{"id":1298,"date":"2010-12-25T22:00:26","date_gmt":"2010-12-25T20:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/elanguage.net\/blogs\/booknotices\/?p=1298"},"modified":"2010-12-20T12:26:22","modified_gmt":"2010-12-20T10:26:22","slug":"handbook-of-intercultural-communication","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/?p=1298","title":{"rendered":"Handbook of intercultural communication"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"margin-left: 2em; text-indent: -2em;\"><strong>Handbook of intercultural communication.<\/strong> By <strong>Helga<\/strong> <strong>Kotthoff<\/strong> and <strong>Helen<\/strong> <strong>Spencer-Oatey<\/strong>. (Handbook of applied linguistics 7.) Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2009. Pp. xxi, 560. ISBN \u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.worldcat.org\/title\/handbook-of-intercultural-communication\/oclc\/428731393&amp;referer=brief_results\">9783110214314<\/a>. $59.95.<\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\">Reviewed by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.english-linguistics.uni-bayreuth.de\/de\/team\/Anchimbe_Eric\/index.html\"><strong>Eric A. Anchimbe<\/strong><\/a>, <em>University of Bayreuth, Germany<\/em><\/p>\n<p>This volume is the seventh of nine in the series <em>Handbooks of applied linguistics<\/em>. One of the aims of this series is to \u2018show that applied linguistics can provide or develop instruments for solving new, still unpredictable problems\u2019 (xii). Without purporting to provide only solutions to problems in intercultural communication, the volume uses multidisciplinary perspectives to explore intercultural communication, communication practices and processes, and intercultural competence in different sectors of life and in different discourses. Discourses from multicultural sectors, such as the workplace, healthcare system, legal contexts, schools, media, and business and social relationships, are succinctly investigated with the help of frameworks from linguistic anthropology, cognitive pragmatics, social psychology, cultural theory, and sociolinguistic theory.<\/p>\n<p>The volume adopts a pragmatic approach to explaining intercultural communication, based on the premise that \u2018people regard themselves as belonging to different social groups\u2019 and only end up forming communities through contact and socialisation processes. Interaction is at the center of these processes since it is the \u2018dynamic process through which people jointly construct (consciously and\/or unconsciously) their multiple identities\u2019 (2). The twenty-four chapters of this volume (grouped into five parts) are held together by this stance. Each part is introduced by an informative editors\u2019 introduction.<\/p>\n<p>Part 1, \u2018Multidisciplinary perspectives on intercultural communication\u2019, contains six papers that focus primarily on cultural influences in communication (<strong>John Gumperz<\/strong> and\u00a0 <strong>Jenny Cook-Gumperz)<\/strong>, cognitively-based cultural impacts on communication (<strong>Vladimir \u017degarac<\/strong>), psychology and intercultural communication (<strong>Madeleine Brabant<\/strong>, <strong>Bernadette Watson<\/strong>, and <strong>Cindy Gallois<\/strong>), emotions and intercultural adjustments (<strong>David Matsumoto<\/strong>, <strong>Seung Hee Yoo<\/strong>, \u00a0and <strong>Jeffrey A. LeRoux<\/strong>), and intercultural conflict (<strong>Nathalie van Meurs<\/strong> and <strong>Helen Spencer-Oatey<\/strong>).<\/p>\n<p>Part 2, \u2018Intercultural perspectives on communicative practices and processes\u2019, describes the interconnectivity of cultures through communicative genres (<strong>Susanne G\u00fcnthner<\/strong>), workplace humour (<strong>Meredith Marra<\/strong> and <strong>Janet Holmes<\/strong>), rituals and style (<strong>Helga Kotthoff<\/strong>), meaning negotiation in lingua franca (<strong>Christiane Meierkord<\/strong>), and culture and interpreter behaviour (Helen Spencer-Oatey and <strong>Jianyu Xing<\/strong>).<\/p>\n<p>Some of the theoretical perspectives described in Parts 1 and 2 are applied to real life situations in the six papers in Part 3, \u2018Intercultural communication in different sectors of life\u2019, especially, healthcare settings (<strong>Celia Roberts<\/strong>), international business and management (<strong>Peter Franklin<\/strong>), Aboriginal legal contexts (<strong>Diana Eades<\/strong>), schools (<strong>Albert Scherr<\/strong>), media (<strong>Perry Hinton<\/strong>), and intimate relationships (<strong>Ingrid Piller<\/strong>).<\/p>\n<p>Part 4, \u2018Issues and debates\u2019, makes a general appraisal of discrimination in discourse (<strong>Martin Reisigl<\/strong>), power and dominance (<strong>Winfried Thielmann<\/strong>), communicating identity (<strong>Janet Spreckels<\/strong> and Helga Kotthoff), and communities of practice (<strong>Saskia Corde<\/strong>r and M<strong>iriam Meyerhoff<\/strong>).<\/p>\n<p>In the final section, Part 5, \u2018Assessing and developing intercultural competence\u2019, the focus is on the intercultural competence and its assessment (<strong>Elisabeth Prechtl<\/strong> and <strong>Anne Davidson Lund<\/strong>), intercultural training (Martina Rost-Roth), and workplace communication training (<strong>Jonathan Newton<\/strong>).<\/p>\n<p>In all, this volume accomplishes the major objective of demonstrating that\u00a0 applied linguistics uses linguistic knowledge for the purposes of solving real world problems. The multidisciplinary perspectives and the varied sectors of life in which they are applied bring the professional and non-professional, the researcher and student, and the linguist and non-linguist closer to determining the function of communication, interaction, and diversity in intercultural and multicultural contexts. Lastly, the inclusion of articles that focus on many countries indicates that monolingual national boundaries are giving way to multicultural structures. We must continue to adopt these types of interdisciplinary approaches in order to understand the changing realities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Handbook of intercultural communication. By Helga Kotthoff and Helen Spencer-Oatey. (Handbook of applied linguistics 7.) Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2009. Pp. xxi, 560. ISBN \u00a09783110214314. $59.95. Reviewed by Eric A. Anchimbe, University of Bayreuth, Germany This volume is the seventh of nine in the series Handbooks of applied linguistics. One of the aims of this [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1298"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1298"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1298\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1299,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1298\/revisions\/1299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}