This reference book will be a welcome addition to the libraries of business communication professionals interested in international or intercultural business communication. The editors should be congratulated on their achievement in coordinating the work of an outstanding group of leaders in the field. . . . An outstanding resource for university and personal libraries. --Journal of Business Communication "A major milestone. . . . Stimulating and absorbing. . . . The most up-to-date book I have read on these issues and it is handy. . . . I recommend this book not only to the world of communications, science and research, but also to media practitioners, social scientists, and persons in academia. It is a commendable work." --P. A. Joseph Maison, Producer, News and Features, Televisa, S. A. "Serious students of international and intercultural communication will find this a handbook indeed, with comprehensive, thoughtful literature reviews and summaries of the developing edges of theory and practice. It deserves to become a classic text in the field of intercultural communication." --Review and Expositor

"The book is clearly written and includes many examples and analogies to illustrate the authors? main points. . . .The collaboration presents information useful for setting up an intercultural training program but also helpful for those attempting to ascertain the elements of a good program as well as for those interested in the general subject matter. This work will enhance the collections of libraries that support communication and business programs in particular."

--The Journal of Academic Librarianship

As societies become more global, acquiring an understanding of other cultures and customs becomes a necessity. It is essential to provide effective training programs whether the association is with culturally diverse people within the same city or country, other countries, or across hemispheres. The only comprehensive guidebook of its kind, Intercultural Communication Training provides an organizational framework for planning and establishing intercultural communication training programs. Drawing from intercultural communication and cross-cultural training, this guide emphasizes those aspects of training that explicitly involve face-to-face communication. The approaches this volume covers, such as assessing needs, establishing goals, and building positive attitudes, apply to any situation where good personal relations and effective communication need to be established with people from different cultural backgrounds.

This guidebook is an essential tool in designing a training program for scholars, students, counselors, diplomats, social workers, business people, and anyone who needs to increase their knowledge and skills for communication across cultures.

This provocative essay uses as a starting place the work of two towering figures in Canadian intellectual history: Harold Innis and Marshall McLuhan. Graeme Patterson questions conventional understanding of the thought of Innis and McLuhan and the relationship between their work. Historians have generally considered communications an area distinct from (and irrelevant to) their own. Harold Innis is usually regarded as having moved from the field of Canadian history in his early work to non-Canadian history and communications. The distinction, Patterson suggests, is false; both the early and the late work of Innis are in the field of communications and, indeed, so is the study of history itself. Using nineteenth-century Upper Canadian political history as a focus, Patterson applies communications theory to such familiar subjects as the Family Compact, responsible government, and the rebellion of 1837, and shows how Canadian opinion was generated and shaped by media of communication. Both Innis and McLuhan held that the technologies of writing and printing conditioned and structured human consciousness, resulting in 'literal mindedness.' Using that insight, Patterson explores the thinking of nineteenth- and twentieth-century writers of Canadian history, including Donald Creighton, J.M.S. Careless, and Chester Martin. In his challenge to long-standing views, Patterson offers a new way of understanding the work of two key thinkers, and new ways to think about communications theory, Canadian history, historiography, and history as a discipline.

Published in cooperation with the Speech Communication Association Division on International and Intercultural Communication. A diverse multicultural team of experts assembled for this compelling volume voice the importance of understanding language, communication, and culture. They discuss the critical role of language usage through communication to assert and negotiate different facets of identity, and relate the different levels and functions of language usage to the collective life of a culture. Each author discusses the interlinkage between language and communication based on his or her points of research interest and orientation. Topics addressed include the importance of studying the relationships between language and society; the relationship between language and identities--personal identity, social role identity, and cultural/ethnolinguistic identity; and the multiple functions and meanings of language and communication in relationship to culture. Taken together, the three approaches in this volume reflect the current trends and directions of multidisciplinary nature of studying language, communication and culture. Language, Communication, and Culture reflects the current ideas and approaches of scholars working in the disciplines of psychology, linguistics, sociolinguistics, intergroup relations, and communication. It will appeal to scholars, researchers, and students who are intrigued and enticed by the fascinating, multifaceted aspects of language. "The book makes a unique contribution to the literature in that it includes a balance of theoretical discussion of issues such as language development, use, and function, as well as a variety of analytical approaches and intergroup data-based studies. . . .Language, Communication and Culture is a book which extends our knowledge about the structures, functions, and implications of language use across cultures. Ting-Toomey and Korzenny have provided a worthwhile sourcebook for those of us researching culture, and a particularly useful book for graduate level or advanced undergraduate coursework in language and/or culture." --International Journal of Intercultural Relations "This is an important volume and will prove invaluable to gamers interested in the communication and the cultural aspects of simulation." --Simulation & Gaming "This collection . . . is a well-organized presentation of current research on the relationships among intercultural communication processes from differing perspectives." --The Modern Language Journal "This book will interest academic specialists in language and communication and their graduate students." --Academic Library Book Review "On the whole, the papers are coherent and well integrated into the research literature." --Canadian Journal of Communication "The contributors'arguments are diverse but interlinked and provide a critical perspective on the theme of language and communication in cross-cultural contexts. . . . Adds to several important studies about the language/culture nexus and favors the current climate of cultural pluralism and multilingualism to promote liberal ethnic identity." --Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology

Recipient of the 1988 Outstanding Book Award from the International and Intercultural Division of the Speech Communication Association "The integration is impressive, and the book is a 'must' for those interested in this and related topics. . . . I think this book is likely to become 'the bible' of graduate students preparing for qualifying examinations for their doctorate in interpersonal communication, particularly if cultural variables are included in such preparation. Professionals in this area will, of course, want to have it. It is recommended to all readers of this journal." --Harry Triandis, International Journal of Intercultural Relations "This book provides a welcome addition to the literature on human interaction. . . . The coverage of most areas is impressive. The authors have amassed a considerable volume of material and have managed to compress a very detailed discussion into a comparatively small space. The material is logically organized and succinctly presented throughout . . . a valuable reference source. . . . A thoroughly researched and tightly written book which contributes significantly to the corpus scholarship in both interpersonal and intercultural communication. It is highly recommended as a reference source for anyone interested in these increasingly imporatnt areas of research." --Canadian Journal of Communication "The authors have integrated an impressive array of literature. . . . This book is timely and will help give direction to culture and communnication research over the next decade. . . . Clearly structured and the material is well organized. . . . The writing is easy to read and the material generally well integrated." --Contemporary Sociology "Offers a very useful grounding and integration of work in this area so far." --Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology

Virtual worlds have exploded out of online game culture and now capture the attention of millions of ordinary people: husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, workers, retirees. Devoting dozens of hours each week to massively multiplayer virtual reality environments (like "World of Warcraft "and "Second Life"), these millions are the start of an exodus into the refuge of fantasy, where they experience life under a new social, political, and economic order built around "fun." Given the choice between a fantasy world and the real world, how many of us would choose reality? "Exodus to the Virtual World" explains the growing migration into virtual reality, and how it will change the way we live--both in fantasy worlds and in the real one.

Wissenstransfer und Wissenstransformation sind zentrale Herausforderungen in der Wissensgesellschaft. Die fortschreitende Fragmentierung von Wissensdomanen und die eingeschrankte Zuganglichkeit von Wissensressourcen sind nur zwei gegenlaufige Tendenzen. Umso mehr rucken funktionale Aspekte von Wissenskonstruktion und Wissenskonstitution in den Blickpunkt. Dieser Band bundelt ausgewahlte transdisziplinare Perspektiven und Positionen des Themenfeldes.

What exactly is so appealing in formal science, such that its influence can be seen in numerous disciplines nowadays, for practical purposes like better functionality, performance, and so on-as Pythagoras already famously said in antiquity: "Number is the ruler of forms and ideas and the cause of gods and demons"?This contemporary addiction to practical convenience in formal science has turned a blind eye to its other side, which has impoverished both our knowledge of reality and the well-being of our lifeworld.Contrary to conventional wisdom, the other side of this appealing addiction has yet to be comprehensively understood, nor has the fact that its practical convenience is neither possible nor desirable to the extent that the proponents of formal science would like us to believe. Needless to say, this by no means suggests that formal science should not be used for practical purposes, or that the literature in formal science (and other related fields like computer science, information theory, microeconomics, decision theory, statistics, and linguistics, just to cite a few of them) should be dismissed. Of course, neither of these two extreme views is reasonable either.Instead, this book provides an alternative (better) way to understand the nature of formal science, especially in relation to systems theory for practical convenience-while learning from different approaches in the literature but without favoring any one of them (nor integrating them, since they are not necessarily compatible with each other). In the end, this book offers a new theory to transcend the existing approaches in the literature in a new direction not thought of before. This seminal project is to fundamentally alter the way that we think about formal science, from the combined perspectives of the mind, nature, society, and culture, with enormous implications for the human future and what I originally called its "post-human" fate.