Communicating with Strangers

While puttering around the last couple weeks on my extended vacation, I had a chance to read through a couple texts that had caught my eye.  I wanted to sort of ease myself back into writing by talking about one of these texts; Communicating with Strangers: An Approach to Intercultural Communication.The book is written by William B. Gudykynst and Young Yun Kim.  The second edition is dated 1992, so it is an older text.  I didn't have a chance to extensively look for a newer version but I did find a fourth edition from 2002.  Some of the material may be a bit dated. Regardless, I found it fascinating and I plan to read it through again while making more thorough notations.  If I can find a newer version, I would love to include this as a class text for any ESL "train the trainers" type classes.  

 

Although the text was written for a communications course, it serves well for anyone who communicates with people of different cultures; especially in group settings.  The book is divided into four parts.  Part One lays out some conceptual background towards communication in general.  The authors lay out their plan for the text and they discuss the "big picture" of what communication is all about.  They do a really good job of providing a defining structure for communication by laying out eight assumptions of communication.  They briefly discuss uncertainty and anxiety in communication, and they provide an overview of what the term culture means with regard to their plan for the book.  They also break down the concept of "the stranger". And,at the end of Part One they identify their model for the study of communicating with strangers.  This serves as a guide for the remainder of the book.

For sake of brevity, I won't try to over analyze the remainder of the book.  However, the authors take a very systematic to their study.  They begin Part Two by identifying and discussing influences that affect the overall process of communication with a stranger.  Part Three includes a chapter on nonverbal communication.  I found this to be very interesting as it discusses cues and emotion which are always confusing.  Part Three discusses the concepts of encoding and decoding as well, and includes a chapter on language usage.  Part Four speaks to interaction with strangers and details concepts of adapting communication, managing conflict, and dealing with romantic relationships.  I found the latter very interesting as my wife is a non-native English speaker and comes from an Asian cultural background.

The drawback to the book is that it is too old to accurately address communication via cellphone or through other digital means.  I do think many of the concepts transfer though.

In short, I think this is a great book for anyone looking to wards dealing with ESL students or perhaps evening contemplating a stint teach overseas. 

ISBN-13: 978-0071195379

ISBN-10: 0071195378