Capturing Intercultural Communication as Discourse Study between Filipino and Indonesian Exchange Students
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15642/ijet2.2025.14.2.177-194Keywords:
Intercultural Communication, Culture, Southeast Asian Countries, InstagramAbstract
The cultural richness of the world in the midst of the onslaught of this technology-dominated era is still very well preserved. Cultural exchange or cultural introduction to someone who has a different culture is now very easy to find with the support of technology, especially social media. This study analyzes the intercultural communication between students from two Southeast Asian countries, namely the Philippines and Indonesia to address a gap in the literature regarding the specific dynamics of Southeast Asian intercultural interactions and their relevance to developing intercultural communicative competence in language learning. Participants in this study were five Philippine exchange students and two Indonesian students who accompanied them for a month living in Indonesia. This study uses a qualitative approach with Intercultural Discourse Analysis. Data was taken from conversations that occurred on Instagram and also through personal experiences interacting with Filipino students with documentation. The results show that as the host, Indonesian culture is dominant compared to Philippine culture even though the comparison of the number of participants is quite large. Although Indonesian culture dominates, Filipino students still try to bring their culture from language to habits that are commonly done by Indonesians. Apart from the cultural differences, it turns out that there are a few cultural similarities, especially non-verbal culture, namely giving souvenirs to close friends. The interaction successfully shows cultural exchange through a modern platform, namely social media. Therefore, Instagram is an effective social media to bridge intercultural communication. The online interaction that occurs in it successfully reflects cultural values by bringing cultural symbols from each country. This study contributes to ELT by illustrating how social media interactions can develop students' intercultural communicative competence.
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References
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