Peaceful Conversations - Preventing Conflict in Communication : Across Cultures, in the Workplace, among Family and Friends

You never listen… It's your fault… They're all thieves… Get to the point… Don't be so abrupt... If these sound familiar as speaker or listener then Peaceful Conversations is sure to help. One of the greatest challenges facing society today is how to develop peaceful communication, empathy and mutual understanding. Entire communities are being stereotyped and targeted for hate. In the political arena, differences of opinion turn into violence. In the workplace, simple differences in communication style cause loss of clients and jobs. Children, parents, couples and friends sit around a dinner table or college dorm feeling that they are not heard or understood. Some become estranged. Even for the well-intended, automatic psychological roadblocks and cultural differences in speech styles obstruct our best efforts. We exclude others as a matter of course —in the boardroom, on the school playground, in three-party conversations. In the heat of emotional upset or a self-serving desire to win, the goal of our conversation often gets lost. Peaceful Conversations offers a wellness approach to communication in an attempt to head off conflict, before it begins. What makes up empathy, inclusion and effective communication? How can we overcome the psychological traps that cause us to blame and stereotype others? How can we apply respect for diversity to conversation practices? Through original research and findings of experts, tempered with entertaining anecdotes, Peaceful Conversations provides practical solutions proven to lift communication roadblocks and ease the way to peaceful communication from the bedroom to the boardroom, both here and abroad. The strategies will help in preventing squabbles at the dinner table, getting that raise at work, making a new friend in a local market abroad, or just becoming a more empathetic friend, lover, parent or child who can communicate criticism without decimating the listener. Soon available in Spanish as Conversaciones Pacíficas.

Dr. Gail L. Nemetz Robinson, a.k.a. Robinson-Stuart, (Ph.D., Stanford University), is Professor of Linguistics, San Diego State University, and was Founding Director of its Language Acquisition Resource Center as one of the nation's first three National Language Centers, funded through the U.S. Congress. Her international experience as former Language Research Specialist with SONY, Japan, and the New South Wales Dept. of Education, Australia, lend broad perspectives to communication dilemmas and solutions. Among her numerous books, articles and Multimedia Projects are her educational documentary, "From the Inside: Ethnographic Interview Techniques; Crosscultural Understanding, Prentice Hall Intl; "Culturally Diverse Speech Styles, in Interactive Language Teaching, Wilga Rivers (Ed.) Cambridge University Press, and "Second Culture Acquisition," Modern Language Journal.