Culture In Communication

Focusing on three primary systems of communication, spoken, written and visual, the authors outline the key concepts and skills in the fields of communication studies, cultural studies and textual 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.

An analysis of the extent to which culture plays a part in communication. This title explores topics such as context and culture in theoretical issues in intercultural communication, and incorporates a number of case studies from East and West German communication, collaboration and pleasure at work, and negotiation to address the relation of culture to communication.

This introductory textbook of culture and communication shows students how to use language as a tool to reveal cultural phenomena.

A textbook for students in Japanese, communication, or international studies, assuming no previous background in Japanese language or culture. Donahue (Japanese studies, Nagoya Gakuin U., Japan) first surveys the perceptual barriers to communicating between Japan and North America, then examines the Japanese communication style, differences in discourse, and images of the Japanese in the mass media. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

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.

Communication Across Cultures remains an excellent resource for students of linguistics and related disciplines, including anthropology, sociology and education. It is also a valuable resource for professionals concerned with language and intercultural communication in this global era.

Edmund Leach's book investigates the writings of 'structuralists,' and their different theories: the general incest theory and of animal sacrifice. This book is designed for the use of teaching undergraduates in anthropology, linguistics, literary studies, philosophy and related disciplines faced with structuralist argument. It provides the prolegomena necessary to understand the final chapter of Levi-Strauss's massive four-volume Mythologiques. Some prior knowledge of anthropological literature is useful but not essential. The principal ethnographic source is the Book of Leviticus; this guide should help anyone who is trying to grasp the essentials of 'seminology' - the general theory of how signs and symbols come to convey meaning. The author's core thesis is that: 'the indices in non-verbal communication systems, like the sound elements in spoken language, do not have meaning as isolates, but only as members of set'; the book's special merit is that it makes this kind of jargon comprehensible in terms of our everyday experience.