CHAPTER OBJECTIVES

This chapter will enable you to:

LOVE GOES GLOBAL

Throughout this book we have repeatedly seen that intercultural communication is often considered problematic. At the same time, it may be celebrated as we saw in the exploration of the commodification of intercultural communication in advertising in the previous chapter. This chapter is devoted to another form of the celebration of cultural difference and diversity, where the cultural other is romanticised and constructed as an object of romantic and sexual desire.

A German woman whom I asked in the late 1990s how she had met her American husband responded, ‘I always wanted to marry a cowboy!’ (Piller 2008). In saying that, she was – consciously or unconsciously – echoing the lyrics of a pop song that had topped the charts in Germany back in the 1960s when she was a child:

A South Korean man who was asked why he was looking for a Vietnamese wife responded ‘They will be obedient and good to my parents’ (H. M. Kim 2007: 114). In saying that, he was echoing the words found in the promotional materials of international marriage brokers and local governments, which run an international marriage campaign in South Korea. The campaign – with the slogan ‘Giving rural bachelors a chance to marry’ – has the aim of rejuvenating South Korea's aging society.

These two exchanges occurred in two widely different contexts, yet they are bound together by the pursuit of the most personal desires of love, romance, intimacy and family through intercultural communication. Each exchange makes culture relevant, and stereotypical images of the cultural other have become enmeshed with intimate personal desires – which we oftentimes regard as deeply individual. Furthermore, in each case, the stereotype was no match for reality. Natalie's