Third Culture Building

Unilateral Awareness

One prospective interactant develops awareness and interest in another. The other's unfamiliarity requires the first party to consider variations in language and cultural preferences and values to refine some motivation to initiate contact. Initiation of contact proceeds following investigation into the state and nature of perceived differences between the parties. A motive such as curiosity or the need for some form of business exchange may be modified in light of the findings of the process of unilateral inquiry. The ideal TCB mind-set examines both the self and the other before initiating contact.

Interpersonal Contact

The first interactant makes some contact with the prospective partner, directly or through a third party, in person, or through electronic means. The first interactant represents a stranger to the other, and the mutual uncertainty among the parties will begin to be reduced with the assistance of information that was learned by the first interactant during the stage of unilateral awareness. The interpersonal contact may continue indefinitely for as long as both parties are able to identify some benefit to continuing the contact. At this stage, elements of the identity of the self and the other become more evident to both parties.

Persuasion Stage

The parties gain a more thorough understanding of one another. To move toward achieving the goals they have identified as worthy of pursuit, they engage in perspective taking and negotiation, first of material aspects of the negotiation and subsequently of their perceptions about cultural realities. Some aspects of the cultural preferences of the other become attractive, and elements of one's own cultural approach are placed under closer scrutiny and evaluation. Partly because of the need to address a new social reality that stems from the contact between the parties, new ways of defining and addressing social needs develop. These alternative approaches are tested, then adopted, then dropped, or retained by the parties. In those cases where new and overlapping behavioral repertoires develop for both parties, identity changes in accordance with the demands of the new requirements.

Intercultural Stage

Once the parties find a reason to prefer cultural behaviors of the other or to develop behaviors that were native to neither party as their new primary means of communicating, their altered preferences may be institutionalized in rules, protocols, adjusted languaging, or behaviors. Because the new pattern of communication behaviors represents a change from previous practice, and because the changed behavior has proven to be adaptive, the new behaviors are passed along to others as preferred behaviors. The relationship, the business, the offspring of the union, move to form a generalizable mode of conduct. By linguistic analogy, a pidgin has become a creole, and an identity emerges that is neither that of one nor the other interactant but, rather, represents some fusion of both interactants.

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