Lecture The Study of Intercultural Communication Key Terms

4.14 The Sojourner
A sojourner is an individual who visits another culture for a period of time but who retains his/her original culture. The sojourner typically is a visitor or traveler who only resides in the other culture for a relatively specific time, often a year or two, with the intention of returning home. Sojourners may be businesspeople, diplomats, students, military personnel, or guest workers. Many U.S. citizens experience sojourning:
1. Over two million people from the United States work overseas. The average company spends $250,000 per year for salary, benefits, and expenses to keep a U.S. employee and dependents overseas; some 25 percent of returnees leave their company within one year of coming home (many sojourning businesspeople expect that their experience in another culture will benefit their career and are disappointed when they find that it does not).
2. More than half a million U.S. military personnel and their dependents are stationed abroad.
3. Some 30,000 high school students and 75,000 university students study abroad each year.
Large numbers of sojourners come to the United States:
1. About 450,000 international students study in the United States. The majority come from China, Japan, Taiwan, and India.
2. Over 12 million international visitors come to the United States each year. Japan, Britain, and Germany are the leading nations from which these sojourners come.
Sojourners are a favorite topic of study by intercultural communication scholars. Sojourners represent a unique situation in which most everyday communication is intercultural. The sojourner is a particular type of stranger. While immigrants decide the degree to which they will become assimilated, sojourners know that their stay in the new culture is temporary. Regardless of their intent to learn the new culture, they will eventually return to their original culture. This "escape clause" can affect adjustment to the new culture. The sojourner is a stranger caught between two worlds. Past research shows that sojourning is a very difficult process, especially when an individual is sojourning for the first time. Sojourning threatens the self-worth of many individuals. The degree of culture shock that many indi­viduals experience tells us that culture is important and that intercultural adjustment is not easy, although it can be a valuable learning experience. Some individuals perceive the sojourning experience as negative and personally painful, at least during their sojourn. However, if one has the desire to under­stand a different culture, sojourning can be an exciting and wonderful event once the period of adjustment passes. Some sojourners thrive on the experi­ence. Sojourning can change one's life by giving a feel­ing of self-confidence and self-efficacy, a sense of controlling one's life and over­coming difficult situations. Many sojourners look back on their intercultural experience as something resembling a profound religious rebirth.