Books Hunting

Communication Reports Vol. 21, No. 1, January–June 2008, pp. 1–13

Intercultural Friendship Development
Patricia M. Sias, Jolanta A. Drzewiecka, Mary Meares, Rhiannon Bent, Yoko Konomi, Maria Ortega, & Colene White

This study examined intercultural friendship development through analysis of in-depth interviews. While extant literature on friendship development has examined friends from the same cultural background, interviewees in the current study (N ¼ 30) described relationships with friends from cultures different than their own. Analysis revealed four factors that respondents felt influenced the development of their intercultural friendship; targeted socializing, cultural similarities, cultural differences, and prior intercultural experience. Results also indicate several ways in which communication both enables and hinders the development of intercultural friendships, providing evidence of the uniqueness and complexity of communication in these relationships. Keywords: Intercultural friendship; Relationship development Scholars have paid scant attention to intercultural friendships despite their clear importance and frequency in the increasingly multicultural world. Intercultural friendships represent an intimate intersection between personal and cultural aspects of communication processes and the difficulty in teasing them out might be one reason why they receive so little research attention. Qualitative methods lend themselves particularly well to understanding the subjective experience and how it is shaped by personal and cultural factors. This study examined intercultural friendship development through an analysis of in-depth interviews.
Patricia M. Sias (PhD, University of Texas, Austin, 1993) is a Professor in E. R. Murrow School of Communication at Washington State University. Jolanta A. Drzewiecka (PhD, Arizona State University, 1999) is an Associate Professor in E. R. Murrow School of Communication at Washington State University. Mary Meares

References: Altman, I., & Taylor, D. A. (1973). Social penetration: The development of interpersonal relationships. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Barnett, G. A., & Lee, M. (2002). Intercultural communication. In W. B. Gudykunst & B. Mody (Eds.), Handbook of international and intercultural communication (2nd ed., pp. 275–294). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Baxter, L., & Bullis, C. (1986). Turning points in developing romantic relationships. Human Communication Research, 12, 469–493. Brehm, S. S. (1985). Intimate relationships. New York: McGraw Hill. Bullis, C., & Bach, B. W. (1989). Are mentor relationships helping organizations? An exploration of developing mentee-mentor-organizational identifications using turning point analysis. Communication Quarterly, 3, 199–213. Casmir, F. L. (1999). Foundations for the study of intercultural communication based on a thirdculture building model. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 23, 91–116. Chen, L. (2002). Communication in intercultural relationships. In W. B. Gudykunst & B. Mody (Eds.), Handbook of international and intercultural communication (2nd ed., pp. 241–258). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Chuang, R. (2003). A postmodern critique of cross-cultural and intercultural communication research: Contesting essentialism, positivist dualism and eurocentricity. In W. J. Starosta & G. M. Chen (Eds.), Ferment in the intercultural field (pp. 24–56). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Collier, M. J. (1996). Communication competence problematics in ethnic friendships. Communication Monographs, 63(4), 314–336. Collier, M. J. (2000). Reconstructing cultural diversity in global relationships: Negotiating borderlands. In G. M. Chen & W. J. Starosta (Eds.), Communication and global society (pp. 215–236). New York: Peter Lang. Collier, M. J., & Bornman, E. (1999). Core symbols in South African intercultural friendships. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 23(1), 133–156. Collier, M. J., Hegde, R. S., Lee, W., Nakayama, T. K., & Yep, G. A. (2002). Dialogue on the edges: Ferment in communication and culture. In M. J. Collier (Ed.), Transforming communication about culture (pp. 219–280). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Duck, S., & Pittman, G. (1994). Social and personal relationships. In M. L. Knapp & G. R. Miller (Eds.), Handbook of interpersonal communication (2nd ed., pp. 655–686). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Gareis, E. (2000). Intercultural friendship: Five case studies of German students in the USA. Journal of Intercultural Studies, 21(1), 67–91. Glaser, B. G., & Strauss, A. L. (1967). The discovery of grounded theory: Strategies for qualitative research. Chicago: Aldine. Griffin, E., & Sparks, G. G. (1990). Friends forever: A longitudinal exploration of intimacy in samesex pairs and platonic pairs. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 7, 29–46. Gudykunst, W. (1985). An exploratory comparison of close intracultural and intercultural friendships. Communication Quarterly, 33, 270–283. Communication Reports 13 Imahori, T. T., & Cupach, W. R. (2005). Identity management theory: Facework in intercultural relationships. In W. B. Gudykunst (Ed.), Theorizing about intercultural communication (pp. 195–210). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Knapp, M. L. (1978). Social intercourse: From greeting to goodbye. Boston: Allyn & Bacon. Kudo, K., & Simkin, K. A. (2003). Intercultural friendship formation: The case of Japanese students at an Australian university. Journal of Intercultural Studies, 24, 91–114. Lee, P. W. (2006). Bridging cultures: Understanding the construction of relational identity in intercultural friendship. Journal of Intercultural Communication Research, 35, 3–22. Levinger, G. (1983). Development and change. In H. H. Kelley, E. Berscheid, A. Christensen, J. H. Harvey, T. L. Huston, G. Levinger, et al. (Eds.), Close relationships (pp. 315–359). New York: W. H. Freeman. Martin, J. N., Hecht, M. L., & Larkey, L. (1994). Conversational improvement strategies for interethnic communication: African American and European American perspectives. Communication Monographs, 61, 236–255. Sias, P. M., & Cahill, D. J. (1998). From coworkers to friends: The development of peer friendships in the workplace. Western Journal of Communication, 62(3), 273–299. Sias, P. M., Fix, B., Heath, R. G., Perry, T., & Silva, D. (2004). Narratives of workplace friendship deterioration. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 21, 321–340. Sigman, S. J. (1995). Order and continuity in human relationships: A social communication approach to defining ‘‘relationship’’. In W. Leeds-Hurwitz (Ed.), Social approaches to communication (pp. 188–200). New York: Guilford Press. Wright, P. H. (1984). Self-referent motivation and the intrinsic quality of friendship. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 1, 115–130. Zajonc, R. B. (1968). Attitudinal effects of mere exposure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 9, (Monograph Supp. No. 2, Pt. 2).