Interculture Communication A Practical Guide

This book is not only for those interested in US/Mexican relations, but is useful for anyone open to learning about communication challenges at multiple levels with people from many different "cultures". It provided the framework to a deeper understanding of the complexities of communication

Interculture Communication A Practical Guide

Novinger,Tracy

University of Texas Press, Austin

2001

Abstract

Successfully communicating with people from another culture requires learning more than just their language. While fumbling a word or phrase may cause embarrassment, breaking the unspoken cultural rules that govern personal interactions can spell disaster for businesspeople, travelers, and indeed anyone who communicates across cultural boundaries. To help you avoid such damaging gaffes, Tracy Novinger has compiled this authoritative, practical guide for deciphering and following "the rules" that govern cultures, demonstrating how these rules apply to the communication issues that exist between the United States and Mexico. Novinger begins by explaining how a major proportion of communication within a culture occurs nonverbally through behavior and manners, shared attitudes, common expectations, and so on. Then, using real-life examples and anecdotes, she pinpoints the commonly occurring obstacles to communication that can arise when cultures differ in their communication techniques. She shows how these obstacles come into play in contacts between the U.S. and Mexico and demonstrates that mastering the unspoken rules of Mexican culture is a key to cementing business and social relationships. Novinger concludes with nine effective, reliable principles for successfully communicating across cultures.

The first half of the book is a kind of Human Communication 101 primer, including well analyzed material on intercultural communication within a complex context of personal values, societal values, historical influence and more. It lays the foundation for the second half of the book which further explores the topic, but in a deeper and more specific way. The author's exploration and analysis of the issues of communication between persons from the United States and Mexico is not only highly enlightening, but also very practical. Anyone who takes the time to read and digest this book will have a much greater understanding of the self and how this impacts one's interpretation of the "other".

This book as it puts into perspective how our deeply embedded values effect how we communicate and evaluate others. And significantly, it demonstrates to us how we oftentimes are completely unaware of the dynamics involved.