INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION AND DISABILITIES FROM A COMMUNICATION COMPLEX PERSPECTIVE John Parrish-Sprowl Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis 420 University Blvd. <...> This is important because travel and technological capability enable more and more immigrants, business people, tourists, etc. to engage in such interactions. <...> One group of people that comprises 10% of the world population, the disabled, is increasingly being mainstreamed within cultures as well as traveling to other countries. <...> When the abled enter an intercultural interaction with the disabled the communication challenges are even greater. <...> Communication Complex, a metatheoretical perspective on communication that embraces a constitutive definition of communication combined with a neuroscience understanding of interaction, offers a deeper, yet highly practical explanation of the level of complexity that such an encounter entails. <...> This article offers a brief introduction to this way of understanding intercultural communication, along with the suggestion that future studies and practical guides should take disabilities into account when analyzing or building skills. <...> INTRODUCTION Challenges faced in communication vary according to context. <...> However, individuals from different countries, ones with a history of animosity, may find a conversation on a similar topic to be more work, frustrating, and possibly it could be deadly. <...> Quite simply, adding to the complexity of the communication process, intercultural interaction holds potential pitfalls that are absent from within-culture conversation. <...> Often, in within culture conversation, we also find communication between the abled and the disabled to hold similar difficulties. <...> People often do not know how to manage the issue of disability in a conversation. <...> People might wonder how to talk to a person in a wheelchair without seeming to look down on them in the pejorative sense, or how to go about interaction with the deaf and blind in a way that does not feel disconcerting. <...> The range of disabilities, including mobility, sight, sound, and mental impairments just adds to the challenge to develop capable communication skills. 101 Russian Journal of Linguistics, Vestnik RUDN, 2015, N. 4 To complicate matters even more, if we add to the intercultural communication context, one or more persons with a disability, a layer of complexity rarely discussed but growing in frequency, adds to the effort needed to communicate effectively. <...> While a large and ever increasing literature on intercultural <...>