| This study looked at the ways in which intercultural married couples negotiate cultural identity and attempted to determine whether or not third culture building occurs within intercultural marriages. Theoretical positions guiding this study were symbolic interactionism, identity negotiation, social constructionism, and third culture building. Given that successful marriage, like crossing international boundaries, requires adaptation and identity transformations, these theoretical positions seemed most suitable for looking at how intercultural couples negotiate their differences to create stable marriage identities. Face-to-face interviews were conducted with interculturally mixed couples to determine how these couples socially constructed meaningful realities, negotiated identity, and participated in third culture building. The richness of these emic narratives revealed five emerging themes: language and communication, religion, race, identity and third culture. Dialectical tensions manifested themselves within the dialogues of these intercultural married couples' and Ting-Toomey's (2005) identity related dialectics, Martin and Nakayama's (2007) intercultural dialectics, and Baxter and Montgomery's (1996) praxis patterns of adjustment and change were used to understand and interpret the data. |
