A Phenomenological Inquiry Into Cross-cultural Adaptation And Identity Among Japanese International Students In Shanghai

With the development of our society and the economy, the advancement oftechnologies, the world we are living is taking on tremendous changes, so are ourcommunication styles and mode of thinking. People have created a variety of cultures withvarious forms and connotations interweaved in the broad historical, political, and socialcontexts. The relocation and transition from the culture of origin to the host culture entailintercultural communication. However, constrained by external and internal factors such ascultural differences, stress originated from the social environment and personal psychology,people will undergo a continuous process of adjustment, learning, and changes when facedwith the transition of cultural contexts.International students, a group of cross-cultural subjects frequently under examination,will go through cross-cultural adaptation on different levels when they move and relocatein another country. Through extensive literature review, the author identifies that most ofthe previous studies proceed to explore cross-cultural adaptation from three domains:psychological, sociocultural, and academic adaptation, identifying indicators andpredicators of cross-cultural adaptation, and formulating strategies to cope with variousproblems involved in this experience. The author attempts to apply a critical perspective inreconsidering the issue of cross-cultural adaptation.Since the1990s, a critical turn began to emerge in the academic field of interculturalcommunication, especially at the beginning of the21stcentury, a profusion of articles oncritical intercultural communication were published. However, critical studies onintercultural communication research and related areas are relatively small in Chinamainland. Inspired by a profusion of critical inquiries into intercultural communication, thepresent study attempts to interrogate the Westerncentric, positivistic notion ofcross-cultural adaptation in the field, believing that a large proportion of cross-culturaladaptation studies are generated within the Westerncentric discourse. Besides, the issue ofpower differentials is somewhat overlooked or excluded in many studies.Identity, which is perhaps the most frequently investigated issue in interculturalcommunication and also perhaps the most salient feature of humans, needs reconsideration, too. Working against the essentialism of viewing identity as static, and unchangeable in theprocess of time, the present study asserts that identity is always in flux and dynamic, whichundergo a complex process of re-creation and negotiation with a series of oppositions thatplace us in a relational relationship with others in communication and interaction.Driven by the objective to explore inductively the complex ways identify changes inthe process of cross-cultural adaptation, phenomenology was utilized as a methodologicalframework to analyze transcripts generated through in-depth semi-structured interview of6Japanese international students studying in Shanghai. This phenomenological analysishighlights that identity emerges through the shifting mode of consciousness of fromnormalcy to difference, as well as from assimilationist attitude to the assertion ofdifferentiation in the specific context of cross-cultural adaptation.