How is cultural identity accomplished interactively? What happens when different cultural identities contact one another? This book presents a series of papers, from classic essays to original expositions, which respond to these questions. The view of communication offered here -- rather than ignoring culture, or making it a variable in an equation -- is based on cultural patterns and situated communication practices, unveiling the multiplicity of factors involved in particular times and places. The contributors to this unusual volume represent a wide range of fields. Their equally diverse offerings will serve to clarify cultural distinctiveness in some communication phenomena, and lay groundwork for the identification of cross-cultural generalities in others.

How is cultural identity accomplished interactively? What happens when different cultural identities contact one another? This book presents a series of papers, from classic essays to original expositions, which respond to these questions. The view of communication offered here -- rather than ignoring culture, or making it a variable in an equation -- is based on cultural patterns and situated communication practices, unveiling the multiplicity of factors involved in particular times and places. The contributors to this unusual volume represent a wide range of fields. Their equally diverse offerings will serve to clarify cultural distinctiveness in some communication phenomena, and lay groundwork for the identification of cross-cultural generalities in others.

Bringing together current research, theories and methods from leading scholars in the field, this volume is a state-of-the-art study of intercultural communication competence and effectiveness. In the first part, contributors analyze the conceptual decisions made in intercultural communication competence research by examining decisions regarding conceptualization, operationalization, research design and sampling. The second part presents four different theoretical orientations while illustrating how each person's theoretical bias directs the focus of research. Lastly, both quantitative and qualitative research approaches used in studying intercultural communication competence are examined.

This book has the chapters from the Handbook of International and Intercultural Communication, Second Edition relating to the structure and growth of cross-cultural and intercultural communication. With an expanded forward by William Gudykunst it is an invaluable resource for students and lecturers of communications studies

Today, students are more familiar with other cultures than ever before because of the media, Internet, local diversity, and their own travels abroad. Using a social constructionist framework, Inter/Cultural Communication provides today's students with a rich understanding of how culture and communication affect and effect each other. Weaving multiple approaches together to provide a comprehensive understanding of and appreciation for the diversity of cultural and intercultural communication, this text helps students become more aware of their own identities and how powerful their identities can be in facilitating change—both in their own lives and in the lives of others.

Both interculturalism and multiculturalism address the question of how states should forge unity from ethnic, cultural and religious diversity. But what are the dividing lines between interculturalism and multiculturalism? This volume brings together some of the most prominent scholars in the field to address these two different approaches. With a Foreword by Charles Taylor and an Afterword by Bhikhu Parekh, this collection spans European, North-American and Latin-American debates.

Today, students are more familiar with other cultures than ever before because of the media, Internet, local diversity, and their own travels abroad. As such, traditional intercultural communication textbooks which focus solely on the ′differences′ approach aren′t truly effective for today′s students, nor for this field′s growth. Using a social constructionist framework—which explores how culture is constructed and produced in the moments in which it is experienced—Inter/Cultural Communication provides today′s students with a rich understanding of how culture and communication affect and effect each other. Inter/Cultural Communication improves upon current textbooks in four significant ways: (1) It provides a differences approach and a social constructionist approach; (2) It explores the consequences of cultural moments on immediate communication and on larger scale social issues; (3) It is descriptive, not prescriptive, of how culture is communicated; and (4) It introduces intercultural topics, rather than interpersonal topics. Weaving multiple approaches together in order to provide students with a comprehensive understanding of and appreciation for the diversity of cultural and intercultural communication, this text allows them to become more aware of their own identities and how powerful those identities can be in facilitating change—both in their own lives and in the lives of others. In addition, the book will help students deal with unfamiliar cultures and understand those with whom they come in contact when they travel, in their communities, in the workplace, in their home, and online.