From “Laying the Foundations” to Building the House: Extending Orbe's (1998) Co-Cultural Theory to Include “Rationalization” as a Formal Strategy

Abstract

We extend co-cultural theory to include an additional communication strategy: rationalization. Rationalization is defined as instances where individuals provide alternative explanations for communication rather than labeling them as forms of injustice (e.g., racially insensitive, prejudice, or discriminatory). Thirty co-researchers were interviewed about Black and White communication challenges from a co-cultural theoretical lens. Participants employed rationalization to process intercultural tension. Specifically, Black participants rationalized being watched in public, racial comments, workplace practices and treatment, and racism.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 33 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.