3Keio Communication Review No. 24, 2002 Edward T. Hall and The History of

Here we trace the role of anthropologist Edward T. Hall in founding the scholarly field of intercultural communication during the 1951-1955 period when he was at the Foreign Service Institute of the U.S. Department of States. The scholarly field of intercultural communication was then mainly advanced by university-based scholars of communication in the United States and Japan, and in other countries. The development of intercultural communication in the U.S. and Japan is analyzed here. The Founding Role of Edward T. Hall This essay explores (1) the development of the original paradigm for intercultural communication, and (2) how this paradigm was followed by scholars in the United States and in Japan. The term “intercultural communication ” was used in Edward T. Hall’s (1959) influential book, The Silent Language, and Hall is generally acknowledged to be the founder of the field (Leeds-Hurwitz, 1990; Rogers and Steinfatt, 1999). Hall was born in St. Louis, but grew up mainly in the American Southwest. As a young man in the 1930s, Hall worked for the U.S. Indian Service, building roads and dams with construction crews of Hopis and Navajos (Hall, 1992, 1994). He earned a Ph.D. in anthropology in 1942 at Columbia University, then one of the most important centers in anthropological study. During World War II Hall served as an officer with an African American regiment in Europe and in the Pacific (Hall, 1947). After the War, Hall returned to Columbia University for post-doctoral study in cultural anthropology (somewhat of a career shift from his previous specialt