CONFERENCE PRESENTATION – LOS BAÑOS, LAGUNA, PHILIPPINES
At the Speech Communication Conference 2025 at the University of the Philippines Los Baños, Ned Legaspi presented a Southeast Asian approach to culturally intelligent storytelling, exploring how stories can remain rooted in culture while building resonance across borders.
On October 10, 2025, I presented my paper, “Rooted Yet Resonant: A Southeast Asian Framework for Culturally Intelligent Storytelling in Global Media,” at the Speech Communication Conference 2025 at the University of the Philippines Los Baños.
The presentation began with a challenge that has shaped much of my work in global media:
How can a story remain deeply rooted in its culture and still resonate with people who do not share that culture?
For many years, the dominant assumption in global media seemed to be that stories had to become more universal by becoming less culturally specific. Local references were explained, unfamiliar practices were simplified, and cultural differences were sometimes softened to make stories more accessible to international audiences.
But some of the most successful stories crossing borders today suggest another possibility.
Perhaps stories do not travel because they abandon their cultural roots. Perhaps, under the right conditions, they travel because they are rooted.
My presentation explored this tension through a Southeast Asian perspective on culturally intelligent storytelling. I discussed how creators can examine the cultural forces shaping a story, including identity, relationships, authority, communication, time, rules, emotional expression, and social expectations, without reducing culture to a checklist of visible symbols.
The question is not simply whether a story contains local food, language, clothing, music, or landscapes. Cultural rootedness goes deeper. It can shape why characters make certain choices, how families negotiate conflict, how authority is understood, what remains unspoken, and what a community considers acceptable or unacceptable.
At the same time, cultural specificity alone does not guarantee that a story will connect beyond its place of origin.
This is where resonance becomes important.
I proposed that stories can create points of connection across cultures through recognizable human drives, emotions, relationships, and dilemmas, while still allowing culturally distinct ways of expressing them.
A story can be culturally specific without becoming culturally inaccessible.
For me, this is one of the central possibilities of culturally intelligent storytelling: not creating stories that are culturally neutral, but developing stories that are rooted enough to be authentic and resonant enough to travel.
The conference setting made this conversation especially meaningful. The theme, “On Speaking Terms: Enabling Encounters, Engaging Communities,” invited us to think about communication not simply as transmission, but as encounter.
Stories, too, are encounters.
When a story travels, one cultural world meets another. The challenge for storytellers is not to eliminate the distance between them, but to create enough understanding for connection to become possible.
That is where culturally intelligent storytelling begins.
About The Conference
The Speech Communication Conference 2025, themed “On Speaking Terms: Enabling Encounters, Engaging Communities,” was held on October 9 and 10, 2025 at the University of the Philippines Los Baños.
The conference brought together scholars and practitioners to examine communication as a means of enabling encounters and engaging communities. My presentation was delivered as part of the session on Creative Communication and Culture, where discussions on storytelling, media, and culture provided a natural setting for examining how Southeast Asian narratives can remain culturally rooted while building resonance across cultural boundaries.
The conference format emphasized focused presentations and scholarly exchange. Each presenter was allotted 12 minutes, followed by a moderated open forum after all papers in the session had been presented.
Engagement Details
Event: Speech Communication Conference 2025
Conference Theme: On Speaking Terms: Enabling Encounters, Engaging Communities
Presentation: Rooted Yet Resonant: A Southeast Asian Framework for Culturally Intelligent Storytelling in Global Media
Session: Creative Communication and Culture
Date: October 10, 2025
Time: 1:30 PM to 3:00 PM
Venue: University of the Philippines Los Baños
Location: Los Baños, Laguna, Philippines
Role: Paper Presenter
