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Communication To Reduce Embarrassment Between Individualistic And Collectivistic Cultures, Puvana Ganesan

Institute for the Humanities Theses

lntercultural communication is an inherent aspect of life, and "as we move or are driven toward a global village and increasingly frequent cultural contact, we need more than simply greater factual knowledge of each other. We need, more specifically, to identify what might be called the 'rulebooks of meaning' that distinguish one culture from another" (Barnlund, 1975, p. 7).

This thesis sought to discover and contribute valuable content to this "rulebook of meaning" through intercultural communication between high context, collectivistic cultures and low-context, individualistic cultures in the situation of experiencing embarrassment. One goal of this study was to determine if …