Understanding Others: The Coherentist Method in Intercultural Communication

The article introduces theories of epistemic justification to the problems of under-standing in communication. Two dominant approaches in contemporary epistemolo-gy—foundationalism and coherentism—are applied in intercultural discourse. Since the intended meaning of utterances in communication is reached through inference, beliefs about the intended meaning are justified with respect to the evidence of communicative behaviour and context. Tracing the difficulties of intercultural dialogue, the article ar-gues that the coherentist method of justification is more useful than foundationalist one. Coherentism is consistent with the open-mindedness and unprejudiced reasoning, both of which are crucial parts of intercultural competency.