Commentary: Dancing the Kochari : Challenging the U.S. Perspective on Communication in Newly Democratic Cultures

Abstract

Research on professional communication in the former Soviet republics and satellite countries was by and large closed to American scholars until recent years. This commentary offers a critical introduction to the forces of globalization, discourse, and democracy in that region, offering to U.S. readers a corrective lens that challenges the American view of the role of writing in regions where democratization is new, fragile, and even alien to the culture. A great part of our work as professional communicators rests on Western, particularly democratic, theoretical assumptions, mainly derived from Greco-Roman assumptions. Too often we do not confront the real otherness of practices that poach on Western assumptions or practices for nondemocratic ends, but we face increasing pressure to do so as our work is relentlessly internationalized.