Intercultural Communication: Pathways to Better Interactions was born from a desire to empower students to become competent, informed communicators who can recognize when they are faced with cultural difference in communication, have strategies for making sense of cultural difference, and work toward restoring coordinated interaction with cultural others for the purpose of completing specific tasks.
Practical in focus, grounded in social interaction, and written in a strong narrative style replete with concrete examples, author David Boromisza-Habashi deftly explores the primary challenge of effective intercultural communication in our globalized world: the ability to properly coordinate interactions to achieve shared meaning.
The vital importance of understanding cultural communication, and how it relates to being a responsible member of society, is stressed throughout. The weaving of scholarly work and everyday encounters highlights the role of inquiry as not just an academic endeavor but as an everyday practice. Strategies for coordinating intercultural encounters in the real world encourage readers to take action and recognize that this work and learning doesn't end when the course ends. Rather, it is a process, one that should be an ongoing part of their lives.
The thoroughly updated second edition expands on and clarifies the process and experience of building culture and a new chapter on identity and othering in intercultural communication.
The pragmatic, thought-provoking approach of this book is timely, useful, and relevant. Intercultural Communication: Pathways to Better Interactions is the ideal textbook for students of intercultural communication who wish to create and foster meaningful social interactions.
David Boromisza-Habashi (Ph.D., University of Massachusetts Amherst) is an associate professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Colorado Boulder. His research explores how communication as language use is shaped by the cultural context in which it occurs.
