In studying sociolinguistic rules, researchers must be aware of some guiding principles: that (1) these rules are below the conscious level of awareness, and (2) rules of speaking differ across cultural groups, with none being more correct than another. Even when members of different cultural groups interact in the same language they may find it…

Films such as Peter Weir's 1985 film "Witness" can be used in intercultural communication classrooms to increase intercultural understanding, provide a substitute for experience, and compare cultures. In "Witness," an Amish boy witnesses the murder of an undercover narcotics agent. The investigating detective, the boy, and his…

This book reports the results of an investigation into the internationalization of U.S. higher education through the experience of faculty, using impressions and data from extensive campus visits and interviews at 37 institutions nationwide, and data from 4 previous studies. Chapter 1 reviews historical trends in higher education…

Every society has a system of values and seeks to achieve goals which it defines as desirable. To gain insight and a measure of understanding of another culture, international marketers can approach a country as a whole, seek out behavioral premises, obtain a theoretical knowledge of the culture, and learn the country's social heritage.…

This study documents the benefits of tutoring as a clinical experience for the prospective teacher. The program was developed to give the teacher candidates a perspective on the likelihood that they will encounter vast differences between their life experiences and those of their students. These differences may be racial, ethnic, and/or cultural.…

A study investigated the hypotheses that: (1) people from different language backgrounds would differ in the jokes they found funny; and (2) the differences would be related to culture rather than lack of vocabulary. A questionnaire with 30 jokes was presented to 51 English teachers from a wide variety of countries and 11 native English-speakers.…

An international mass communication minor, with its salient, unique communication features and its interdisciplinary nature, can internationalize American higher education and raise students' cultural, political and economic awareness. The relationship existing between communication and the various disciplines is illustrated in the Arts-Sciences…

Language learning is a form of cultural learning, and cultural learning embraces language learning. The goal of cultural learning is a continuing search for understanding that bridges cultures. Language can be a bridge, a system that constructs reality as it communicates about reality. Education in the U.S. has tended to define culture as American…

During the summer of 1984, 30 speech communication professors and their spouses visited Shanghai, Beijing, Moscow, and Leningrad, spending three or four days in each city. In each of the four communist cities, they met with professors and administrators for long briefings and discussions about communication. One of the first things the Americans…

An effort to go further than recent attempts have gone in relating the content of materials for teaching English as a second language (ESL) to learner needs is illustreated in two separate types of projects which integrate ESL and academic course content. One places advanced ESL students with American students in an intercultural communication…

The relationship of one aspect of conversational style, the degree of directness in the sending and interpretation of messages, to ethnicity was investigated in a comparison of the communication styles of Greeks and Americans. It was hypothesized that Greeks tend to be more indirect in speech than Americans, and that English speakers of Greek…

Aspects of nonverbal communication are examined as they relate to business communication and to the instruction of business language. Relevant literature on nonverbal communication is reviewed, focusing on gestures and body language and the problems inherent in interpretation of their meaning. Suggestions for educators include: training students…

From the standpoint of intercultural communication, the most serious problem connected with the intercultural transfer of technology is not the fact of technology's continuing expansion, but rather the way in which technology is understood and transmitted to recipient cultures. In its present form, the intercultural transfer of technology implies…

A two-part presentation on cross-cultural communication consists of a discussion of cultural differences in interpersonal communication and an article from a Greek English-language publication concerning telephone use skills in a foreign country. Cultural differences in communication are divided into eight types and illustrated: (1) when to talk;…

The needs for understanding the multicultural nature of the world, creating educational opportunities for minorities, and striving toward accurate communication among cultures are addressed. The first part of the paper discusses culture in terms of the symbolic system that encodes the values of humanity at the levels of language, social structure,…