A framework for understanding intercultural mediation from the standpoint of a systemic theory of communication

This chapter suggests a specific theoretical and methodological framework which explains mediation as achieved through communication. Mediation is conceived as a communication system realised through interactions and based on reflexive coordination, which is used to clarify opportunities of communication and/or to stress problems or doubts about the production of communication. Mediators’ dialogic actions invite to reflect on different communicative constructions of problems, avoiding judgements, proposing a deconstruction of negative identities and activating proposals of alternative narratives. Mediation is properly intercultural when it deals with explicit and evident cultural problems or concerns. Intercultural mediation proper means intercultural adaptation, i.e. the communicative negotiation of cultural values and behaviours, which shows the way in which cultural presuppositions are adapted to specific conditions of communication, and interlaced personal cultural trajectories are produced as small cultures. The specific function of intercultural mediation is to enhance empowerment and recognition of cultural diversity, abolish or at least reduce ethnocentric communication, promote change of the dominating cultural presuppositions within a communication system, and treat cultural diversity as a plurality of options.