Intercultural Communication. A literature Review

Intercultural communication is becoming more and more essential in a globalized world. A couple of years ago, only international managers or diplomats needed to think about intercultural communication and its challenges. Today, this has changed and ordinary people from all over the world and different cultural backgrounds come into contact with each other on a regular base.

The different reasons, primarily driven by technology and globalization as well as the related challenges are presented in the following pages.

This paper presents different frameworks, which help to describe and understand the important elements and issues in intercultural communication. The presented models accept as a prerequisite that all individuals are being affected or interrelated by multiple cultures in various amounts and purposes. The Intercultural Communication Model, the Rainbow Model, A Contextual Model of Intercultural Communication as well as the recent Dimensional Value Framework will be presented and explained in this paper.


All of the four frameworks theorize the relationship between communication and culture while using different approaches and assumptions. As a first result it can be said, that there is no universal valid model on how to communicate in an intercultural context. All frameworks offer helpful guidance and recommendations on how to react within certain circumstances. Which model to use, depends on individual preferences and traceability of each and every one of us.