The public and private Dean Barnlund

International Journal of Intercultural Relations 36 (2012) 780–788 Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect International Journal of Intercultural Relations journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijintrel The public and private Dean Barnlund Janet M. Bennett The Intercultural Communication Institute, 8835 SW Canyon Lane, Suite 238, Portland, OR 97225, USA a r t i c l e i n f o Keywords: Meaning-centered communication Transactional communication Public and private selves in Japan and the United States Communication styles in Japan and the United States a b s t r a c t In the 1960s and 1970s, well before intercultural communication existed in any welldefined way, Dean Barnlund was synthesizing his interests in art, architecture, travel, psychology, and interpersonal communication into a perspective that offered a fresh way to look at human interaction, especially across cultures. As a consummate educator, he influenced generations of communication students and professionals to put the creation of meaning at the center of communication. Dean emphasized that this required us to integrate multiple disciplines and to make a commitment to both the humanistic and scientific paradigms. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction While some of the authors in this volume have had the opportunity to interview their subjects, the death of Dean Barnlund in 1992 has precluded such intimate reminiscing for this chapter. Having the pioneer’s own voice is irreplaceable, speaking of past accomplishments and recounting challenges within complete contexts of his own life. On the other hand, not many authors have access to 15 file drawers of their subject’s papers, particularly when the subject, Dean Barnlund, kept meticulous records of every lecture delivered, every intriguing article read, and every fascination explored. It is with this overwhelming treasure trove of materials stored in the library of the Intercultural Communication Institute that I am exploring Dean’s life, work, and contribution to the field of intercultural communication. Those who knew Dean have a vivid memory of the portable manual typewriter he used to record his prolific notes, long after electric typewriters had replaced these gentle antiques, and just before computers revolutionized our work. For those who did not know him, it would be startling to look through those 15 drawers of identically hand-typed notes on his topics of interest, realizing the enormous effort and organizational skill that produced this copious collection. One file drawer alone contains the following selected files: verbal interaction analysis, new directions in linguistics, communication theory, the Stranger Scale, the Acquaintance Inventory, the Defensiveness Scale, adult–child communication, nutritionists, words (use and abuse), group process (field theory, psychoanalytic theory, sociometrics, interactionist, and communicative), formal validity in problem solving, hostility, anxiety and defensiveness, social causality, interpersonal stress, nonverbal settings, nonverbal appearances, social pressure, value similarity, and roles. In turn, each file contains plastic page covers enclosing the lecture notes, underlined in red now and then, and annotated with examples. The examples are from other realms entirely (a fertility idol here, a French film there, a bit from the news) and carefully typed on index cards, annotated with the source, and clipped to the appropriate spot on the lecture outline. The remainder of each file folder is stocked with further anecdotes, references, and the collection of articles that are incorporated into the lecture. This brief comment serves to set the stage for exploring his world, keeping in mind his eclectic interests, his scholarly passions, and the limits of paper files to elucidate an elusive man. E-mail address: [email protected] 0147-1767/$ – see front matter © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijintrel.2012.08.007 J.M. Bennett / International Journal of Intercultural Relations 36 (2012) 780–788 781 2. The private Dean Barnlund One cannot grasp Dean as an academic without deeply appreciating his intuitive synthesis of communication and the arts. In a letter to the sculptor George Rickey (1964), Dean describes the powerful synergy he experienced between the two: My work is not in art at all—indeed it just strikes me that I have never taken a formal course in art—but in the field of interpersonal communication. What I have learned of art, particularly of architecture, sculpturing and music, has been learned solely because it has meaning for me, some of the most important meanings in my life. What I feel about art has come from looking, listening, and thinking about it. And I have found that what I learn is as vital to my life and to my work as technical study in my own field. Dean worked precisely and coherently in building his own environmental context. Attracted early in life by Frank Lloyd Wright’s architecture, he thought seriously of becoming an architect himself. Instead, his work in communication ultimately reflected his architectural interests. In a discussion of the power of personal space in a nonverbal class, he once offered that he thought an architect could build a house that would create a divorce, perhaps a comment originally from Frank Lloyd Wright. (Personal communication with the author) In 1979, he ultimately designed a home atop a cliff in Sausalito, California, with a panoramic view over the Golden Gate Bridge, and where the walls were devoted to his extensive art collection. He collected Japanese, African, Pre-Columbian, and 20th century sculpture, as well as lithographs and etchings from Picasso, Miro, Ernst, Leger, and Albers, all gathered well before the market increased their value beyond his reach. Dean’s correspondence with the architects of his home (August 1979) reveals much about his inner world. First, we find him using the word “honest,” an adjective he frequently employed for art, crafts, and designs that pleased him: A lodge in the city seems to be what I am after. I like a building that invites people to take off their shoes; that feels comfortable and warm, yet freeing and spacious at the same time. Hence a modest, honest, unpretentious building . . . something between a Taliesin and a mountaineer’s tent! (Both superbly designed nonetheless) Further, his sense of precision during the building of his home hints at the precision in his professional work. The file of his correspondence to the architects is two inches thick and laced with minute details of construction. He had previously developed an informal Design Parameter Scale to assess an individual’s stylistic predilections. His own scores were particularly high on dimensions of bold, informal, relaxed, simple, honest, plain, and creative (architectural file of Dean Barnlund, 1979). In communication with the author, Dean reported that he personally selected every stone for his fireplace, and balanced each stone into the final product. In the end, he finessed just the right amount of sunlight and just the right number of spotlights to illuminate his artworks. He explained to his architects, “I rarely have many things displayed at one time, preferring to change them frequently. I have four or five items that require substantial wall space to display (Navajo blanket, Borneo tapestry, large Miro and Calder lithographs)” (Personal correspondence from Dean Barnlund to his architects, August 1979). Dozens of pages of detailed commentary and exact stipulations reveal his sense of perfection concerning every aspect of the home. The requirements became more meticulous as the project moved forward; however, he ultimately entered into a dialogue with the architects designing his aesthetic vision, writing: What I am trying to describe are the problems to be solved, and not to delineate their solutions. I need a house that will exploit a particular geography, that will provide an informal and exciting place to live, eat, sleep, work. It should be as original in conception and as enspiriting (sic) in atmosphere as I can afford. Feel free to challenge these suggestions—and even my needs—and to find solutions that lie beyond my assumptions. There seem to be hazards in giving too much and too little information. (Personal correspondence of Dean Barnlund, September 1979) The themes of honesty, precision, and artistic vision also permeated his selection of art, crafts, pottery, furniture, and even his dinnerware (vintage Arabia Finland). Whether positioning his extensive collection of African masks, displaying a Calder mobile, or contemplating a Japanese teacup, Dean avoided excess and thrived on simplicity. His aesthetic vision had a remarkable purity. Whenever he returned from a trip with a new discovery, say a Dogon door lock from Mali, it fit into the existing ambiance of his home. Every piece fit. Nothing clashed: no stray candles, jarring colors, distracting designs. It fit. His travels inspired his love of photography, and his legacy of rich cultural portraits is a powerful one indeed. When Dean wandered the Silk Road or crossed Siberia by railway, a professional portfolio often resulted. These black and white impressions were incorporated into lectures and speeches, weaving cultural content into intercultural processes. His personal preferences for honesty in design, precision, integrity of concept, and a vision of the whole are deeply integrated into Dean’s academic work as well as in his aesthetic preferences. Personally, Dean is most frequently described as “private,” or as Carol Wilder put it, “He was a soloist, not a diva” (Personal communication, April 8, 2012). Indeed, it seems that many of those who were close to him were unaware of the others who claimed his friendship, meeting each other only at his memorial service or in the years after his death. John Condon concurs, noting Dean’s mysteriousness, suggesting that: . . . his personality, his kind engagement but also a personal detachment, a wondering about this bright and serious . . . man, seems a piece in understanding Dean’s influence on the field. I am guessing that some who wanted to work 782 J.M. Bennett / International Journal of Intercultural Relations 36 (2012) 780–788 with Dean did so not because he was famous . . . but because he was so interesting, wise, and also aloof. (Personal communication, March 16, 2012) While he built profound relationships, he often chose the written word to connect to others, and was widely admired for his eloquent prose, as a “heavenly writer . . . just a dream” (C. Wilder, personal communication, April 8, 2012). However, in personal relationships, his friends honored him for the gifts of love and understanding, and even healing, that he brought to his friendships: “He helped me through those tough times with emotions of true empathy and insights that were so inspiring that I remember them today as a benchmark in my personal life toward deeper happiness” (C. Clarke, personal communication, March 30, 2012). As John Condon summarized this characteristic, “He was elusive, although maybe we never asked the right questions” (Personal communication, March 14, 2012). 3. The public Dean Barnlund: biographical notes Born September 13, 1920, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, of Swedish and Finnish heritage, Dean was the only child of August William Barnlund and his wife, Elsie Colquitt. A. W. Barnlund was a Methodist minister, and Dean’s papers include copies of Sonnets of the Immortal Hope, a collection of religious poetry his father had written and self-published in 1952. His father also composed religious music, wrote seven manuscripts interpreting key bible passages, and completed a text on biblical scholarship. Reliable sources of Dean’s early years are not available, outside of a precious note written by Dean to his father, who was at a conference in Kansas City. At the age of eight, Dean faithfully reported to his father, “Mother says I am a good boy . . . I will be glad to see you again.” It is intriguing to note that both his grandfather and great grandfather were shipbuilders and sailors, a fitting environment for Dean to develop his own interest in exploring the world. By the 1990s he had traveled to over 80 countries. He spent from 1942 to 1946, during and after World War II, in intelligence efforts, primarily in cryptanalysis and code breaking, a developing science that foreshadowed modern computers. Needless to say, he rarely spoke of this period of his career, except to illustrate a concept now and then in his graduate courses. Dean received a BS in 1942 and an MA in 1947 from the University of Wisconsin. It was there he met and married Jean Hilliker, an art teacher, who died in 1958. His personal letter to family members about her imminent death is a stunning insight into his private world, where he kept Jean’s spirit the rest of his life. He completed his PhD in 1951 at Northwestern University in the School of Speech, writing his dissertation on Experiments in Leadership Training for Decision-Making Discussion Groups, under the joint direction of Kenneth G. Hance and Robert H. Seashore, with assistance from Franklyn S. Haiman, who later co-authored a text with Dean. While he taught briefly at Carroll College (1946–1947), Dean’s academic career really began at Northwestern University, where he connected with many others who would become part of his future, including Mitsuko Saito, Franklyn S. Haiman, and John Condon. He served as a graduate assistant for three years, with one year (1949–1950) spent teaching at the University of Florida. After completing his doctorate, he accepted a one-year appointment at the University of Cincinnati before returning to Northwestern, where he taught for another decade. He moved to the San Francisco area in 1962, joined Mensa, became a member of the Board of Directors of the Friends of Ethnic Art of the de Young Museum, and served as a professor in the Communication Department at San Francisco State for the next 30 years, until his death in 1992. 4. The Japanese influence In the autumn of 1968, Dean was invited to deliver a keynote address at the Summer Institute of Linguistics, an annual meeting held at the International Christian University (ICU) campus in Mitaka, Japan. While he had visited Europe regularly for many years, the understated elegance of Japanese culture intrigued him, as it had so many early interculturalists, and he became one in a long line of intercultural pioneers captured by the complexity and subtlety of Japanese interaction. He visited pottery villages, collected crafts, and simultaneously attended to communication patterns in a way that would forever influence his life’s work. He returned to ICU for the academic year 1971–1972, at the invitation of the department chair, Mitsuko Saito, a fellow graduate student from his days at Northwestern. In the summer of 1972, John Condon and Mitsuko Saito organized the International Conference on Communication Across Cultures, a one-week conference at ICU. A stimulating gathering of Japanese and American scholars, as well as enthusiastic graduate students (present author included), the interdisciplinary conference spawned not only a text (Intercultural Encounters with Japan, 1974), but also a new interest in the fledgling field of intercultural communication in Japan, largely inspired by John Condon’s decade of work at ICU. In continuing an interchange with Dean, John often sent graduates from ICU to San Francisco State, further developing the bond among the interculturalists. Dean structured the thesis work of his graduate students to quantitatively explore speech acts such as compliments (Barnlund & Araki, 1985), apologies (Barnlund & Yoshioka, 1990), criticism (Nomura & Barnlund, 1983) and other topics exploring cross-cultural comparisons between Japan and the United States. After the ICU conference, Dean and Masako Sano, his friend and colleague at the university, explored Japanese crafts in villages throughout Japan. In the Mashiko pottery village, they met the potter Shoji Hamada, the great “Living National Treasure” (at that time), and dined with him on his own understated pottery (M. Sano, personal J.M. Bennett / International Journal of Intercultural Relations 36 (2012) 780–788 783 communication, April 4, 2012). A fan of the Japanese mingei crafts movement, Dean appreciated the concepts of minimalism, functionality, anonymity, and simplicity that the movement embraced, consonant as they were with his own aesthetic. In 1968, Dean began investigating self-disclosure in Japan and America, with an extensive research project based in part on Sidney Jourard’s work on self-disclosure (Jourard & Lasakow, 1958). As John Condon observed, “Dean, again, was doing what others had not attempted—to push toward an empirical, data-based standard and not what was—and is—a largely romanticized, more humanities-based perspective on Japanese culture” (Personal communication, March 16, 2012). As Dean himself noted (1989): What is sought, beyond the facts, is the pattern that connects, that links one behavior with another. The approach is unique. It employs neither the psychic focus of the psychologist nor the institutional focus of the sociologist, but looks instead at the social norms that operate when Japanese and Americans communicate with strangers, acquaintances, friends, and intimates. (p. xvi) Working with Kay Campbell at San Francisco State, he developed an instrument called The Barnlund–Campbell Dimensions of Interpersonal Relations, which consisted of a set of eight related subscales (1977). Dean (1975) suggests that what they were seeking was a tentative glimpse of the possible responses to the question posed by the famed Japanese poet Basho: “My neighbor–how does he live?” They were exploring the “. . . portion of the self that is shared with others, the public self, and that which is not shared with others, the private self. . .” (Barnlund, 1975, p. 141). 5. And how does this differ in Japan and the United States? Between 1968 and 1972, Dean and his colleagues collected data at universities in Japan and the United States. The instrument allowed the research subjects the opportunity to reflect on their patterns of self-disclosure—what they would be willing to talk about and with whom—as well as their patterns of nonverbal touching behavior, again, where and with whom. The results reflected intriguing differences in the cultural comparisons between the U.S. and Japan. The original study was published in Japanese in 1973 (Nihonjin no hyogen kozo), translated by Masako Sano; the English version was published in 1975, The Public and Private Self in Japan and the United States. Masako Sano shared a review in the Japan Times, comparing Dean’s work with that of anthropologist Chie Nakane and psychoanalyst Takeo Doi, two renowned Japanese scholars (M. Sano, personal communication, April 4, 2012). In a further effort to separate images from realities, the research team gathered additional data at 10 colleges, which comprised a total of 423 Japanese and 444 American male and female subjects who provided over one million responses used to complete Dean’s last book Communicative Styles of Japanese and Americans: Images and Realities (1989). While Masako Sano also translated this text into Japanese, it was never published because the well-respected Simul press went out of business. One reviewer commented insightfully on how Dean’s medium was the message: . . . it occurred to me that Barnlund takes a primarily “Japanese” approach. He synthesizes elements into a unified whole as opposed to analyzing and dissecting things into elements, a more “American” or “Western” mode of thinking. While such an approach may be at first, confusing, it ultimately acquaints the reader with a particular communicative style representative of the Japanese. Thus, not only do readers become more informed about such a style, but they also actually engage in it. (Di Mare, 1989, p. 29) In 1990 this book received the Distinguished Scholarship Award of the Intercultural Communication Division of the International Communication Association. Dean was also able to return frequently to Japan under the auspices of Cross-Cultural Training Services (CCTS) in Tokyo, formed by Shoko Araki in 1987 after she completed her master’s degree with Dean in 1985. She used CCTS as a vehicle to bring intercultural professionals from the United States to Japan to teach weekend seminars directed at the blossoming interest in things intercultural in Japan, and attributes her success as an intercultural professional in Japan to Dean’s mentorship. Kiyoshi Shioiri, a linguistics professor in Japan, wrote in recalling the seminars: I first attended a CCTS seminar by Dean Barnlund in 1991. I got hooked and the 1990s became a decade for the study of intercultural communication for me. English, which I studied as a foreign language and taught in school turned into a language, which embodies culture. English became an intercultural language. It has become a fascinating field and broadened and enriched my mental world. (Personal communication, May 10, 2012) Those of us who facilitated those seminars would likely conclude that the learning was much more ours, so intriguing were these dialogues among Japanese scholars. 6. The Nihonmatsu conference In 1974, several senior interculturalists, including Dean and Clifford Clarke, invited a select group to a hot springs resort named Nihonmatsu, where Americans and Japanese were gathering in an experimental effort to explore group building across cultures. Cliff suggests that this powerful learning opportunity “was the turning point of many of the participants’ lives in greater self-awareness because of the intensity of the interactions” (Personal correspondence, April 2, 784 J.M. Bennett / International Journal of Intercultural Relations 36 (2012) 780–788 2012). This event has been described elsewhere in this volume, particularly well by Richard Harris. The well-intentioned efforts at intercultural dialogue ultimately proved challenging, and the event remains a source of divergent perspectives to this day. 7. Dean as an educator Perhaps Dean’s greatest gift to the field of intercultural communication was to teach in such a way that a generation of his students was inspired to continue in this work. In interviews and correspondence with the author, those who learned from him recollect an approach to teaching that was transformative. He is most often described as a synthesizer, bringing together communication theory, psychology, and the arts, joining both objective and subjective cultural elements in ever-memorable ways. Carol Wilder, now a professor at The New School, served on the faculty with him while he was at San Francisco State. She commented that “he was a giant . . . with an encyclopedic mind and an eclectic perspective . . . a synthesizer and a highly sophisticated writer” (Personal communication, April 8, 2012). Jack Condon, retired as a Regents’ Professor from the University of New Mexico and now teaching regularly in Japan, is a fellow pioneer profiled in this volume. He noted: Dean was the consummate teacher . . . gentle but strong and where even the most questioning students would trust that he had answers for one’s questions. He was a gifted storyteller, as all teachers are, but his tellings always seemed fresh and that he was enjoying the story, too, and not just passing it along . . . He certainly inspired me, not just in the information and ideas exchanged, but in his way of making it all work together so well. (Personal communication, March 16, 2012) “His lectures were thrilling,” commented Bill Shoaf, a friend and student of Dean’s and an instructor at City College since 1977, and recently retired. He assisted Dean in running simulations in his classes at San Francisco State. The rich references Dean brought to his lectures, so well documented in his files, ranged from Bergman films to jazz, and were thoughtfully composed for the greatest impact, Bill recalled (Personal communication, April 3, 2012). Shoko Araki, a professor of intercultural communication at Obirin University, and one of Dean’s graduate students, offered this comment: My first impression of Dean was the stereotype of a studious professor who is at home with a stack of books in a dusty den. By the end of the first class, my impression took a complete turnaround. His style and approach to teaching intercultural communication took several directions. For example, he told us stories from his personal life that were often humorous and charming . . . Dean knew how to play to students’ strengths by listening and watching them carefully. He understood the power of “dead air” when he addressed questions to international students. (Personal communication, May 17, 2012) While attending the Summer Institute for Intercultural Communication in Portland (to be discussed later in this paper), Mick Vande Berg, vice president for academic affairs at the Council on International Educational Exchange, had this experience in Dean’s course: During one of Barnlund’s chalk talks (he loved writing on the board, commenting as he drew connections and made inferences), a participant from Finland jumped up, strode to the front of the class, very purposely and—from the point of view of the rest of us—aggressively took the chalk out of Barnlund’s hand, and proceeded to sketch out his own ideas on the board. Barnlund didn’t act surprised, much less threatened—he stood back a little while he watched the participant scribble on the board. Then he began to comment on what was appearing there—and took the chalk out of the participant’s hand, in a firm but friendly way, and wrote things on the board in response. Then the participant took the chalk back, and wrote some more; then Barnlund did the same thing—and there they went, back and forth, having an energetic and very companionable conversation, while the rest of sat there, astonished. After a while the participant, satisfied, handed the chalk back to Barnlund and went back to his seat. And then we knew that Barnlund would go anywhere at all that we needed to go. Amazing. (Personal correspondence, March 13, 2012) This incident illustrates of one of Dean’s favorite mottos: “Let’s play it by ear.” While he usually had clear expectations for learning outcomes, he enjoyed the freedom in the classroom that encouraged spontaneity, allowing for a high degree of student engagement in the process. As the 15 file drawers of lecture notes suggest, Dean believed that a person should never deliver the same lecture twice. He gave a remarkably powerful presentation once, using teacups from the United States, China, and Japan as props. From these everyday objects, he derived deep values from within each of the cultures, presenting the comparisons and contrasts each cup represented. When offered the opportunity to present the same lecture again, he declined. He had given that lecture, and it was never to be repeated. As do other academics, he believed you should never lecture on a topic if you had not done research in that area. Can it be that his father’s constant J.M. Bennett / International Journal of Intercultural Relations 36 (2012) 780–788 785 preparation of new homilies influenced his own style of presentation (as suggested by J. Condon, personal communication, 2012)? 8. Contributions: communication According to John Condon, “To appreciate Dean as an influence in this field (of intercultural communication), one must also appreciate Dean before he was identified with the field” (Personal communication, March 16, 2012). In the early years of his career, Dean’s academic attention was focused on interpersonal communication, small group behavior, and leadership, interests reflected in his doctoral dissertation (1951), Experiments in Leadership Training for Decision-Making Discussion Groups, as well as in nine publications on leadership and group discussion. In 1960, he joined his colleague from Northwestern University, Franklyn S. Haiman, later renowned for his work on free speech and first amendment rights, to complete their popular text, The Dynamics of Discussion: Communication in Small Groups, which was republished in a second edition with Stanley E. Jones in 1980. Reviewer Laura Crowell wrote, . . . this text provides a valuable and delightful basis for training in the “art of discussion.” A book of this caliber is of high credit to the men who produced it and to the discipline in which they work. (1961, p. 95) John Condon notes with a trace of irony that when the text came out, there was a movie circulating on suicide prevention; the young actress possibly contemplating her own death was seen in the film to be reading The Dynamics of Discussion, a source of amusement to the authors (Personal communication, March 16, 2012). Dean’s often-anthologized 1962 article “Toward a Meaning-Centered Philosophy of Communication” signaled his gradual movement from leadership and group studies to interpersonal and eventually intercultural communication. In 1968, he edited the well-regarded compendium of interpersonal communication research, Interpersonal Communication: Surveys and Studies, described as “a model of his erudition and passion” (Jack Condon, personal communication, March 16, 2012). These chapters examined theories of interpersonal communication, communicator choice, the social context of communication, channels of communication, verbal and nonverbal interaction, and therapeutic communication from a wide range of wellknown scholars, including Theodore Newcomb, Leon Festinger, Morton Deutsch, Irving Janis, Harold Leavitt, Leonard Cottrell, Harry Triandis, John Thibaut, Abraham Maslow, Paul Ekman, Carl Rogers, and Fred Fiedler, among many others. This list of topics and authors, drawn together more than four decades ago, reflects Dean’s early influence on moving the field from a message-centered view of communication to a meaning-centered perspective, with an increasing emphasis on context, where Dean notes, “that meaning is something “invented,” “assigned,” “given,” rather than something “received” (1970, p. 47) “Meanings, once created, cannot be taken back” (1982, p. 100). Later in an interview with Tom Nunnelley (1989) he suggested, Meanings are the focus of human interaction, not messages, and that our meanings reflect our best effort to make sense out of the present circumstances that we are in, drawing on our past experiences selectively, viewing the present circumstances, and out of that trying to form some kind of meaning that makes it possible for us to act effectively. (p. 6) The predominant linear models during this period were focused on the sender, the message, the channel, and the receiver. Writing on a new cosmology of communication, Dean (1981) summarized the existing approach: (These) models reflect such conceptual kinship as clearly to have sprung from the same epistemological ancestry. They are alike in their basic elements, alike in their postulated relations, alike in their social implications. All employ a cosmology that emphasizes structure over function, object over relation, element over variable, linearity over circularity, additivity over non-additivity; all reify object, stimulus or message, and all presume behavior to be externally determined. (p. 90) In contrast to the earlier models, Dean’s work (1970) emphasized that communication is dynamic, continuous, circular, unrepeatable, irreversible, and complex. In developing what he called a new ecology of communication, his later work (1981) added several other attributes, including intentional, transactive, evolutionary, reflexive, context-bound, and multidimensional, among others. While today’s communication scholars largely take these attributes for granted, they were far from universally recognized in the 1960s and 1970s. As with most famous contributors, Dean’s influence was a reflection of both the person and the times. His fascination with communication as a meaning-centered process coincided with the movement in the field. The late 1950s and early 1960s were a time of change in many academic fields, including speech. In many departments there were conflicts between those who most valued a humanities tradition that emphasized rhetoric, and those whose backgrounds and passions were in the social sciences, which is where Dean’s interests were established. Clearly those individuals with a social science interest would be looking outside of the conventional focus of “speech.” And in many if not most Departments of Speech, the tensions were apparent among those moving away from speech and toward human communication, embracing group communication, organization communication, interpersonal communication, and eventually, intercultural communication. There was at least one university where the two sides stopped talking to each other, and there was even a lawsuit (J. Condon, personal communication, March 2012). 786 J.M. Bennett / International Journal of Intercultural Relations 36 (2012) 780–788 As part of this movement to locate communication in the social sciences, Dean worked with Carol Wilder at San Francisco State to change the name of the Speech Department to Communication Studies. First it became “Speech and Communication Studies,” and ultimately it was changed to “Communication Studies.” (C. Wilder, personal communication, April 8, 2012) During this period, there was an enormous emphasis on developing models of human interaction, with powerful influences from cybernetics. Dean (1970) stated flatly, The contemporary scientific world has quietly replaced the two related premises of the Cartesian, or mechanistic view of the universe–that the whole is the sum of its parts and causality the ONLY unifying order—with a worldview that emphasizes process. (pp. 43–44) Through his teaching and publishing, Dean’s influence helped to move the field of communication to an appreciation of the social science process approach. He published in journals of psychology, anthropology, medicine, sociology, psychiatry, and communication. While his integration of the arts and the social sciences was a unique interdisciplinary perspective at the time, Dean was also the model left-brain rationalist who required data to support claims about human communication, while at the same time brilliantly writing about the reflexive and transactional nature of human interaction. 9. Contributions: intercultural communication Senior professionals in intercultural communication often remind their students that the field didn’t really exist in any substantial way until the 1970s. At that time, an array of social forces—travel, transportation, military interventions, the Peace Corps, international education, corporate transferees, and civil rights—stimulated a variety of academic disciplines to pay attention to the global village. It is stunning to recall that at the first Stanford Institute of Intercultural Communication in 1975 there were two small bookshelves of literature available to the participants, compared to 2012, when the Intercultural Communication Institute Library now holds over 30, 000 intercultural items. The interdisciplinary history of the field is available elsewhere, but as John Condon says it well, “Intercultural communication had many midwives” (Personal communication, March 14, 2012). Dean Barnlund was in the right place, at the right time, to be one of those midwives. He was not terribly worried about whether intercultural communication would become a discipline. Indeed, he asserts, I would say that (intercultural communication) is not a discipline, at least at this time. It is an interest group within a number of disciplines—certainly in the field of psychology, communication, and more and more within the field of language teaching. So it is a focus more than it is a field or a discipline, and I am not sure that it will, at least in the near future, become a field or discipline in its own right for it is by its own nature very interdisciplinary. (Nunnelley, 1989, p. 5) Dean continues this line of thought by suggesting that “the most fundamental things of all are processes, and processes cut across disciplines” (Nunnelley, 1989, p. 5). He worked outside the confines of a discipline, preferring instead to integrate multiple frames of reference into his work. Further, because of Dean’s natural love of travel, his interpersonal concepts were readily transformed into intercultural concepts. He reflected (1989) on the difference between the two: Although intercultural encounters are, basically, interpersonal encounters, there is a difference. When two people of contrasting cultural backgrounds meet they are likely not only to attach different meanings to the same event . . . but also express such meanings in distinctive ways as well . . . Until they can adapt to differences in their communicative styles there is no way to comprehend or deal with their substantive differences. (p. xiv) In the late 1970s and 1980s, Dean’s work turned to the global world he so appreciated. When he moved to San Francisco State, he became quite involved in intercultural work, bringing his background and interdisciplinary perspective to a field as yet undefined. In the very early years of intercultural communication, the focus tended to be on international intercultural research, a trend that has changed with increasing commitments to social justice, growing from the civil rights movement. It is worthy of note that many of the principles he espoused serve equally well for both domestic and global contexts. In a relatively obscure interview, Dean laid out his sense of what intercultural communication is about, where communication is the carrier of culture, where we have mutual responsibility to develop shared meaning, where the interaction is happening in a context, and where we are both constructing our world views. He states, . . . the interculturalist approaches it (communication) from the standpoint that the “influence” ought to be mutual. And that if I’m going to present some of my culture and some of my ideas to another culture, then I have to be equally open to that culture’s ways and that culture’s values and that I may be changed as much by the encounter or more than the culture into which I am going. (Nunnelley, 1989, p. 6) He elaborated on this by reiterating that our focus is on process, not content, since we are interested in the practical applications of this knowledge. Contrasting intercultural communication with the study of diplomacy, he noted that our work is more pragmatic, an opinion he might not as readily voice today, as many senior interculturalists consult with governmental agencies. J.M. Bennett / International Journal of Intercultural Relations 36 (2012) 780–788 787 Many of the core principles of intercultural relations we embrace today can be found in Dean’s work, although they were pioneering ideas in the field at that time. He noted (1989) the highly interactive nature of communication and culture, “It is through communication that we acquire a culture; it is in our manner of communicating that we display our cultural uniqueness” (p. xiv). He boldly contradicted (1989) a truism of the times, that we are all human and if we follow the Golden Rule, we can be effective across cultures: . . . if we are “truly ourselves” (honest), are “of goodwill” (well intentioned), or “try hard enough” (persistent), whatever differences divide us will disappear. The assumption that everywhere men and women inhabit the same world and assign essentially the same meanings to events of their lives is perhaps the most pervasive and most intractable barrier to intercultural rapport. (p. 189) He presaged the current trend for developing intercultural competence when he suggested we are looking for people with empathy, and for the opportunity to prepare them for working across cultures more effectively. The durability of his ideas derives from his tremendous capacity to synthesize disciplinary perspectives, his articulation of significant intercultural perspectives within and outside the field of communication, and his enduring commitment to both humanistic and scientific paradigms. 10. The Summer Institute for Intercultural Communication There is yet another way in which Dean served as a midwife for intercultural communication. In 1975, Clifford Clarke, at that time a doctoral student at Stanford, developed a powerful program for the developing field of intercultural communication, the Stanford Institute for Intercultural Communication (SIIC). Clarke (1987) writes: Inspired by the scope of the Intercultural Communication Conference at International Christian University in 1972 and the intensely personal quality of the workshops at Nihonmatsu in 1974, I wanted to create an intercultural education institute in which these dynamics were balanced. It is this concept of balance—balance of scope and depth, theory and practice and international and domestic issues—which characterized the development of the Institute throughout its ten-year history. For 10 years, Cliff and his colleagues King Ming Young, David Hoopes, and Jack May designed and implemented intensive workshops on intercultural issues at Stanford, with Dean Barnlund featured in the program from 1976 to 1986. When the program moved to the Intercultural Communication Institute in Portland, Oregon, in 1986, it was renamed (but not reinitialed) the Summer Institute for Intercultural Communication (SIIC). Its mission is built on the earlier vision: to balance breath and depth of theory and practice, to integrate domestic and global concerns, and to prepare professionals to disseminate quality intercultural programming. Dean taught in Portland from 1987 to 1991 and continued facilitating courses on “Teaching Intercultural Communication,” “The State of the Art: Advanced Seminar for Experienced Professionals,” and “Intercultural Theory and Application: Advanced Seminar.” In 1992, he had prepared a new course on “Art and the Cultural Unconscious.” Dean died July 14, 1992, the day before the Institute started, and never delivered that course. At the Institute that summer, we honored Dean in a way he might have appreciated. In each of the three sessions, the Institute has about 200 participants who arrive for the opening session. In every opening, we asked those in the room who had ever worked or taught with Dean to stand. And then, those who had been his students were asked to stand. Finally, those who had read his work joined the standing crowd. And with that, eventually, every person in the room was standing. Acknowledgements The author wishes to acknowledge the generous support of Dean’s colleagues and friends who offered their public and private reflections on his work and personal life: Shoko Araki, professor at Oberlin University; Clifford Clarke, the co-director of the Stanford Institute of Intercultural Communication; John Condon, Regent’s Professor at the University of New Mexico (retired); Masako Sano, friend and interpreter, International Christian University, Japan (retired); Kiyoshi Shioiri, Emeritus Professor, Matsuyama Women’s University; William Shoaf, teacher at City College, San Francisco (retired); Carol Wilder, Professor of Media Studies at The New School; Mick Vande Berg, academic dean, Council on International Education Exchange; For patience and endurance, insight and aptitude, I offer a most gracious thank you to Torey Browne, Sandra Garrison, Sara Oakland, Edwin Praiseworthy, Adrienne Sweetwater, and Greg Walker, for their research and editorial assistance. References Barnlund, D. C. (1951). Experiments in leadership training for decision-making discussion groups. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. Northwestern University. Barnlund, D. C. (1952). The reflective mind in the making. Speech Teacher, 1(2), 86–94. Barnlund, D. C. (1968a). Communication: The context of change. In C. Larson, & F. Dance (Eds.), Perspectives on communication (pp. 24–40). Milwaukee, WI: University of Wisconsin. Barnlund, D. C. (1968b). Interpersonal communication: Surveys and studies. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin. 788 J.M. Bennett / International Journal of Intercultural Relations 36 (2012) 780–788 Barnlund, D. C. (1968). The structure of human interaction. Paper presented at the Linguistics Conference, Tokyo, Japan. Barnlund, D. C. (1970). A transactional model of communication. In J. Akin, A. Goldberg, G. Myers, & J. Stewart (Eds.), Language behavior: A book of readings in communication (pp. 43–61). The Hague, The Netherlands: Mouton. Barnlund, D. C. (1974). The public self and the private self in Japan and the United States. In J. C. Condon, & M. Saito (Eds.), Intercultural encounters with Japan (pp. 27–96). Tokyo, Japan: Simul Press. Barnlund, D. C. (1975). The public and private self in Japan and the United States. Tokyo, Japan: Simul Press. Barnlund, D. C. (1979). Toward a cosmology of communication. Paper presented at the International Communication Association-Speech Communication Association Conference, Asilomar, CA. Barnlund, D. C. (1979). Verbal self-disclosure: Topics, targets, depth. In L. Luce, & E. Smith (Eds.), Toward internationalism: Readings in cross-cultural communication (pp. 83–101). Cambridge, MA: Newbury House. Barnlund, D. C. (1981). Toward an ecology of communication. In C. Wilder-Mott, & J. Weakland (Eds.), Rigor & imagination: Essays from the legacy of Gregory Bateson (pp. 87–126). New York, NY: Praeger. Barnlund, D. C. (1989). Communicative styles of Japanese and Americans: Images and realities. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Barnlund, D. C., & Araki, S. (1985). Intercultural encounters: The management of compliments by Japanese and Americans. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 16(1), 9–26. Barnlund, D. C., & Campbell, K. (1975). Interact scale. Washington, DC: Copyright Office, Library of Congress. Barnlund, D. C., & Campbell, K. (1977a). Communication patterns and problems of pregnancy. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 47(1), 134–139. Barnlund, D. C., & Campbell, K. (1977b). Communication style: A clue to unplanned pregnancy. Medical Care, 15(2), 181–186. Barnlund, D. C., & Yoshioka, M. (1990). Apologies: Japanese and American styles. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 14(2), 193–206. Clarke, C. (1987). A message from Clifford Clarke. Portland, OR: Summer Institute for Intercultural Communication. Crowell, L. (1961). Dynamics of discussion [Review of the book dynamics of discussion]. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 47(1), 95–96. Di Mare, L. (1989). Communicative styles of Japanese and Americans: Images and realities [Review of the book Communicative styles of Japanese and Americans: Images and realities]. Business Forum, 14(2), 28–29. Jones, S., Barnlund, D. C., & Haiman, F. (1980). The dynamics of discussion: Communication in small groups (second ed.). Cambridge, MA: Harper & Row. Jourard, S. C., & Lasakow, P. (1958). Some factors in self-disclosure. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 56(1), 91–98. Nomura, N., & Barnlund, D. C. (1983). Patterns of interpersonal criticism in Japan and the United States. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 7(1), 1–18. Nunnelley, T. (1989). Interview: Dean C. Barnlund. The Language Teacher, XII(3), 5. Further reading Barnlund, D. C. (1950). Barnlund–Haiman leadership rating scale. In F. Haiman (Ed.), Group leadership and democratic action (pp. 237–244). Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin. Barnlund, D. C. (1953, May). Leadership evaluation: Some premises and procedures. Journal of Communication, 3(1), 24–27. Barnlund, D. C. (1954). Our concept of discussion: Static or dynamic? Speech Teacher, 3(1), 8–14. Barnlund, D. C. (1955a). Experiments in leadership training for decision-making discussion groups. Speech Monographs, XXII(1), 1–14. Barnlund, D. C. (1955b). The use of group observers. Speech Teacher, 4(1), 46–48. Barnlund, D. C. (1957). Leadership and its effects upon the group [Review of the Book Leadership and its effects upon the group]. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 43(1), 91–92. Barnlund, D. C. (1959). A comparative study of individual, majority, and group judgment. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 58, 55–60. Barnlund, D. C. (1962). Consistency of emergent leadership in groups with changing tasks and members. Speech Monographs, 29(1), 45–52. Barnlund, D. C. (1963). IS THERE ANY NEW BUSINESS? Foreword to the bibliography of general semantics by John C. Condon, etc. Review of General Semantics, 20(1), 75–83. Barnlund, D. C. (1964). Review of the book Crowds and power. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 50(1), 88–89. Barnlund, D. C. (1973a). Communication: The context of change. In C. Mortensen (Ed.), Basic communication theory (pp. 5–28). New York, NY: Harper & Row. Barnlund, D. C. (1973b). Nihonjin no hyogen kozo (in Japanese) [Public and private self in Japan and the United States]. Tokyo, Japan: Simul Press. Barnlund, D. C. (1976a). Communication styles in two cultures: Japan and United States. In A. Kendon (Ed.), Socialization and communication in primary groups (pp. 399–428). The Hague, The Netherlands: Mouton. Barnlund, D. C. (1976b). Mystification of meaning: Doctor–patient encounters. Journal of Medical Education, 51(9), 716–725. Barnlund, D. C. (1978). The cross-cultural arena: An ethical void. In N. Asunción-Lande (Ed.), Ethical perspectives and critical issues in intercultural communication (pp. 8–13). Falls Church, VA: Speech Communication Association. Barnlund, D. C. (1980). Interpersonal encounters of the cultural kind. In M. H. Prosser (Ed.), USIA Intercultural communication course: 1977 proceedings. Washington, DC: United States Information Agency, Forum Series. Barnlund, D. C. (1988). Communication in a global village. In L. Samovar, & R. Porter (Eds.), Intercultural communication: A reader (pp. 5–14). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Barnlund, D. C., & Asai, A. (1992). Communicative indices of self-knowledge: A Japanese and American cross-cultural comparison. Paper presented at the Communication Association of Japan 22nd Annual Convention, Tokyo, Japan. Barnlund, D. C., & Griffin, L. (1956). Group-centered leadership [Review of the book Group-centered leadership]. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 42(1), 93. Barnlund, D. C., & Harland, C. (1963). Propinquity and prestige as determinants of communication networks. Sociometry, 26(4), 467–479. Barnlund, D. C., Hunt, P., Morgan, R., Campbell, K., & Manlove, R. (1974). Communication research project. San Francisco State University. Barnlund, D. C., & Kikufuji, A. (1979). Attitudes toward the aged in Japanese and American youth. Kyoto Tanki-Daigaku Ronsyu, 8(1). Barnlund, D. C., & Nomura, N. (1985). Decentering, convergence, and cross-cultural understanding. In L. Samovar, & R. Porter (Eds.), Intercultural communication: A reader (pp. 347–366). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.