intercultural friendship

Stages and Transitions of Relational Identity Formation in Intercultural Friendship: Implications for Identity Management Theory Pei-Wen Lee In light of identity management theory (IMT), this research seeks to uncover the stages and transitions that explain the process of relational identity formation within intercultural friendships. Three stages (i.e., initial encounter, interaction, and involve- ment) and two transition phases emerged within the intercultural friendships of this research. This study concludes that while IMT contributes to our understanding of the process of intercultural relationship formation, it overlooks how intercultural relation- ships transition from one stage to another and the influences of networks and a third cultural context.

Keywords: Intercultural Friendship; Identity Management Theory; Friendship Formation; Relational Identity; Friendship Phases and Transitions We are living in a world where numerous people move their homes across national boundaries every year. According to U.S. Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services (BCIS, formerly INS), 32 million nonimmigrant admissions were recorded during fiscal 2005, which is equal to nearly 10% of the total U.S. population (Grieco, 2005). As the statistics show, the likelihood for individuals to form relationships across cultural or national boundaries is increasing as an outcome of globalization.

Nonetheless, researchers found that existing literature which emphasizes intercultural relationships across national contexts remains restricted (Adams & Blieszner, 1994; Pei-Wen Lee (Ph.D., Ohio University, 2004) is an Associate Professor in the Humanities Department of LaGuardia Community College, CUNY. This research was partly supported by a 2006 2007 Professional Development Grant administered by the Educational Development Initiative Team (EDIT) of LaGuardia Community College. Correspondence to: LaGuardia Community College, CUNY, Humanities, 31 10 Thomson Ave., New York, 11101, USA. Email: [email protected]. The author wishes to send her gratitude to Dr. Claudia Hale at Ohio University and the reviewers for their precious comments on the final drafts of this paper.

ISSN 1751-3057 (print)/ISSN 1751-3065 (online)#2008 National Communication Association DOI: 10.1080/17513050701690918 Journal of International and Intercultural Communication Vol. 1, No. 1, February 2008, pp. 51 69 Cargile, 1998; Chen, 2002). As Chen (2002) suggested, research concerning friend- ships formed by members who share different nationalities has been largely neglected.

As a sojourner, even though I was personally benefited by my intercultural friendships in numerous ways, it is not rare to find individuals who believe that intercultural relationships fail more easily. Previous research indicated that a key to maintaining an intercultural friendship lies in effective communication between members. Gaines and Liu (2000) noted that an intercultural friendship terminates often because members in the relationship fail to negotiate their expectations and patterns of friendship with the other party. They maintained that it is crucial for an intercultural dyad to ensure that they share similar values and beliefs toward their relationship, or that they understand each other’s values and beliefs. In other words, according to Gaines and Liu, an intercultural friendship could remain solid when the members within the friendship share and co-form their own relational identity.

Relational identityis an abstract concept, but can be defined as a reality or culture that reflects the values, the rules, and the processes of the friendship and helps the dyad to maintain the relationship (Wood, 2000). In this sense, relational identity seems to be a critical component which determines the success of an intercultural relationship.

Unfortunately, as Gaines and Brennan (2001) wrote, the scholarship of inter- cultural communication has paid little attention to the formation of relational identity within intercultural relationships. While Cupach and Imahori’s (1993) identity management theory (IMT) describes the relational identity phases within intercultural relationships, IMT has received little support from published research (Belay, 1993; Gudykunst, 2002). In addition, IMT fails to explicate how each relational phase transitions from one to another as the relational identity forms within an intercultural friendship. To fill the knowledge gap, this study aims to explore the process of relational identity development within intercultural friend- ships. More specifically, I intend to uncover the stages which delineate the process of relational identity formation and how the stages transition within intercultural friendships.

Review of the Literature Although the topic of friendship has been studied since the late 1970s (Duck & Perlman, 1985), the publications have examined friendship primarily from an intracultural and noncomparative perspective. The focus has mostly been on middle- class European Americans’ friendships, and on the differences occurring during the developmental friendship stages of a lifetime (see, e.g., Fehr, 2000; Monsour, 2002; Rawlins, 1992). Chen (2002) suggested that friendship research, as it intersects with other cultural contexts, has still remained ‘‘in its infancy’’ (p. 241).

Reflecting on the extant intercultural/cross-cultural friendship research, studies have shown that the perceived notion of friendship varies as a result of age, gender, and cultural background (Adams, Blieszner, & De Vries, 2000; Mirny, 2001; Patterson, Bettini, & Nussbaum, 1993). Krumrey-Fulks (2001) conducted a cross-cultural research which revealed that people in the Chinese culture expect friends to perform 52 P.-W. Lee helping behaviors, whereas Americans expect friends to be good listeners, that is, someone with whom they can share, and someone who is always ‘‘there’’ for them. In other words, individuals in the American culture and those in the Chinese culture share different perceptions toward friendship formation, and what it means to be friends. Conceivably, if an American and a Chinese failed to discuss their friendship expectations with each other, that friendship might not last very long.

Researchers have also discussed a variety of factors that might influence the formation of intercultural friendships. In Gareis’ (1999) study, foreign students in the U.S. identified 11 key variables that affect the formation of their intercultural friendship: culture, personality, self-esteem, friendship elements, expectations, adjustment stage, communicative competence, demographic variables, contact frequency, U.S. elements, and chemistry. An example of ‘‘U.S. elements’’ could be:

‘‘Americans are seen as friendly but not easy to befriend, too busy and self-absorbed to focus on others, more business oriented than human oriented’’ (Gareis, 1999, p.

459). Or, as some Americans might have already established friendship circles, they may tend to not bother seeking out intercultural relationships (Gareis, 1995). With regard to ‘‘chemistry,’’ Gareis (1999) described it as ‘‘an invisible bond’’ and ‘‘an interest in the essential person of the other’’ (p. 461). She concluded that to understand intercultural friendships, one has to consider cultural experiences and differences, the connection between all human beings holistically, and most importantly, individual variations in characteristics, motivations, and impulses.

In addition, interpersonal relationship dialectics, as indicated in research, are often involved in the process of friendship formation and maintenance. Chen (2002) maintained that dialectical tensions in intercultural relationships can be seen from both internal and external aspects. The internal aspect refers to the tensions (e.g., openness closedness, autonomy connection, predictability novelty) emerging from communication and interactions between dyad members; whereas the external aspect refers to the tensions (e.g., revelation nonrevelation, separation integration, con- ventionality uniqueness) occurring when the dyad interacts with society or their social networks.

The dialectic of openness closeness is about how much intercultural relationship partners share information with each other, whereas revelation nonrevelation is the dialectic about how much they share relationship information externally with individuals in their social networks and with society more generally. While the dialectic of autonomy connection involves the extent to which relationship partners focus less on their own independence than on the relationship interaction, separation integration involves the extent to which relationship partners participate in activities within their social networks. The predictability novelty dialectic indicates the extent to which relationship partners maintain the stability of the relationship by interacting with each other in expected ways without losing interest, but the conventionality uniqueness dialectic is about how relationship partners contribute to the stability and variability of how intercultural relationships are perceived in their culture and society. Unlike intracultural relationships, intercultural dyads have to deal Intercultural Friendship 53 with the difficulties and pressures coming from mutual cultures and societies (Chen, 2002).

Relational Identity and Identity Management Theory Forming an intercultural friendship, however, is not entirely an impossible task.

Gaines and Liu (2000) argued that the cause of the dissolution of an intercultural friendship is because the dyad’s relational identity is not well developed, resulting in the relationship being negatively influenced by self-serving biases and group-serving biases. But, Gaines and Liu stressed that if the dyad’s relational identity is strong, the relationship tends to last longer. Namely, a strong relational identity internalized within each partner in an intercultural friendship is the core of such relationships. In fact, the importance of forming a shared identity within the relationship between members is supported by several interethnic studies (Hecht, Collier, & Ribeau, 1993; Hecht & Ribeau, 1984, 1991; Hecht, Ribeau, & Alberts, 1989) and in a cross-gender relationship research (Acitelli, Rogers, & Knee, 1999).

Wood (1982) defined the term ‘‘relational identity/culture’’ as ‘‘a privately transacted system of understandings that coordinate attitudes, actions, and identities of participants in a relationship’’ (p. 76). A relational identity ‘‘arises out of communication and becomes an increasingly central influence on individual partners’ ways of knowing, being, and acting in relation to each other and the outside world’’ (p. 75). Relational identity is essential in a relationship, particularly in an intercultural friendship, because it is like a ‘‘mini-culture’’ (Baxter, 1987) emerging within the relationship, and based on this culture, the members know how to behave and interact appropriately, as well as effectively within their intercultural friendship.

Cupach and Imahori’s (1993) identity management theory explained the process of relational identity development within an intercultural relationship. Cupach and Imahori emphasized that an intercultural relationship can be simultaneously interpersonal if a relational identity is co-formed between the partners. The participants can focus on their interpersonal interaction by sharing this relational identity and temporarily allow their cultural differences to recede into the background.

Cupach and Imahori (1993) also argued that one’s identity can be revealed and recognized through face, an individual’s presented social identity. Positive face, according to Cupach and Imahori, refers to an ‘‘individual’s desire to be appreciated and approved of by important others,’’ whereas negative face indicates ‘‘the desire to be autonomous and free from the imposition of others’’ (p. 116). In an intracultural context, it is easier for interactants to save or support their interlocutor’s face because of their shared cultural norms. However, during an intercultural encounter, interactants could threaten the other’s face due to lack of knowledge concerning the other’s cultural rules and differences within cultural identity. The paradox of supporting the other’s positive or negative face desires while simulta- neously threatening one’s own face needs happens quite often during intercultural interactions.

54 P.-W. Lee In essence, Cupach and Imahori (1993) contended that it is useful to consider intercultural relational processes in three phases. These three phases are highly interdependent, sequential, and cyclical in order. Relational dyads will go through these phases at a different pace. Some might resist moving on to the next phase, whereas others might go quickly through these three phases. It all depends on interactants’ intercultural communication competence. The three phases of IMT are:

trial,enmeshment, andrenegotiation.

Trial.This phase represents the initial encounter of intercultural relationships.

Mutual support and confirmation of cultural identities (i.e., the degree to which individuals can identify with or be accepted in their own cultural groups) (Collier & Thomas, 1988) are very important in this phase. Because a relational dyad’s understanding of each other’s culture might be inaccurate at this stage, it is possible for interactants to violate norms or rules of the other’s culture. Thus, one has to be able to tolerate incompetence and risk the possibility of threatening the other’s face, and at the same time engage in finding a shared set of references or similarities (e.g., interests or attitudes) (Cupach & Imahori, 1993).

Enmeshment.In this phase, members in an intercultural relationship bring their cultural identities to their encounters, and then integrate their cultural identities in order to develop a mutually acceptable relational identity by which their relationship can grow and evolve. The shared relational identity forms based on the similarities identified in phase one. During this phase, rules or roles guiding the behaviors of and interactions between interlocutors would emerge. The personal aspect of shared meanings may be emphasized more than the cultural aspect by a relational dyad if the relationship evolves well based on the personal similarities. For example, individuals would avoid touching on more complex issues, such as cultural identity, if their relationship actually progresses (Cupach & Imahori, 1993).

Renegotiation.This phase represents a truly interdependent andpersonalrelationship.

A relational identity formed between interactants at this point is fully developed.

Competent members in an intercultural relationship at this stage renegotiate their different cultural identities based on their preliminarily defined relational identity, which emerges in the second phase. It is possible for individuals to renegotiate their separate cultural identities at this phase because they have established certain interdependent rules and are more likely to evaluate the different cultural identity positively (Cupach & Imahori, 1993).

Unfortunately, after IMT was introduced, only a handful of studies have been conducted regarding it. Imahori (2003), cited in Imahori & Cupach, 2005) surveyed respondents who were in various stages of intercultural relationships and found that ‘‘with increased relational identity, people are able to simultaneously support each other’s cultural identity with less tension stemming from the self-other face dialectic’’ and ‘‘with stronger relational identity, there is less need for emphasizing positive face support of cultural identity’’ (p. 206). That is, with stronger and more developed relational identity, members in intercultural relationships are more likely to embrace Intercultural Friendship 55 each other’s different cultural identities, and are less likely to experience face dialectics during their interactions.

In view of IMT, Lee (2006) examined the strategies/activities that influence the development of relational identity within intercultural friendships. The findings revealed that seven types of activities were identified: (1) positivities/providing assistance (i.e., giving help, doing favors, and providing support, advice); (2) rituals, activities, rules, and roles (i.e., engaging in joint activities where rules and roles emerge); (3) self-disclosure (i.e., sharing personal information); (4) networking (i.e., meeting significant others); (5) exploring cultures and languages (i.e., learning each other’s cultural beliefs, values, and languages); (6) emphasizing similarities and exploring differences (i.e., stressing shared values while respecting different points of view); and (7) conflict/conflict management (i.e., experiencing conflicts and employing conflict management strategies). Lee emphasized that constructive conflict management strategies positively shape the formation of relational identity within intercultural friendships. If members in an intercultural friendship can manage their conflicts in a productive fashion, the friendship tends to sustain. Consequently, in an intercultural friendship, ‘‘it is the conflict management matters, rather than the frequency of encountering conflicts’’ (p. 19).

In sum, while identity management theory seems to contribute to our under- standing of relational process in the context of intercultural relationships, little research has provided empirical evidence to support IMT’s propositions regarding the phases of relational identity formation (Belay, 1993; Gudykunst, 2002). Imahori and Cupach (2005) admitted that ‘‘IMT’s propositions regarding the identity phases have gained partial empirical support’’ (p. 206) and ‘‘the theory is still in its infancy and needs a lot of maturing’’ (p. 207). Although since its introduction, IMT has been applied to a few studies in examining, for example, facework strategies for managing face problematics and dialectic conflicts (Imahori, 1999, 2001, 2002, 2003, cited in Imahori & Cupach, 2005) in interethnic relationships and the activities that shape the formation of relational identity within intercultural friendships (Lee, 2006), these studies neglected the relational development phases within intercultural relationships.

Moreover, IMT fails to explain in detail how each phase of the intercultural relational process transitions to one another, which shows that our understanding of the intercultural friendship process still remains incomplete. As a result, it is necessary for the current study to further explore the process of relational identity formation within intercultural friendships. There are two research questions guiding the examination of the present research:

1. What are the stages that characterize the process of relational identity formation within intercultural friendships?

2. How does the intercultural friendship process transition from one stage to another?

56 P.-W. Lee Methodology This research seeks to understand relational dyads’ experiences in constructing the shared meanings in their intercultural friendships. Thus, it is appropriate to employ a qualitative research method because its goal is to understand how individuals co- create meanings with one another and how they live with those shared meanings in their relationships (Bogdan & Bilken, 1998; Denzin & Lincoln, 2000; Lindlof, 1995).

Grounded theory, among the qualitative research methods, has emerged as a suitable methodological orientation for this research. Charmaz (2000) suggests that grounded theory is useful for ‘‘the study of experience from the standpoint of those who live it’’ (p. 522) and explains that the purpose of a grounded theory study is to generate crucial theories from collected data. Strauss and Corbin (1998) have argued that ‘‘the data do not lie’’ (p. 85); the data represent reconstructions of participants’ lived experiences.

For many grounded theory studies, the data come from interviews (Charmaz, 2000). Interviewing is the most widely employed technique for data collection in social science research (Holstein & Gubrium, 2002). Kvale (1996) defines the research interview as ‘‘an interview whose purpose is to obtain descriptions of the life world of the interviewee with respect to interpreting the meaning of the described phenomenon’’ (pp. 5 6). The research interview is conducted through a conversation with the interviewee, reflecting on his or her life meanings and experiences.

In short, employing qualitative interviewing can help researchers to better understand participants’ life and relationship processes. At the same time, inter- viewees can review their lived world and possibly improve their lives. The inter- viewing technique is appropriate for the present study in a sense that this study aims to capture participants’ views toward their intercultural friendships.

Participant Recruitment Participants in this research were recruited on the campus of a midwestern university as many individuals’ first intercultural friendship is often formed in college. The following criteria were established for the qualified participants included in the study.

First, each participant had to possess at least one close intercultural friend.

‘‘Intercultural friend’’ was operationalized in this research to mean an international friend who had both a different native language and a different nationality. Although individuals could share the same native language (e.g., English) and come from different nations (e.g., Australia versus the U.K.), the language criterion was invoked to maximize the challenging characteristics rooted in the nature of intercultural friendships. I paid particular attention to this type of intercultural friendship (i.e., international friendship) because of its challenging nature. Furthermore, as the statistics indicate, this type of intercultural friendship, even though less studied, has become more prevalent than before in many places, including the U.S., since an increasing number of the population has moved across nations to live due to school, work, politics, marriage, and so forth. Intercultural Friendship 57 Second, the selected intercultural friendship had to have lasted for at least one year and the participants had to regularly meet with his/her intercultural friend outside the setting where the relationship started (e.g., classmates had to meet outside the classroom). The ‘‘one year’’ criterion was set based on the belief that it was less likely for participants to give lots of meaningful examples to help understand the process of the friendship if that relationship had only existed for less than one year. On the other hand, if the criterion was established to be longer than one year, some potential participants in one-year Master’s programs on the selected campus would be automatically excluded. Participants were recruited through an online newsletter, advertisements or fliers, and network sampling. As an inducement, the advertisement emphasized that participants in the research would receive a five-dollar certificate that could be used at a local coffee shop.

The third criterion required both the primary participant and his/her intercultural friend to be accessible to participate in an individual interview through face-to-face meetings, telephone calls, or email exchanges.

Description of Participants Fifteen intercultural friendship dyads agreed to participate in this research, resulting in 30 participants and 30 interviews. Most of the participants were obtained through networking. Ten of the intercultural friendship dyads involved an American with an international friend. The participants in the remaining five friendship pairs were non- Americans. Five of the 15 dyads were cross-gender friendships; nine were female and female friendships; and only one pair was male and male friendship. Twenty-three interviewees were females and seven were males. Five participants were under- graduate students in their early 20s, and 25 of them were graduate students ranging in age from their late 20s to early 40s. When the interviews took place, six friendships had been developed for 1 year, three for 2 years, three for 3 years, two for 4 years, and one for 9 years. In addition to ten American participants, interviewees were from Argentina (n 1), Botswana (n 1), Canada (n 2), China (n 3), Dominican Republic (n 1), India (n 2), Indonesia (n 1), Japan (n 2), Macedonia (n 1), Malaysia (n 1), Taiwan (n 3), Turkey (n 1), and Trinidad and Tobago (n 1).

Interview Procedures I met with each participant and their intercultural friend for an individual interview.

Prior to each interview, participants were informed of the purpose of the study, assured of the confidential nature of their participation, and asked for permission to audiotape the interview. On average, the individual interviews lasted approximately one hour. The interviews were in depth, semistructured, and open ended, taking place in locations chosen by the participants.

During the interview, participants were first asked to talk about how ‘‘close friendship’’ is viewed within their own cultures, and to share any stories concerning the selected intercultural friendships. In the second part of the interview, I adopted 58 P.-W. Lee the Retrospective Interview Technique (RIT), a methodological strategy employed to acquire turning point data (Baxter & Bullis, 1986). Following RIT, each interviewee was asked to identify as many as possible turning points that had played a significant role in his or her intercultural friendship since their first meeting. The turning points identified by the interviewees represented specific events that gave meanings to the friendship, through which their shared relational identity emerged.

Data Analysis Because the purpose of this research is to identify the stages and transitional phases that define the process of relational identity formation within the respondents’ intercultural friendships, I coded the interview data by applying the thematic analysis (Owen, 1984). Owen (1984) defined themes as ‘‘a limited range of interpretations used to conceive of and constitute relationships’’ (p. 274). The thematic analysis employed in this research entailed three steps. During the first step, broad themes were identified. The patterns, or turning points, that were repeated, recurrent, and forceful in a majority of the data were counted as a theme. In the second step, more specific subthemes were located when more than one related insights were present.

This allowed me to distinguish among those highly related but different patterns and to categorize themes that were more in depth and complex. The final step was to choose a label for each theme, representing each phase and transition of the relational identity formation within intercultural friendships, in comparison to the phases suggested in IMT.

Results Three themes or stages emerged from the interviews:initial encounter,interaction, and involvement. The findings associated with the three stages and two transitional periods, needs/interests and turning point, are presented below.

Initial Encounter This is a contact stage where intercultural friends meet each other for the first time.

Participants indicated that they met either through mutual friends or in the professional contexts (e.g., class, office, sports team, etc.). Interactions between two intercultural friends in the initial encounter stage were reported to be less intense.

Intercultural friends tended to have light and general conversations, discussing school or work related topics. Emily (all participants’ names used in this research are pseudonyms), an American undergraduate student, described how she met her Taiwanese friend, Cheryl: I don’t even remember the first class that we were in together. It is probably a biology class or something. [Cheryl] has always been so much better in the classes than I was but we formed a good friendship. And she has always been willing to help me with my classes. So it’s kind of how we met. Intercultural Friendship 59 The initial encounter stage was also the starting point for participants to explore each other’s culture and clarify some cultural misunderstandings. For example, Jon, an American graduate student, and Lori, a Chinese graduate student, became closer friends because Jon was courting another Chinese graduate student in their department who was their mutual friend. Jon expressed that at the beginning, he was not sure what behaviors were considered appropriate in the Chinese culture, and he sometimes tended to be too culturally sensitive. Jon said: There was one time because my understanding of the Chinese culture, you know, touching in public between boys and girls or men and women just typically isn’t done, but doesn’t mean it never is done. But there was a time when [my girlfriend] had a really good day when we started dating and she wanted a hug and I couldn’t do it since it’s in public. So she gave me a hug and I was too slow to respond and she got upset. This was also the time when [Lori] and I started to do things together. So I went to talk to [Lori] about it. That’s when [Lori] said, ‘‘what were you doing?!’’ ‘‘Just hug her!’’ Yeah, she was like ‘‘you are being too culturally sensitive and you are stereotyping one thing you know about Chinese culture.’’ Interestingly, Jon discussed with Lori the cultural misperceptions he encountered with his Chinese girlfriend, which was also helpful for his interactions with Lori.

Transition One: Needs/Interests Prior to moving to the second stage, interaction, respondents reported that they experienced various types of needs or interests, motivating them to continue the intercultural friendship. For instance, one participant might sense that the intercultural friend was capable of fulfilling his or her needs in terms of being a good source of advice (e.g., help to survive in academia) (Lee, 2006), a reliable and interesting person to talk to (e.g., personality attraction), a fun companion to hang out with (e.g., social life), or an understanding person to relate to or identify with (e.g., both in the same organization). For instance, Helen, an American under- graduate student, and Xing, a Chinese graduate student, met at a Christian fellowship through their mutual friends. After their first meeting, Helen recalled that two of them immediately clicked, and she was so attracted to Xing’s fun personality that she decided to carry on this friendship. Helen described that: I just adore [Xing’s] presence with people and how fun she was. I am like she was so much fun; I want to spend time with her. And she was just instantly willing to be my friend. So that we just hang out instantaneously and have a bless. She was searching for a Christian fellowship. So was I. And I want her as a friend because she was fun so we just started hanging out. Interaction Following the initial encounter stage and the first transition period, needs/interests, intercultural friends began to engage in frequent social interactions. Interaction is 60 P.-W. Lee often a stage when participants start to realize their relational roles, rules, and rituals which refer to the joint activities done by them on a regular basis (Lee, 2006). For example, Brent, an American graduate student, disclosed to me an activity/ritual shared by him and his Argentinean friend, Betty: ‘‘[Betty] always comes and finds me and said let’s go smoke a cigarette. I think we smoked outside quite a bit, too. A funny thing about smoking is that that’s where you meet a lot of people.’’ Because participants in the interaction stage began to be involved in frequent contact, the connection, or the shared relational identity between the two of them emerged. They started to bond*to understand and to get familiar with each other’s life and personality. Eating, shopping, watching movies or TV, playing games or sports, or sharing the events happening in their lives were the popular activities participants liked to engage in with each other. Participants felt the need to demonstrate patience and positivity (Lee, 2006) as to reinforce to their friends their interest in forming a friendship. A Taiwanese gradate student, Sandy, described her gratefulness for her American friend, Mila: [Mila] and I we have a lot of experiences doing papers together. I think she is being patient listening to what I think. A lot of times, especially like for the early times I came here, I might not be able to express what I really think clearly. But she’s being patient to know, to understand, to try to understand what my concept, like what my ideas really like. We might think that Americans being individualistic, so they won’t really want to help international students or help them to correct their writings or to read their papers, to give some suggestions. But she is really willing to do so. Respondents were naturally exposed to their intercultural friend’s culture through their frequent interactions. Participants indicated that they would attend various (or each other’s) cultural activities (e.g., Chinese New Year celebration), cook cultural food, and learn to play unique cultural games (e.g., Scrabble) together. Cheryl (Taiwanese) and Emily (American) were classmates and Cheryl learned how Americans celebrated holidays through the family gathering she participated in with Emily: [Emily] invited me to go over to have Christmas dinner with her family. I think it was really nice of her, but I was kind of nervous. But her family, they were pretty nice. And I got a lot of presents there. It is like presents from Santa. I said for the first time, I realized that Santa is a good man. Cause’ like in Taiwan we don’t really receive Christmas presents, especially not from family members. But being a close friend from another culture, I think [Emily] wants to show me how they celebrate with the family. She tried to help me feel comfortable in a foreign culture. During the interaction stage, interviewees admitted that they had more opportunities to see their friends from their cultural side. Whether intercultural friends were in contact through food, games, or people, this stage involved a process in which they really began to learn and understand the other person’s culture. As far as cultural differences were concerned, participants reported that they did not necessarily consider them as impediments. Rather, they tended to emphasize their shared similarities and, at the same time, understand or respect the differences being Intercultural Friendship 61 identified, which to some degree, coincides with Imahori’s (2003) and Lee’s (2006) research findings where intercultural partners viewed cultural differences either positively or as insignificant to their relationships. Shirley, an African American graduate student, discussed how she and her Taiwanese friend, Patrick, viewed cultural difference: [Cultural difference] has never been a barrier. And I don’t think it is a barrier for either one of us. For example, [as an African American woman], I am always changing my hair style. So he asked me about that before. But we talked about different educational systems. We have talked about so much stuff. So it is always interesting to know a totally different perspective. From a different part of the world and from a male perspective. It is always interesting. At that same time, there were things that interest us in the same manner and that is spirituality. I think that is a very important part of the foundation of our friendship. I think we both just love life and we love people so I think that’s a common ground that we have and we share. Respondents’ emphasis on their shared similarities could be an example of how they supported each other’s positive face. According to IMT, their respect for the cultural differences could be seen as a strategy they employed to avoid threatening each other’s face.

Transition Two: Turning Point Before the interaction stage shifts to the next stage (i.e., involvement), another transition period was identified. Whereas intercultural friends’ mutual understanding and familiarity gradually increased through their frequent contacts, there was usually one particular incident, or turning point, that moved their friendship to the next phase. The turning points, according to the respondents, include meeting the partner’s family or loved ones, becoming roommates, staying over, taking a road trip together, or experiencing significant moments (e.g., wedding). Betty (Argentinean) disclosed the turning point after which she felt she was much closer to her American friend, Brent: I consider [Brent] as a good friend after the trip to [my country when my brother passed away] and the calls I received from him; that is something I never expected.

And I never expected it from anybody because people were far away and I received so many emails so I was not expecting anybody to call me. I would be very offended if that happened here and nobody called. I would be very offended, but people were far away. So, for me it was a surprise. And it made me feel very good in many ways. Gene, a French Canadian, described a similar turning point experience with her Macedonian friend, Iris: During Christmas, we had Christmas training for six weeks. So we were going to Florida for two weeks. And before that we were staying here and since she didn’t have anybody staying home with her, she asked me if I wanted to come and like go stay in her place. And it was fun. Like my best friend back home, every time I go to her place like we sleep in the same bed. It is like a big party; it is fun. I would sleep 62 P.-W. Lee in [Iris’] bed with her, too. So we chat every single night and I think that’s when we became closer. Participants reported that experiencing a significant turning point confirmed their shared intimacy, and made them ensure the necessity of developing and sustaining their friendships.

Involvement Moving from the interaction phase, involvement is a stage where the emerging rules (e.g., confidentiality, mutuality) and roles (e.g., the peace maker, the ‘‘lecturer’’) for both members in the intercultural friendship were much better understood at this point in terms of what was appropriate or inappropriate to be done (Lee, 2006). Jean (Chinese) gave an example of the tacit agreement shared between her and Akiko (Japanese): Because [Akiko] can drive much better than I do or a lot of comfortable with driving than I do, when we go to places, usually she drives and once in a while she would say, ‘‘Can you drive?’’ And I would say, ‘‘Okay, I can drive.’’ But usually if it is long distance, she would drive no matter whose car it is. I guess that’s the implicit rule we have. Or, things that I don’t feel comfortable doing, she would do it without asking twice. And it’s the same with me. If she doesn’t feel comfortable with something, I would do it without thinking. In this stage, participants built trust and saw the other person truly as a life-time friend. Participants revealed that they found their lives were overlapping with their intercultural friend’s lives. Wynona, a Chinese Canadian, explained why she had seen her African American friend, Sally, as part of her family after her wedding day: It is kind of difficult for people from the world to come to my wedding. So [Sally] was the only person from my side that was at my wedding. She was my maid of honor. She came here and made sure whatever I needed to do was done before the wedding. She came here the day before. She drove eight hours to make sure that I was okay. Then she spent an extra day after the wedding before she went home. So she had to drive another eight hours home. So it made me feel that she is the person that I can count on. So I think that added an extra closeness. And then we have remained close friends ever since. Because of further interactions in the involvement stage, participants became more embracing, and came to a deeper understanding of the other’s culture, and where those cultural values or beliefs came from. In other words, involvement is a stage in which intercultural friends truly learned to respect the other’s cultural perspective. All of the cultural contact helped participants to better understand their friend as a person. In Anna’s case, being an American, after visiting and staying with Veronica’s Indian family in Malaysia, she realized that she knew more in depth about who Veronica was. Anna recalled: I got to know more about [Veronica] when I got to meet her mom. And I realized she was actually coming from this, seemed to me, oppressive domestic situation so that made it out all more clear what kind of person she really was. I met her mom Intercultural Friendship 63 and realized her mom expected her to be a traditional Indian girl who would marry a nice Indian boy and make lots of money and may have a lot of kids and be socially acceptable. And it is a generational thing as well. So getting to know her mom helped me to see more who she was and where she was coming from....Yeah, I think me crossing over and going to her country and seeing her at home really made me believe that we had gone beyond the college experiences and just meeting on the campus environment. And me actually traveling, and seeing her at her home...I know we can meet in different environment and still maintain our friendship. Similarly, being on a trip to Miami together, Yvonne, a Taiwanese, discovered more cultural differences between her and Marie, her American friend. Yvonne explained that the cultural difference did not affect their friendship in a negative way; she understood that it was just how Marie was as a person. During the trip to Miami, [I discovered that] we have different habits. I think it is because of cultural differences. Like in Western cultures, women are more open about exposing their body figure. But as Asian women, we often treat our body as more secretly or more privately that we don’t really show them to others even though they are our close friends, we wouldn’t do that. Like when Asian women go to spa, we wouldn’t take off everything in front of our friends. But like [Marie] would do so....It doesn’t make me uncomfortable; it didn’t really bother me a lot.

I think it is her. I respect her way of living. Hopefully she will respect my way of living. Of course I guess she won’t force me to be naked. She would respect me, too.

Like maybe she thinks that she is pretty close to me so that she can do that. That’s her way of showing that we are good friends. In the involvement stage, many participants revealed that they felt so close to their intercultural partners that they would not consider cultural violations to be necessarily negative. In fact, some respondents reported that they felt comfortable enough to joke about their different cultural perspectives.

It is important to note that because this study took place on a college campus, at the end of the interviews many participants shared how they would continue maintaining friendship stability through various forms of communication*emailing, making phone calls, making visits to the other’s country*once they left the campus and moved on. As Olga (Turkish) commented on her moving apart from Jeff (Indian) the following year, she said: [Jeff ] learned that he got accepted by another school and it definitely put a mark on our friendship. Because it means that we won’t be sharing the same place next year and we won’t be seeing each other that often. I don’t know. But it is pretty clear that next year will be much more different than now. When I first heard that he won’t be here next year, I felt pretty depressed for one day or two days. But it just passed because you cannot live in that place for a long time. Probably we will be writing emails to each other, making phone calls to each other, and during the breaks, we will be seeing each other, and we have some plans that he will come to Turkey and I will go to India just like he will give me a long long ride or he will be my guide in India. Being physically away from each other could be considered another turning point in the respondents’ intercultural friendships. As Chen (2002) suggested, autonomy 64 P.-W. Lee connection is one of the internal dialectical tensions that intercultural dyads often have to cope with in their relationships. Nonetheless, it will take another research to follow up on how their friendships progress after being separated geographically.

Additionally, it should be kept in mind that the three stages of relational identity formation are not clear-cut; rather, they are a dynamic and interdependent process. It is possible for the intercultural friendship dyads to experience, in Knapp and Vangelisti’s (2000) terms, ‘‘stage overlapping’’ and ‘‘stage backward’’ during the formation of their relational identity. Sami, an Indian graduate student, revealed that in her friendship with Arthur, an American graduate student, there was a point where she experienced ‘‘stage backward’’: I needed to go from Chicago to Michigan and [Arthur] was visiting his father and he was driving through Chicago so he offered to give me a ride. And I think that was a lot of fun because we stopped and looked through these hills that were in Indiana...it was a long drive but it was really nice. Because we got to joke around and talk about stuff...and then I was in Michigan for a while and we kept in touch through emails and we called every now and then. But then we had a fight afterwards. I was really mad. It was a misunderstanding but it was at this point where I was wondering if it is still worth to be friend with [Arthur]. After our fight, it seemed sort of pointless to keep up with our friendship. But it sort of like faded out and we sort of became friends again. Discussion The current research seeks to unveil the stages and transition phases of the relational identity formation within intercultural friendships. In this research, the three stages which emerged to define relational identity development, to some extent, parallel the three phases in IMT. Trial, the first phase suggested by Cupach and Imahori (1993) can be seen as overlapping with the first stage, initial encounter, in this research because both of the stages characterize the relational partners’ initial meetings and how they begin to experience and explore their different cultural identities. The enmeshment phase in IMT, the start of relational identity formation, is similar to the interaction stage emerging in this research because they both describe a process in which the participants regularly engage in personal and cultural events together, furthering their understanding of each other. Finally, renegotiation, the last phase suggested in IMT, is comparable to the involvement stage found in this study, in which the relational members are used to and comfortable with their interactions toward each other and learn to accept and respect their divergent cultural views.

On the whole, IMT effectively outlines the process of intercultural relationship formation, but overlooks some vital aspects. First, in understanding the relational identity process within intercultural friendships, IMT fails to make clear how intercultural relationships transition among the three phases. Even though Cupach and Imahori (1993) detailed relational members’ personal and cultural interactions, which characterized each phase within intercultural relationships, how these phases shift from one to another throughout the process remained unknown. The findings Intercultural Friendship 65 of this research clearly suggest that the participants were motivated to take their relationships to another level after they experienced a certain need, interest, or a significant turning point. More specifically, during the three phases, in order to progress to the following level the respondents often went through two transition periods*needs/interests and turning point. During the first transition phase, a need or interest (e.g., mutual attraction, sharing similarities) was formed, which provided the interviewees with an incentive to develop the friendship further while during the second transition period, usually a meaningful event took place (e.g., providing emotional support, exchanging secrets) which confirmed the relational closeness of their friendships. Moreover, a few participants reported that they experienced ‘‘stage backward’’ (Knapp & Vangelisti, 2000) in their friendships when a negative turning point occurred (e.g., a conflict) (Lee, 2006). This is where the friendship would move back to a previous stage.

Second, IMT ignores the influence of the third parties (i.e., social networks) (Chen, 2002; Lee, 2006), and the potential influence of a third cultural context (i.e., as exists when neither member of the intercultural friendship is from the host culture) in shaping the formation of relational identity. For example, Gene (French Canadian) and Iris (Macedonian) met at the school swimming team, and their shared life and friendship is very much surrounded and influenced by the American sports culture.

As Gene disclosed: [Ivy] and I share the same feeling for the swimming here. Like we used to love swimming and now we are here it is different. It is always about performance. So we don’t really like it. We usually talk about it and how we don’t like it, how we just want to quit. Mostly we talk about [swimming]. We’ve talked a lot about she had a boyfriend on the team last year. So we talked about him a lot, too. Gene also shared how she enjoyed meeting Iris’ family and friends, and it was a turning point where she felt closer to Iris and understood more about her culture. As Gene pointed out: I got exposed to [Iris’] culture more through meeting her family and friends. [Iris] lives with a Macedonian girl. And her sister was here for a while and she comes back here every other week. So I see her sister a lot, too. And [Iris] has two other friends are from Macedonia who are always there. And her mom came. I met all of them and it’s really fun like her mom came to the bar with us. I can never have my mom came to the bar with me. And her mom fits in really well....In Macedonian culture, when you are eating something, when you are smoking, or when you are drinking, you pass along and there was this guy really young sitting next to her mom in the bar. And he was nice to her. He was talking, but her mom couldn’t speak English at all. So she asked [Iris], ‘‘should I pass my cigarettes?’’ And we were like ‘‘No! Don’t do that!’’ So funny! As the excerpts in this study illustrate, the third parties have an impact on the participants’ interactive dynamics, which advance the intercultural partners’ under- standing of each other’s personalities, family histories, and cultures. Also, the third cultural context serves as a significant backdrop with rules, norms, and events to which the intercultural dyad can relate and refer during their interactions. Both the 66 P.-W. Lee third cultural context and third parties contribute to the relational identity formation shared between the partners in the sense that they play a key role in furthering the partners’ mutual understanding and in shaping their communicative behaviors.

Overall, the current research supports the three phases proposed in IMT. This study also provides a more complete view in understanding the process of relational identity by suggesting the two transitions occurring between the three stages, and by stressing the importance of taking into account the influences of the third parties and third cultural context where intercultural friendships take place. Future research focusing on relational identity phases within intercultural friendships might consider expanding the sample size by interviewing people who form friendships across ethnic, gender, class, physical abilities/disabilities, generation groups, and so forth. Inter- cultural friendships certainly should not be restricted to ‘‘friendships formed across nations.’’ As long as the partners in a friendship consider each other’s cultural identities to be different, the friendship qualifies as an intercultural friendship.

Communication scholars might also consider adopting alternative research methods, such as ethnography, diary recording, or conjoint interviews, which could possibly yield richer data for understanding the intercultural relational process in a more in- depth fashion.

To date, the scholarship of intercultural friendship has still received limited attention from communication researchers. My aim in engaging in this research was to begin the journey of filling in a knowledge gap with respect to the development of intercultural friendship. Most importantly, my purpose was to invite more communication researchers to join me on this journey, and continue to learn and share with others our findings that contribute to forming healthier and stronger intercultural friendships.

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