introduction actsindicate, people introduced themselves in terms of names, nationalities, occupa-tions, family members, and personal experiences and attributes (most notablylength of stay and English competence), and through narratives of personal ex-perience. These can be seen as examples of the ways of talking about some of therelevant aspects of what it means to be a person that is shared by the participants,constituting the discourse on personhood in the groups.

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Names. Every participant invariably self-identified in terms of their names,usually in the very beginning of their introduction. However, the importance ofnames as identifiers of individual participants seems to be contingent on whetherthe individual was a regular participant. On the one hand, on the surface, namesdid not always seem to be accorded much importance as an aspect of a person.Although names that are neither English nor native to one's language are usuallydifficult to hear and reproduce accurately, there were not many instances wherethe participants requested someone to repeat her name or attempted to say it.Vickie justified the introduction based on the value of names by emphasizing thatit was "good" to know each other's names in the opening, but knowing and re-membering each other's names did not seem to be the top priority within thespeech event. One's name seemed rarely remembered by the participants as aresult of one introduction (the interviewees, including Vickie, would more oftenrefer to a participant who was relatively a newcomer by nationality than by name;e.g., "that older woman from China"; see also the section Nationality, below). Par-ticipants rarely used names to address each other or to refer to someone after theintroduction unless they knew each other well outside the group context. Thisnorm seems to be very different from the common practice in U.S. discourse,where individual names, especially first names, are accorded great importance. Inmany situations in the U.S., people are encouraged to address each other by theirfirst names in order to promote a friendly atmosphere. For example, it is commonfor service personnel (such as waitpersons in restaurants, bank tellers, cashiers) toidentify themselves by name or wear a name tag for the customers. For classroominstructors, learning the names of their students and having the students learneach other's names are important.

On the other hand, when the introduction speech event is seen as a recurringroutine where regular members exchange their names every time, names do seemto have importance. There are two issues concerning names. First, the U.S. normto be on first-name-only basis in nonformal occasions did seem to be picked up bythe participants who regularly attended the support groups. As described previ-ously, many Asian participants tended to use their full name in the introductionwhen they were relatively new in the U.S., whereas those who had been here longerand had been attending the support groups regularly tended to be more likely touse only their first names. This seems to indicate that the introduction may havehad some socialization effect on the participants. The participants seem to be awareof the use of the first name as an American norm, and some Japanese women sawthe American norm as a useful device that allowed them to avoid the gendered useof names in Japanese speech. For example:

RO: Don't you think the Japanese way of addressing people isstrange? Urn . . . there's lots of rankings and honorifics that youhave to consider, and for example, when you enter a company andI meet [her husband's] friends, I'll be called "Mr. Oota's wife"{Oota-san no okusari), but I hate that. Since I'm here, and I haven'tlived [as a married woman, since she got married in the US] inJapan so I haven't had such experience yet, but you know, the waypeople address you as "so-and-so's aunt" (nantoka-san no obasan)}"so-and-so's mother" (nantoka-chan no okaasan)}

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AU10: Yes, they do.RO: Yeah, I really hate that. Yeah, but, if I assert that in Japan, maybe

I'll be considered weird, I think.AU: Right. How do you prefer to be addressed then?RO: Oh, so, by my name, Rika (Rika-san). Here, I can be called Rika,

by other Japanese, even by men. Of course if they aren't thatclose they call me Mrs. Oota (Oota-san), but it's rare that someonecalls me something like "Mr. Oota's wife." Also kids, who havebeen here long enough, even the Japanese kids, call me Rika(Rika-san), "sister Rika" (Rika oneesan), and so forth, but they callme by my name. So I'm happy, but [laughs]

AU: Right. . .RO: Yeah, so I think I'll hate it when I go back to Japan. But, if, in

Japan, I say "please call me Rika" they might think I'm a littleweird, I think.

AU: Right. If you say that to someone you've met for the first time . . .RO: Here, everybody calls each other by their first name a lot, of

course last names are okay too, but you call people by theirnames.

Another interviewee observed that all the Japanese women she interacted withseemed to call each other by their first names, which she noted as being differentfrom the Japanese norm, and she wondered if it was because they were in the U.S.Here is an example of how gender is done through the practice of using first namesto address each other by Japanese women. However, the shift may not necessarilymean that the participants are simply becoming "Americanized"; rather, it maymean that they are able to differentiate between the different cultural processes inwhich they participate and to shift their speech accordingly. For example, some ofthe Japanese women who identified themselves by their first names in the supportgroups still identified themselves by their last names only and others by their lastname followed with the suffix san (which does not have an English equivalent butcan be roughly translated into "Mrs." or "Ms."), which is the Japanese norm, whenthey were being interviewed. Even the women who used first names always usedthe suffix san after the first name to refer to others. This may be a compromisebetween the American norm and the Japanese norm. Thus, whether they arespeaking English in the support groups or speaking Japanese, the Japanese womenactively participate in the reproduction of the local culture through the reproduc-tion of the norm of how to refer to persons by name, which is simultaneously agendered practice for them.

Second, the participants themselves noted that getting to know people throughseeing them and hearing their names repeatedly was one of the benefits of thesupport groups. As one interviewee said, "as you go more [to these supportgroups], you start learning their names," which often paved the way for developingfriendships. Being able to identify a person by her name seemed to be an importantstep toward seeing the person as an "individual" rather than merely as "someone

10AU refers to myself, the interviewer.

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from this or that country," which tended to be, as one woman said, laden withstereotypes and ignorance. Therefore, for regular participants in the supportgroups who participated in the introduction, the name was an important part of aperson that separated her from being an abstract stereotype, a foreign "other." Forthem, participating in the introduction meant that they were participating in theprocess of becoming what people, both self and others, should be in the supportgroups: individuals, potential friends, with names.

Nationality. Categorizing oneself in terms of one's nationality or where onecame from (before arriving to Orchid Dell) was an essential component of theintroduction act. The introduction of oneself was seen as incomplete without men-tioning one's nationality or place of origin. Therefore, one of the constructs of aperson in the support groups seems to be that a person is of some nationality,which means that she is from a country that is (for the most part) not the U.S.,that she has relocated geographically, culturally, and linguistically; and that she isin the U.S. temporally as a "foreigner." Moreover, the country of one's origin isseen as an important aspect of who a person is and the first thing about a personthat was remembered. Often in the beginning one's nationality was used to identifythe person more frequently than one's name. I have observed many individualsrefer to people in Orchid Dell or in support groups by their nationality (e.g., theKorean lady, the woman from Bulgaria).

The importance of one's nationality as an identifier of a person that is producedand reproduced through discourse seems to reveal the support group members'desire to see themselves as multinational, multicultural, multilingual, and plural-istic. Whenever a person is identified in terms of her nationality, the diversity anddifference that exists among the participants in the group are highlighted. Thelinguistic and national variety among the participants in the groups was a qualitythat the interviewees found salient and positive. For example:

What I liked about [the English class] in Orchid Dell, is, first, . . . it's an Englishclass only for people who don't speak English, so, um .. . I'm sure you know, but[laughs] people have very strong accents from their own languages, and for aJapanese like me, it's rather hard to understand you know? But, um, but that's alsowhat's interesting. And also psychologically, it's easier to speak, because there's theatmosphere that there's nothing wrong if your English is bad, so it's really psycho-logically easy, yeah . .. And, urn, you get to hear stories about many differentcountries [laughs], um, in that respect, you can casually go and participate withoutfeeling like you have to speak, that I think is nice.

Some participants also saw the variety as providing important educational oppor-tunities:

I think [the English class] is good to go to, even if it's once a week. Otherwise,nowadays . . . [it's important to tell others] about Japan too, and now, English [isimportant to learn] too, but I also want to hear more about other countries.Mmmm, now, today I couldn't go, but today [we were supposed to learn] wordswith same pronunciation but different meaning. I think that's necessary too, but,for me, yeah, that's communication and different [? sic], for me, English conver-

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sation [can give me] what I want, which is to learn about other countries and studyEnglish at the same time.

However, at the same time, the common experience among the participants, theexperience of living in another country, culture, using a different language, beinga foreigner in the U.S., is also affirmed by default. For example, the importanceof one's nationality (and the status of being a foreigner) provides a backdrop ofthe common sentiment expressed in the first of the two excerpts above, that psy-chologically it is more comfortable to be in the groups because it is understoodthat everybody is expected not to be fluent in English. Therefore, the talk thatregards nationality as an integral aspect of a person establishes a common groundamong the participants while acknowledging the differences that exist between them.

Occupation. Most of the participants in the groups were housewives in theU.S., although their occupation in their home country varied. The move "I'm ahousewife." "I'm a housekeeper here" was frequently made in the introductions.This is interesting, because within the context of support groups for spouses inOrchid Dell, it was expected that participants would be housewives. The statement"I'm a housewife" therefore seems to be redundant, stating the obvious; unlike thestatement of one's name or nationality, categorizing oneself as a "housewife" doesnot describe anything unique or identifiable about oneself. Therefore it is likelythat the move "I'm a housewife" made in the introduction functions more than asimple declaration of one's occupational status.

A close examination of the statement in context reveals that usually it wasmade in a tone of embarrassment, on the verge of being apologetic. Sometimes itwas said with a small laugh accompanied by a self-disparaging "just" or "only":

M: My name is Myon Hi Hu,from Korea,I am house . . . (inaudible) [laughs] wife,


E: . . . My husband is a visiting scholar,He's in accounting,I'm just a housekeeper.


The statement sometimes co-occurred with another statement of one's occupationalstatus back in the country of origin, implicitly noting a drop in social status sincearriving in the US:

M: I have teacher's certificate, in Japanbut in America housewife [laughs]

V: Okay. Do you teach elementary school or high school?M: Elementary school and senior high school and junior high schoolV: Oh. All of them.M: Yes.

But in America housewife [laughs](English class, 3/30/94)

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There seems to be a sort of ambivalence reflected in references to one's statusas a housewife. Housewife seemed to be used as a metaphor for the seemingly low-prestige position that the participants found themselves in as international women,either in comparison to their social position in their home country where they helda job or to their husband's position in the university. Some of my intervieweesindirectly revealed some ambivalent feelings toward their predicament of beinguprooted from their homes for the sake of their spouse's academic or professionalcareers:

[Before coming to the U.S.] I wanted to come, as an experience, but also, well, Ihave to interrupt everything I'm doing in Japan, things like I do as a hobby, andmy child's kindergarten . . . everything had to be interrupted completely to comehere; I guess I was a little uneasy and nervous about that. I'm not the one whogets to study [in the U.S.] anyway, so a year for my husband . . . interrupting whatI'm doing, what the kids are doing . . .

I wasn't very keen on going [to the U.S.], to tell you the truth [laughs]. It was like"What?!" [laughs]. So . . . urn . . . but anyway, I didn't have a choice, my husbandsaid if he had to go alone . . . or rather, he said he absolutely would not go alone,urn, he wouldn't go if he had to leave his family, but, urn . . . he had to go, so, itwas really a hard decision, but I eventually kind of resigned [laughs]. And . . . oncewe got here, my younger son had [a lot of problems adjusting], and I was alsodepressed, and urn . . . it was like that for a while, and well, I think it was he thatsuffered the most, because it was for his sake that all of us were here, so, Iunderstand how he feels and so now I try not to say anything, like "Who do youthink we are here for?" [laughs]

Another woman, for whom this was the second visit to the university, said:

In the beginning I didn't want to come here, to this life. Do we have to go to thatboring place again? I was sick of it, but being sick of it doesn't help anything, soI decided to make the most of the life here.

"I'm only a housewife" may be another way in which the ambivalence wasexpressed.

The significance of this statement lies in that it expressed the reality of theparticipants that was shared largely because of their gender—it was far morecommon for the wife to accommodate the husband's job and opportunity than viceversa. It was also based on the shared understanding that being a housewife wasnot considered a "real" job despite the amount of emotional and physical workinvolved, especially in caring for one's family adjusting in a foreign environment.The move "I'm just a housewife" made in the introduction invokes the genderedreality that was shared by the participants and reaffirmed their ambivalence towardthe circumstances imposed on them from the outside. Gender as a basis of identi-fication and culture building was not a general category of being "women," but amore specific, everyday experience-based category "housewife" used as a symbolin the process of culture building among international wives. A participant in thesupport group was "doing gender" when she disparagingly described herself as

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"just a housewife" as well as attempting to engage in the creation of shared meaningand the building of a culture.

Family members. Participants often talked about their immediate family, mostlychildren and husbands, in their introductions. The identities of their children andhusbands were seen as relevant aspects of oneself to be introduced. Therefore, aperson in this context was seen as inseparable from her family. Mentioning one'schildren's and husband's affiliation (school, grade, department, major) as part ofone's introduction not only shows the participants' connectedness with their family,but also that identification and connection between the participants could be madethrough their children or husbands. For example, a participant who had a 1 -year-old baby could identify emotionally with another participant who also had a babyof the same age and may be able to discuss concerns and offer advice to each other.A participant who was a mother of a second grader in the local elementary schoolmade connections with another participant whose child was in the same class. Aparticipant whose husband was studying in material science might contact anotherparticipant whose husband was also in the same department. The boundaries of aperson in this culture, therefore, was not around the individual, but extended toher family. By making reference to one's family in one's introduction, participantsreconstructed the concept of person as inclusive of one's family. Implicit also werethe gendered roles of mother and wife that most of the participants shared, espe-cially the role of the wife. The talk about one's children and husband as part ofintroduction was also a way of doing gender in the role of mother and wife.

Length of stay and English competence. As previously noted, one's nationality wasseen as an integral aspect of oneself to be mentioned in one's introduction. Thiswas based on the conceptualization of a person as being of a particular nationaland cultural origin and temporarily residing in the U.S. Statements that informothers of how long one has been in the U.S. and how long one will stay, andcomments about one's English ability also seemed to be based on this conceptual-ization. However, what they mean as a part of introduction seems to be moreambiguous. Unlike one's nationality, one's length of stay cannot be used to identifya person instead of her name, and unlike statements about one's children or hus-band, one does not make connections with others on the basis of length of stay.Concern with one's English competence is shared among all participants, but be-cause one purpose of the groups was to allow the participants to practice theirEnglish, making a statement that one's English is not very good does not seem tohave much news value. Therefore, these two types of moves must have somesymbolic meaning.

The length of stay in the U.S. was mentioned in some form by the majority ofintroduction acts, and this information was usually voluntarily given, not solicitedby questioning. It was a statement most frequently made after one's name andnationality. The reference to one's English competence, although not as common,was also made unsolicited and usually responded to by Vickie the facilitator in away that legitimized both the speaker's feeling ("That's okay") and her participationin the group ("You can listen"). Other participants also responded with back chan-nel cues or with laughter whose tone was not mirth but empathy and recognition

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that they felt the same way about their English ability. The laughter was usuallyinitiated by the speaker herself, whose comments about her English were eitheraccompanied by or ended with an embarrassed laugh, to which the other partici-pants would respond with a small laugh of their own. The comments about one'sinability to speak English well often followed one's statements about length ofresidence in the U.S.

The move that mentioned length of stay and the move that expressed concernwith English competence are connected in that they both referred to the difficultiesinvolved in being a non-U.S. American person—uprooted from one's place oforigin and temporarily relocated in a very different environment. The everydaylife of a "foreigner" is the experience of being a "stranger"; one cannot take dailypractices for granted. The time lived as a stranger does not have the same signif-icance as time lived as a member; the length of stay indicated the length of struggle,the time spent getting used to how things are and learning to function in the newenvironment. The length of stay became a metaphor for the amount of strugglethe women had with the language and how much they had accomplished in termsof learning how to speak.

Something as common as language also becomes problematic; the basic processof communication could no longer be taken for granted as something they do"naturally." "English" as a language came to represent the barriers, the problems,and the uncertainties experienced in the daily communication practices that thewomen did not have when they lived in their own countries. The move "I cannotspeak English well," "My English is not good," and so on may be an explicitadmission that communication in this new environment is very problematic for thespeaker, which in turn reinforces and recreates the meaning of personhood in thegroup: A person is someone for whom communication in English is problematic.This recognition was extremely important in this group in order for participantsto feel comfortable in not being articulate and fluent communicators and to feelconfident that their ability to speak English was not being used to evaluate their"natural" ability to communicate. Some of the interviewees expressed their frus-tration in not being able to speak freely:

AU: But you speak up a lot [in the groups], I think you have manyopportunities to use English.

MK: Well.. . I don't know, I feel like . . . I hate myself sometimes, whensomething happens and it's like, oh, why couldn't I understandsomething so simple.

AU: Does that happen a lot?MK: And later, alone I think "Oh I wish I'd said this" [laughs]

Some described the experience as "stressful":

And I want to talk about many things, but urn, I can't express them, and becauseI can't express what I want to say, I accumulate a lot of stress.

They often stated that they were (or used to be) embarrassed to speak or afraid tomake mistakes:

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Urn . . . before, you know, I'd be embarrassed and I didn't want to make mistakesspeaking English, so I couldn't speak.

Some mentioned the experience of feeling lonely as a result of not being able tocommunicate:

Even when somebody starts talking to me, I can't understand, and when I can'trespond, it feels rather awful, maybe they don't really mind, but for me, it's like,oh no . . . I couldn't say anything, mm, and then if the conversation just haltsthere, I really feel . . . kind of lonely, yeah, probably because of things like that, inthe beginning I stopped speaking much.

This experience may also be interrelated with their low status as "just a housewife"and a foreign woman in an academic environment. Statements of one's Englishcompetence were short-hand ways to refer to such experience and to construct theexperience as being shared by the participants. That this was indeed a culturebuilding move can be seen from Vickie's comments following the statements thatframe them as "okay" and understandable. The participants themselves alsoseemed aware that they all shared what it meant to be a nonnative speaker who"could not speak English":

AU: So most of the participants [in the groups] don't speak English astheir first language?

RO: Yes, right. So, it's easy to speak, because we are all nonnatives[laughs].

AU: Oh, is it like that?RO: Mmmm, yes, definitely. Of course there are differences in skills, but

even those who had been here long and became quite good atEnglish know what it was like for them when they couldn't speak.

Being a nonnative for whom English was problematic was one important aspect ofbeing a person that was shared by the group participants. The statement referringto one's inability to speak English, therefore, evoked the shared experience andcontributed to the construction of shared personhood in the groups.

Narratives of personal experience. Studies of narratives have shown the signifi-cance that storytelling and stories have in everyday life, especially in aspects suchas problem solving, socialization, construction of reality, knowledge and identity,and the production and reproduction of social organization and culture (Basso,1984; Bruner, 1986, 1990, 1991; Feldman, 1989; Goodwin, 1990; Gregg, 1992;Hymes & Cazden, 1980; Langellier, 1989; Miller, Potts, Fung, Hoogstra, & Mintz,1990; Polanyi, 1989; Shuman, 1986; Torres, 1992). Introductions occasionally in-cluded personal narratives with common themes, the most frequent being thesuccess story of "becoming more comfortable living in the U.S." The story of aperson who faces a lot of difficulties, a major one being not able to speak English,but who eventually overcomes the problems and starts being able to enjoy life inthe U.S. more is one that seems to offer a model of what a person should be orcould be in this culture. It is important to note that the subtext of this story is that

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the person had not come to the U.S. out of choice or benefit, had few self-servingpurposes in being here, and had to take on the problems of her family and espe-cially her children (who also did not choose to come here) as her own. The story isrelevant to the specific circumstances of the participants in the group, and thecircumstances are gendered, largely derived from the participants' status aswomen, wives, and mothers. Thus, although the gendered nature of the story isnever quite explicit, it is, nevertheless, a gendered story, and through the telling ofthe narrative in the introduction, participants can be seen as engaging in the local"doing" of gender. This success story is told and retold in many circumstances otherthan introductions—for example, Vickie told me the same story about the Japanesewoman S in the above example when she was describing S as a possible interviewee.As a discourse on personhood, the story creates and recreates the meaning of whatit means to live as a sojourning, foreign woman, wife, mother, and nonnativeEnglish speaker in the U.S.

Conclusion

In the beginning of this article, I asserted the need for more studies onwomen's intercultural communication. Just as it is important for feminist research-ers to acknowledge the differences between women, so it is also important forfeminist communication researchers to acknowledge the differences in women'scommunication experiences and in women's intercultural communication experi-ences. Through the discussions of culture and gender as dynamic processes thathave not yet been sufficiently integrated into empirical research on women's com-munication across cultural lines, I have developed and presented a culture buildingmodel of intercultural communication that emphasizes the role of gender that maybe used as a heuristic device to understand actual, situated instances of women'sintercultural communication experiences in the U.S. I have also discussed theconcept of personhood and how the patterned ways in which people talk aboutselves and others can be seen as an attempt to create a shared personhood and asan example of culture building activity.

I have attempted to demonstrate how the model can guide an analysis of anaturally occurring intercultural communication situation by using a case studyof the introduction in support groups for international spouses. By describing thetalk in the introduction, I examined how participants engage in culture buildingthrough the discourse on personhood in the support groups. Here, some types ofintroduction moves were more explicit in the ways gender was done than others.However, I do not wish to imply that the participants were "doing gender" whenthey talked about their husbands and children but not when they identified them-selves by nationality. An individual move cannot be isolated from others in theintroduction but should be taken as a whole, just as a person's experience holisticallyintegrates experience that is gendered, raced, and classed. What I have presentedhere is of course partial and incomplete, and the analysis does not yet take intoconsideration the many contextual variables that may influence the culture buildingprocess, such as the particular effects of geographical location and the interaction

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of the participants' languages, nationalities, and cultures.11 A more detailed, in-depth analysis is clearly needed.

Intercultural communication is no longer a concern reserved only for womenwho are immigrants, students, and business professionals; nor is it completelysynonymous with "intergroup" communication. It is increasingly becoming morecommon for women all over the world to encounter and engage in interculturalcommunication. Such situations range from women coming together in the publicarena for sociopolitical purposes (such as the UN Conference on Women in Beijing)to women attending a more private setting seeking personal goals (such as supportgroups). However, they all commonly provide spaces where gender and differencesamong gender (such as class, race, ethnicity, culture, nationality, language, sexualorientation) are played out through communication.

A "culture building" model is one possible way to approach women's intercul-tural communication in order to understand what the participants are doing in theinteraction. It is based on the conceptualization of culture and gender as what weactively create through communicative practices. It must always be applied tocontextually situated interaction, describing the particular ways in which cultureis created and gender is done, and the particular characteristics of the culturecreated. The greater the number of instances of intercultural communication sit-uations the model is applied to, the better we are able to assess the adequacy ofthe model, and the more we can understand the relationship between gender,culture, and communication.

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Doing gender and building culture: Toward a model of women's intercultural communication