Cross-Cultural Dialogues (74 Brief Encounters with Cultural Difference)

In this update of his classic book, Craig Storti takes readers through 74 brief dialogues between an American and a person from another culture. Short as these dialougues are, they have buried within them at least one cultural breach which the reader is challenged to figure out. In the course of these conversations, readers come face to face with the fact that many of their most cherished instincts don't travel very well, and what is expected and understood in one culture may be shocking and incomprehensible in another - leading inevitably to all manner of misunderstandings, and these misunderstandings, in turn, often result in a wide variety of unpleasant emotional and practical consequences, from hurt feelings and missed opportunities to failed negotiations and lost profits, to anger and hostility. But, if we could stop assuming that other people are like us-if we could begin to believe that we don't necessarily understand our cultural counterparts in social or business settings, we would be well on our way to avoiding cultural misunderstandings and the problems they give rise to.

That, in a nutshell, is the purpose of this book: to alert readers to the misunderstandings lurking in the most common interactions we have with people from other cultures-and help us take the first and most important step down the road to cultural sensitivity.