my report for Com 311: Seminar in Cross-Cultural Research at the College of Mass Communication, University of the Philippines Diliman - PhD Media Studies program

1. Identity Negotiation Theory
Crossing Cultural Boundaries
Chona Rita R. Cruz (Cindy)
86-16518
COM 311
Clarissa David, PhD

2. Stella Ting-Toomey
• Professor of Human Communication Studies at California
State University, Fullerton (CSUF)
• Teaching passions include intercultural communication
theory, intercultural communication training and design, and
intercultural and interpersonal conflict management
• Author and editor of 17 books (plus 2 Instructor's Manuals
and 2 Interactive Student Study Guides)
• 2008 recipient of the 23-campus wide CSU Wang Family
Excellence Award, and the 2007–2008 recipient of the CSUFullerton Outstanding Professor Award
• Lectures widely throughout the United States, Asia, and
Europe

3. Identity
• The reflexive self—conception or self-image that we each derive
from our family, gender, cultural, ethnic, and individual socialization
process
• Refers to our reflective views of ourselves and other perceptions of
our self images – at both the social identity and the personal
identity levels
• Family - We directly and indirectly acquire various belief and value
patterns in our culture through our primary family system
• Personal Family System VS. Positional Family System
• Gender - meanings and interpretations we hold concerning our selfimages and expected other-images of “femaleness” and “maleness”

4. Identities
• Personal Identities
– Unique attributes that we associate with our individuated
self in comparison to those of others
• Social Identities
– Cultural or ethnic membership identity
– Gender identity
– Sexual orientation identity
– Social class identity
– Age identity
– Disability identity
– Professional identity
– Others

5. Family
• Family is the fundamental communication system in all
cultures.
• We directly and indirectly acquire various belief and value
patterns in our culture through our primary family system
• Family socialization – boundary issues, gender-based
decision-making activities, power dynamics, degrees of
emotional expressiveness
• Initial blueprint of our formation of role, gender, and
relational identities
• Personal Family System VS. Positional Family System

6. Gender
• Affect how we define ourselves, encode and decode gendered
messages, develop intimate relationships, and relate to one
another
• Gender identity – meanings and interpretations we hold
concerning our self-images and expected other-images of
“femaleness” and “maleness”
• Expectations and orientations learned through cultural and
ethnic practices – child-rearing
• Children learn appropriate gender roles through rewards and
punishments for “proper” or “improper” gender-related
behaviors.

7. Gender and Communication
• Gender identities are supported and reinforced by existing
cultural structures and practices (how we “should” and
“should not” behave).
• Females
– Fluid discussion that promote relational collaboration
– Form expectation that “communication” is used to create
and maintain relationships to respond to the other’s
feelings empathetically
• Males
– Clear objectives, distinct roles and rules and clear win-lose
outcomes
– Form the expectation that “communication” is used to
achieve some clear outcome, attract and maintain an
audience, and compete with others

8. Cultural Identity
• The emotional significance we attach to our sense of
belonging or affiliation with the larger culture
• Cultural group memberships are acquired through the
guidance of primary caretakers and peer associations during
our formative years
• Physical appearance, racial traits, skin color, language
usage, self-appraisal, and other perception factors all enter
into the cultural identity construction equation
• The meanings and interpretations we hold for our culturebased identity groups are learned via direct or mediated
contacts (e.g. mass media images) with others

9. Ethnic Identity
• Inherently a matter of ancestry, of beliefs about the origins of one’s
forebears
• An inheritance wherein members perceive each other as
emotionally bounded by a common set of
traditions, worldviews, history, heritage, and descent on a
psychological and historical level
• Can be based on national origin, race, religion, or language
• Based on a subjective sense of belonging to or identification with
an ethnic group across time
• Objective sense of ethnic identity – shared religion, language
• Subjective sense of “ingroupness” – shared historical and emotional
ties

10. Value Content
• Value content refers to the standards or expectations that
people hold in their mind-set in making evaluations
• Value dimensions that underlie people’s behavior
• Individualism-collectivism (Hofstede)
• In order to negotiate mindfully with people from diverse
cultures, we must understand the value contents of their
cultural identities

11. Identity Salience
• Identity salience refers to the strength of affiliation /
sentiments or feeling of belonging or connection that we have
with our larger culture
• Operates on a conscious and unconscious level
• Influences our practice of norms and communication scripts
of the dominant, mainstream culture
• In order to negotiate cultural and ethnic identities mindfully
with divers cultural/ethnic groups, we need to understand in
depth the content and salience of cultural and ethnic identity
issues.

12. What is Identity Negotiation?
• A transactional interaction process whereby individuals in an
intercultural situation attempt to
assert, define, modify, challenge, and/or support their own
and others’ desired self-images
• A mutual communication activity
• Communicators evoke their own desired identities in the
interaction and also attempt to challenge or support the
others’ identities
• Mindless (automatic pilot) and mindful (learned process of
attuning to self-identity reactive issues plus engaging in
intentional attunement to others’ salient identity issues)

13. Identity Negotiation Theory

14. • Emphasis: cultural and ethnic identity conceptualizations
• Premise: human beings in all cultures desire both positive groupbased and positive person-based identities in any type of
communicative situation.
• Focus: ways to obtain accurate knowledge of the identity domains
of the self and others in the intercultural encounter.
• Concern: the ways that we can enhance identity
understanding, respect and mutual affirmative valuation of the
other
• Motivations (as needs):
– To feel secure that things are as they appear
– To feel included or actually be included
– To experience a certain amount of predictability and to trust the
responses of others

15. • Enablers:
– our knowledge base
– Our attunement level
– Our honesty in assessing our own group membership and
personal identity issues.
• Critical factors in establishing security, inclusion, trust, and
connection: culture sensitive knowledge and competent
identity-based communication skills
• While the efforts of both communicators are needed to
ensure competent identity negotiation, the effort of one
individual can set competent communication in motion.

16. Identity Dialectics:
Five Boundary-Crossing Themes
Identity Security---------------------- Identity Vulnerability
Identity Inclusion---------------------Identity Differentiation
Identity Predictability----------------Identity Unpredictability
Identity Connection------------------Identity Autonomy
Identity Consistency------------------Identity Change

17. Core Assumptions of
Identity Negotiation Theory

18. Assumption 1
• 1: The core dynamics of people’s group membership identities (e.g.
Cultural and ethnic memberships) and personal identities (e.g.
Unique attributes) are formed via symbolic communication with
others.
• People in all cultures form their reflective self-images, such as
cultural identity and ethnic identity, via their enculturation process.
• To understand the person with whom you are communicating, you
need to understand the identity domains that she or he deems
salient and validate and be responsive to these domains.
• We can discover salient identity issues that are desirable to the
individuals in our everyday intercultural encounters.

19. Assumptions 2 and 3
• 2: Individuals in all cultures or ethnic groups have the basic
motivation needs for identity
security, inclusion, predictability, connection, and consistency
on both group-based and person-based identity levels.
• 3: Individuals tend to experience emotional security in a
culturally familiar environment and experience identity
emotional vulnerability in a culturally unfamiliar environment.
• Perceived threat or fear in a culturally estranged environment
brings emotional insecurity or vulnerability. / We experience
emotional security in a culturally familiar environment.
• Degree of safety vs. degree of anxiety or ambivalence

20. Assumptions 4 and 5
Ingroup/outgroup-based boundary maintenance issues
• 4: Individuals tend to feel included when their desired group
membership identities are positively endorsed, and experience
identity differentiation when their desired group membership
identities are stigmatized.
• Identity inclusion = self-image is attached to some emotionally
significant group membership categories
• Identity differentiation = remoteness
(emotional, psychological, spatial distance)
• Favorable in comparison = positive consideration of one’s
membership
• Unfavorable = options of changing one’s identity group, changing
comparative criteria dimensions, reaffirming one’s own group
value, or downgrading the comparative group.
• Needs: Validation vs. Uniqueness and individuation

21. Assumptions 4 and 5
Ingroup/outgroup-based boundary maintenance issues
• 5: Individuals tend to experience interaction predictability
when communicating with culturally familiar others and
interaction unpredictability (or novelty) when communicating
with culturally unfamiliar others – thus, identity predictability
leads to trust, and identity unpredictability leads to
distrust, second-guessing, or biased intergroup attributions.
• Emphasis on interaction predictability or trust vs. interaction
unpredictability or distrust issues
• Identity trust in interacting with familiar others due to norms
and routines occurring frequently
• Identity awkwardness or estrangement in interacting with
unfamiliar others due to unexpected behaviors occurring
frequently and intrusively

22. Assumption 6
boundary regulation issues in autonomy and identity connection
• 6: Individuals tend to desire interpersonal connection via
meaningful close relationships (e.g. In close friendship
support situations) and experience identity autonomy when
they experience relationship separations – meaningful
intercultural-interpersonal relationships can create additional
emotional security and trust in the cultural strangers.
• Influenced by cultural values of individualism and collectivism
(Hofstede)
• Identity autonomy-connection – manifested through a
culture’s language usage and nonverbal emotional expression
• Need for a strong grasp of the cultural, ethnic, gender, and
relational value orientations
• Need to pay mindful attention to verbal and nonverbal
message styles

23. Assumption 7
Identity consistency and Change Issues
• 7: Individuals tend to experience identity consistency in repeated
cultural routines in a familiar cultural environment, and they tend to
experience identity change (or, at the extreme, identity chaos) and
transformation in a new or unfamiliar cultural environment.
• Favorable or unfavorable climate for newly arrived strangers
• Help for newcomers, realistic expectations of newcomers
• Members of host culture
• Identity security = openness to change VS. identity threats = likely cling
to old, familiar identity habits
• Yin-yang complementary perspective in a mindful direction will help us
to be aware of identity fluidity issues
• Competent intercultural communication = successfully meeting all
mutual identity needs, expectations, attunements, and cravings.

24. Assumption 8
• 8: Cultural, personal and situational variability dimensions influence
the meanings, interpretations, and evaluations of these identityrelated themes.
• Needs and thresholds differ.
• Cultural beliefs and values provide implicit standards for evaluating
and enacting different identity-related practices – and direct our
construction of identities and interactions.
• “loose” cultures vs. “tight” cultures
• Personality trait and personal ability factors shape meanings and
expectations of identity enactment issues.
• Individuals who take the time to reflect and increase their
knowledge about cross-boundary identity issues may also stand a
greater chance of challenging their own identity assumptions than
individuals who stay in an ethnocentric state of denial or defense.

25. Two Ethnic
Identity Development Models

26. A Cultural-Ethnic Identity Typology Model
Cultural Identity
Strong
Ethnic
Identity
Weak
Strong
Bicultural
Identity
Ethnic-Oriented
Identity
Weak
Assimilated
Identity
Marginal
Identity

27. Racial-Ethnic Identity Development Model

28. Assumption 9
• 9: A competent identity negotiation process emphasizes the
importance of integrating the necessary intercultural identitybased knowledge, mindfulness and interaction skills to
communicate appropriately and effectively with culturally
dissimilar others.
• Emphasizes 2 ideas:
– Mindful intercultural communication has 3 components –
knowledge, mindfulness and identity negotiation skills
– Mindful intercultural communication refers to the
appropriate, effective and satisfactory management of
desired shared identity meanings and shared identity goals
in an intercultural episode
• Importance of the integration of knowledge and positive
attitudinal factors put into mindful practice

29. Assumption 10
• 10: Satisfactory identity negotiation outcomes include the
feelings of being understood, respected, and affirmatively
valued.

30. Identity Knowledge Component
• Understand the identity domains that she or he deems salient
• Find ways to validate and be responsive to her or his cultural
identities
• Uncover ways to affirm her or his positively desired personal
identity
• Take other people’s cultural membership and personal
identity factors into consideration

31. Mindfulness Component
• Encourages individuals to tune in conscientiously to their
habituated mental scripts and preconceived expectations
• Readiness to shift one’s frame of reference
• Motivation to use new categories to understand cultural or ethnic
differences
• Preparedness to experiment with creative avenues of decision
making and problem solving
• Proactive
Mindlessness
• Heavy reliance on familiar frames of reference, old routinized
designs or categories, and customary ways of doing things
• Operating on “automatic pilot” without conscious thinking or
reflection
• Reactive

32. Mindful Communicators
• Are mindful of what is going on in our own
thinking, feelings and experiencing to raise awareness of
our own systems of thinking and judging
• Recognize value systems that influence others’ selfconceptions
• Are open to a new way of identity construction
• Are prepared to perceive and understand a behavior or a
problem from others’ cultural and personal standpoints
• Are on the alert for the multiple perspectives that
typically exist in interpreting a cultural collusion episode

33. Identity-Negotiations Skills’ Component
• Skills – the actual operational abilities to perform behaviors
considered appropriate and effective in a given cultural
situation
• Adaptive interaction skills, clarification skills, mindful
observation skills, mindful listening skills, verbal empathy
skills, nonverbal sensitivity skills, identity support skills,
facework management skills, conflict reframing skills,
collaborative dialogue skills, transcultural competence skills
• TING – listening responsively, attending delicately with our
ears, eyes, and a focused heart to sounds, tones, gestures,
movements, nonverbal nuances, pauses, silences, identity
meanings through the other’s identity framing perspective
• Authentic and positive identity validation vs. rejection

34. Identity Negotiation Process: Criteria
• Management of shared identity meanings and effective
achievement of desired identity goals
• Communication competence (achievement of goals through
appropriate interaction) criteria:
– Appropriateness: the degree to which behaviors are
regarded as proper and match the expectations generated
by the culture
– Effectiveness – degree to which communicators achieve
shared meanings and desirable outcomes in a given
situation

35. Identity Negotiation Process: Outcomes
• Identity Outcome Facets
– The feeling of being understood
– The feeling of being respected
– The feeling of being affirmatively valued
• Outcomes contingent on:
– Perceptions of communicators in interaction scene
– Willingness and commitment to practice mindfulness in
interactions with dissimilar others

36. The feeling of being understood
• Connotes an illuminating understanding voice
• Reflective mirror for one’s thinking, feeling and behaving
• Empathetic emotional impact (“I truly understand where you’re
coming from”)
The feeling of being respected
• Desirable identity-based behaviors and practices are deemed
legitimate, credible and on equal footing with members of
other groups
• Connotes mindful monitoring of one’s verbal and nonverbal
attitudes in interacting with dissimilar others

37. The feeling of being affirmatively valued
• Sense of being positively endorsed and being
affirmatively embraced as “worthwhile” individuals
despite having different group-based identities or
stigmatized identities
• Expressed through verbal and nonverbal confirming
messages
• Confirmation – “process through which individuals are
recognized, acknowledged and endorsed”
• Conveying your positive valuation of the other person’s
self-valued identities vs. Disconfirming

38. References
• Stella Ting-Toomey. Identity Negotiation Theory: Crossing Cultural
Boundaries (in Gudykunst)
• California State University, Fullerton - Stella Ting-Tooney’s Home on the
Web http://commfaculty.fullerton.edu/stingtoomey/
• Sage Home
http://www.sagepub.com/authorDetails.nav?contribId=501632
• Identity Negotiation in Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_negotiation