Understanding hybridisation: Towards a study of spaces of intercultural communication

Abstract

Intercultural communication is closely linked with the construction and functioning of cultural identity; thus, one way of analysing processes of intercultural communication is to adopt the idea of spaces of intercultural communication; places where cultures come together, intermingle and affect localising/globalising identities in several ways. These intercultural communication spaces, constructed and practiced (and which, therefore, refer to intercultural entities of thought, discourse or even ideologies that are created and communicated), may be concrete in the sense of geographically defined places, though they may also be of a non-geographic nature. The fundamental idea that can be found in the interval and the liminality that are included in the concepts of intercultural communication spaces is that of hybridisation. This study focuses on the nature of these spaces, and on the learning and hybridisation processes that take place within them.

Keywords

• Hybridisation
• local
• global
• spaces
• cultural identity
• interculturality