INCIDENTS OF SENSITIVITY: SEEING WITH NEW EYES
INCIDENTS OF SENSITIVITY: SEEING WITH NEW EYES

Summary/Abstract: Taking as a starting point the definition of intercultural communication competence as appropriate and effective management of interaction between people who, to some degree or another, represent different or divergent affective, cognitive, and behavioural orientations of the world by Spitzberg and colleagues (2009), we believe with Dalib and colleagues (2011) that competent communication must begin with an understanding of cultural beliefs, values, and worldviews vis-a-vis that of cultural others, thus developing cultural self-awareness through intercultural experiences. Intercultural experience takes place when people from different social groups with different cultures meet (Moosmüller, 1996; Alred et al., 2002). Holmes and O’Neill (2012) put it this way: “Monitoring and managing emotions, and reflecting on the feelings of Self and Other in the intercultural encounter require sensitivity, empathy and facework; these [are] all important processes in developing an awareness of intercultural competence”. We analyse a case of intercultural entrée of a person into a culturally strange community and concentrate on extraordinary intercultural experiences – incidents of sensitivity – that leave a memory trace and evoke transformations in individuals (Riivits-Arkonsuo et al., 2013), thus promoting intercultural communication competence. The case is documented with the help of an ethnographic fieldwork based on the PEER model of Holmes and O’Neill (2012) and serves as a basis for developing a tool for training for intercultural sojourns.

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