Findlay M.S. Language and Communication. A cross-cultural encyclopedia

Santa-Barbara, Denver, Oxford: ABC-Clio, 1998. - 229 p.In this volume a cross-cultural perspective is taken, which helps to prevent what social scientists call an ethnocentric bias (a biased focus on one group, society, or tradition). In the past—and too often in the present—Western European scholars have tended to study their own people exclusively. From their studies false gen- eralizations regarding human behavior were often generated. In reading this volume the reader will be re- minded that Europeans are not exclusive or isolated from the rest of the world but are part of it. English, for example, is rapidly becoming a dominant international language. Yet the forms of English emerging in various parts of the world are being shaped and reshaped by many indigenous languages and forms of communication. Also, through the cross-cultural analysis of language and communicative systems, a more complete and detailed picture of how Western and non-Western traditions are influencing one another emerges. Creole or composite languages, for example, arise in culture contact situations where several fundamentally different cultural and linguistic groups are forced to live together. In many cases these creole languages are made up of European and non-European languages. By exploring how people from differing cultural back-grounds rely on traditional and emergent (newly acquired) cultural rules for social interaction when they attempt to communicate and by learning more about differences in language structures, we can help to ease many of the communication barriers that exist in the world today.