Speaker: Dr. Yang (Vivian) Liu

Discussant: Prof. Song Ying

Chair: Prof. Fu Meirong

Venue: Room 115, SEIS Building, BFSU

Time: 3:00 – 5:00 pm, Dec.7, 2017 (Thursday)

About the Lecture

Acculturation’s impact on migrating individuals’ cultural identity is one of the foci of intercultural communication research. Many intercultural communication studies deliberately place ethnic identity at the core of identity research to avoid using racial identity. And influenced by biculturalism, sojourners’ and immigrants’ Other-identities are often viewed as abnormal, deviant, and alien, and therefore should be managed, reduced, and even eliminated. However, the critical scholarship has revealed that the sense of being the Other is the main theme of sojourners and immigrants. Drawing upon postmodern, postcolonial, and hermeneutic approaches, this study examined American sojourners’ intercultural experiences in China, and explored their identity of being the Other, emerging from intercultural encounters with the Chinese people. The constructive version of grounded theory guided data collection and data analysis. A total of 35 American sojourners were recruited for this study. All first came to China as international students and at the time of the interviews were studying or living in China. Through comparative analysis, this study reveals the American sojourners were exposed to their Other-identity in China due to their phenotypical and cultural distinctiveness. Although they cannot fit into the mainstream society as Chinese people do, they can carve out their owe niches by virtue of their distinctness in China.

About the Speaker

Dr. Yang (Vivian) Liu is an assistant professor at School of English and International Studies, Beijing Foreign Studies University. Originally from Henan province, Dr. Liu got her BA and MA respectively from Xi’an International Studies University and Nanjing University. Before graduating from Nanjing University, Yang also spent one year at the Johns Hopkins University-Nanjing University Center for Chinese and American Studies studying international relations. After working in a transnational media group and an international business corporation for three years, Yang Liu went to the United States for further study at the Department of Communication, University of Oklahoma, and received her PhD degree in intercultural communication in May 2017. Dr. Liu’s areas of research include intergroup and intercultural communication, with emphasis on intergroup conflicts and migrating individuals’ cultural identity. As a qualitative researcher, Dr. Liu is now collaborating with her advisor, Dr. Eric Kramer, to explore American sojourners’ identity changes in China and examine their re-construction of the Self in the context of intercultural communication.

All interested parties are welcome!