Semiotic phenomenology and intercultural communication scholarship: Meeting the challenge of racial, ethnic, and cultural difference

The present work considers how semiotic phenomenology can meet challenges presented in the effort to study the complexities of racial, ethnic, and cross-cultural difference and what is required for the potential of semiotic phenomenology to be adequately realized as a research methodology that can fully engage questions of historical context and the trajectories of power inherent in efforts to build cross-cultural knowledge. A focus on Martin and Nakayama's (1999) dialectical perspective provides the major context for this discussion. A focus on C. S. Peirce's (1958) categories of Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness allows for the specification of the theoretical and practical terms in which the dialectical perspective can be successfully implemented and thus realized in the actual conduct of our scholarly research efforts.