Ten years ago, we identified and described four distinct paradigms of culture and communication research (functionalist, interpretive, critical humanist, and critical structuralist) based on their metatheoretical assumptions and explored strategies for constructive interparadigmatic discussions (Martin and Nakayama, 1999). We then proposed a new way -a dialectical approach -to conceptualize and study intercultural communication. We suggested that a dialectic perspective could guide future research in two ways. First, as a trans-paradigmatic methodology for studying culture and communication phenomena and second, as a conceptual framework for understanding intercultural communication practice. In this essay we again survey current culture and communication research through a paradigmatic lens, assess the current contributions of a dialectical approach to the study of culture and communication and offer new directions for incorporating a dialectic perspective into our research.After 10 years, revisiting the contemporary terrain of intercultural communication seems warranted. The field has exploded in many different directions that have opened up the very notion of "intercultural" communication. In some ways, the term itself, "intercultural," tends to presume the interaction between discrete and different cultures. We know, however, that cultures have always been in contact and that the notion of cultural difference hides and masks the very ways that cultures have already influenced each other. So rather than cultural difference, our inclination is to put that concept into dialectical tension with cultural similarity to highlight the hybrid and heterogeneous character of all cultures. Ten years later, the very problem of conceptualizing "intercultural communication" remains as vibrant and relevant as ever.

A survey of contemporary research reveals distinct and competing approaches to the study of culture and communication. These approaches reflect various metatheoretical assumptions, research goals, and beliefs about the role of power and relevance in contemporary research. In order to legitimate the various approaches and facilitate interparadigmatic discussion, this essay first examines the metatheoretical assumptions of current research and then proposes a dialectical approach to scholarship. First, we identify and describe four distinct paradigms of culture and communication, based on Burrell and Morgan's (1 988) framework: functionalist, interpretive, critical humanist, and critical structuralist. For each paradigm, we identify metatheoretical assumptions, concomitant conceptualizations of culture, the relationship between culture and communication, and contemporary research exemplars. We then propose a dialectic approach that facilitates interparadigmatic dialogue and offers new ways to conceptualize and study intercultural communication. We offer six dialectics of intercultural communication practice that could guide future research.A survey of contemporary research reveals distinct and competing approaches to the study of culture and communication, including crosscultural, intercultural, and intracultural communication studies (Asante & Gudykunst, 1989; Y. Y. Kim, 1984).' Culture and communication studies also reflect important metatheoretical differences in epistemology, ontology, assumptions about human nature, methodology, and research goals as well as differing conceptualizations of culture and communication, and the relationship between culture and communication.In addition, questions about the role of power and research application often lead to value-laden debates about right and wrong ways to conduct research. Whereas these debates signal a maturation of the field, they can be needlessly divisive when scholars use one set of paradigmatic criteria to evaluate research based on different paradigmatic assumptions (Deetz, 1996). The purpose of this essay is to focus attention

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