Beyond Shared Language: Anthropologies of Communication with Non-Equivalent Others

Contemporary theories of communication often presuppose the existence, or at least the eventual attainability, of a shared code, be it a common language, mutually intelligible symbols, or commensurable frameworks of meaning. Yet many communicative encounters unfold precisely in the absence of such stability. This Research Topic invites contributions that interrogate how communication is initiated, sustained, and transformed when semiotic equivalence cannot be assumed.

We focus on communicative situations marked by asymmetry, opacity, or radical difference, in contexts in which interlocutors do not (and may never fully) share linguistic systems, sensory modalities, cognitive frameworks, or ontological assumptions. Rather than treating these encounters as failures or deficits, we approach them as productive sites where provisional forms of common ground are actively constructed. What practices, strategies, and infrastructures enable communication under such conditions? How do participants negotiate meaning when translation is partial, unstable, or impossible?

This Research Topic seeks to bring together interdisciplinary perspectives that foreground communication as an emergent, situated process. Contributions may draw from contact linguistics, literary studies, linguistic anthropology, disability studies, science and technology studies, semiotics, and related fields. We are particularly interested in ethnographic, theoretical, and practice-based work that examines communication across difference without reducing it to equivalence.

Relevant topics include, but are not limited to:

• intercultural and interlingual encounters where no stable lingua franca exists, including contexts of migration and border contacts
• communication involving atypical, impaired, or non-normative modalities (e.g., deafblind communication, augmentative and alternative communication systems, and neurodivergent interaction)
• human–machine and human–nonhuman communication, especially where interpretability and shared reference are contested
• speculative and fictional representations of communication with radically other beings (e.g., aliens in literature and cinema) as sites for theorizing non-equivalence
• the role of gesture, affect, embodiment, and materiality in establishing communicative bridges
• ethical and political dimensions of communicating across asymmetry, including power, exclusion, and epistemic injustice
• methodological challenges in studying communication without presupposed shared frameworks.

By juxtaposing empirical cases with speculative and representational analyses, this Research Topic aims to expand the conceptual vocabulary of communication studies. It seeks to move beyond models grounded in transmission and translation toward accounts that emphasize negotiation, improvisation, and relationality. Ultimately, this Research Topic asks: what does it mean to communicate when there is no guarantee of mutual intelligibility, and what can such encounters teach us about the limits and possibilities of human communication itself?

We welcome submissions that engage critically and creatively with these questions, offering new theoretical insights and grounded analyses of communication beyond equivalence.

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Case Report
• Community Case Study
• Conceptual Analysis
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• FAIR² DATA Direct Submission
• General Commentary
• ... View all formats

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Case Report
• Community Case Study
• Conceptual Analysis
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• FAIR² DATA Direct Submission
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Policy and Practice Reviews
• Policy Brief
• Registered Report
• Review
• Study Protocol
• Systematic Review
• Technology and Code

Keywords: non-equivalent communication, intercultural asymmetry, language contact, multimodal interaction, (mis)understanding

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.