Power relations and change have become two of the most important foci of intercultural communication education and research. This paper contributes to these two elements by problematising and operating an analytical framework from outside the "West," the Chinese notion of Zhongyong (the "Golden Mean"). Based on a dialogical…

In this article, I learn from the Buddhist 'right' ground of mindfulness which provides rich insights about 'good', insights relevant to my thinking regarding what 'good' might entail for the interculturalist. By discussing the 'right' ground of mindfulness and a counter-example of 'McMindfulness', I learnt that the 'good' cannot be separated from…

This article draws on interview data to report how students of Mandarin in UK universities were exposed to and responded to 'Chinese culture' during their studies. The experiences that the students shared and the ways they responded demonstrated their understanding of cultural complexity, incorporating a fluid and dynamic view of culture as…

Intercultural teaching often emphasizes exposure to and understanding of cultural differences. Although it acknowledges the importance of cultural self-awareness, little research has been done to explore how such a goal is achieved. This article adopts collaborative autoethnography (CAE) to explore the creation, development, and use of variations…

This study examines the acculturation characteristics of Chinese students in the context of a multicultural classroom. The Chinese yin-yang philosophy is used to provide another dimension of interpretation and analysis in addition to Berry's acculturation strategy framework. Qualitative data over a five-year period reveal their changing…

This article investigates how pupils and teachers in two Chinese community schools in the UK understand Chinese culture as regards the classroom teaching and other activities offered by the schools such as the celebration of festivals. Working from a social constructionist perspective and building on the work of Adrian Holliday, the study explores…

Chinese migrants have been a rich source of influential international literature, represented by key works such as "Eat a Bowl of Tea" by Louis Chu in 1961 and "The Joy Luck Club" by Amy Tan in 1989. Cultural differences and conflicts, stereotypes and other complex issues regarding the diasporic lives of the Chinese sojourners…

The assumption that each culture has its own distinctive identity has been generally accepted in the discussion of cultural identities. Quite often identity formation is not perceived as a dynamic and interactive ongoing process that engages other cultures and involves change in its responses to different challenges at different times. I will…

Grounded in constructivist theories of reading and informed by the contemporary theories of identity, this study explored how three Korean adult speakers of English as a foreign language (EFL) constructed meaning of the novel "The Catcher in the Rye", and how their identities mediated this process. Sources of data included think aloud…

Through scrutinizing three simulated negotiation cases of Chinese MBA students in an American business school, the study illustrates how Chinese face ideology functioned to orient and complicate the students' (pseudo-)business communications with Americans. The students' bone-deep sensitivity to maintaining harmony and interrelationships in the…

Essentialist representations of the Orientalised Other abound within the literature of intercultural communication. The dominant discourse constructs Chinese-speaking students as members of a homogenised collective: passive recipients of knowledge who are reliant on a reproductive approach to learning. This article seeks to offer a corrective to…

In this study, I explore the experiences of five Japanese returnees ("kikokushijo"). The participants recorded taped monologues or wrote narratives reflecting on their time spent living abroad and of returning to Japan. These retrospective life stories revealed four prominent themes of conflict: group orientation; bullying and…

This contrastive study is concerned with relations between rhetoric and ethnicity in second language (L2) writing. It investigates the influence of Chinese rhetoric on expository writing in English by three groups: the majority Chinese Han group, and two ethnic minorities, Tibetan and Mongolian. Relying on a contrastive text analysis of 30…

The "Self" is a core notion in Western philosophy, which mainly defined it as an "autarchic individual", dependent on no "Other" whatsoever. Such a prevailing definition fails to recognise that just the "Other" is needed to properly define the "Self". As a result, Western mainstream philosophy…

Environmental education has increasingly become part of the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) curriculum worldwide. This article analyses 26 EFL textbooks used in Japan, to discover what kind of environmental education they offer, and what this says about intercultural communication in the teaching/learning process. The results show how…