CIICPD 2023

In the following, these concepts are discussed in detail and a literature review is undertaken to determine how the HEAD Wheel and the DIVE Strategy can link to the current knowledge base.

2. Literature Review

2.1 Critical Incidents in Intercultural Encounters One manifestation of intercultural competence is the capacity to recognise cultural differences, become aware of them and integrate this knowledge and awareness into cultural diversity (Bennett, 2013). This process is described along the road from ethnocentricity, seeing one’s culture as central, toward greater ethnorelativity, seeing one’s culture as one of many on equal footing (Fielden Burns and Rico Garcìa, 2022). In other words, intercultural competence is not only the skill to translate intercultural encounters into effective and appropriate behaviour patterns, but it is also a question of sound cultural knowledge and critical self-awareness that allows for sufficient (self-) reflection. Given that the appropriate interpretation of cultural differences constitutes a key component of intercultural learning and critical incidents have proven to be a useful method in such interpretation (McAllister et al., 2006), it stands to reason they have been in use in the field of intercultural communication since the 1960s. Wight (1995, pp. 127) even considered them to be the most useful and effective training tools. It was Thomas (1993) who largely introduced this approach to the German-speaking world, referring to them as “kritische Interaktionssituationen”. He started to use them as an instrument to generate cultural assimilators – which is a collection of critical incidents – while at the same time developing qualitative methods that would allow him to identify cultural standards. He interviewed a large number of individuals about their experiences with intercultural interactions so that he could draw on an extensive and comprehensive set of data. Consequently, Thomas (2005, pp. 29) defined cultural standards as “orientation guidelines that help in obtaining a knowledge base about the foreign culture’s orientation system”. To do so, Kinast (2005, p. 191) draws on a microanalytical data collection approach that should allow for conclusions regarding the behaviours of the interaction partners as well as one’s own orientation system. In this vein, each case study brings a number of cultural interpretation possibilities to the fore and the analyst may think of the “culturally adequate alternative of explanation for the behaviour of the other person belonging to a different culture” (Kinast, 2005, p. 191). On this matter, Bolten (2007, p. 104) adds that despite the microanalytical interest, there is still a universal meta-analysis that can be drawn from the large number of comparable cultural situations and misunderstandings. So, arguably, one major challenge with critical incidents lies in the assumption that individual cases may be generalised due to a lack of more specific methodological applications (Hiller, 2009). To counteract this shortcoming, the Extended Critical Incident Approach (ECIA) was developed. It is argued that a critical incident is an event during which culture becomes relevant as a factor if the assumptions of normality and expectations of plausibility of the interacting individuals collide with culturally

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