The organisation of the book makes it a potential godsend for a first year lecturer who is introducing intercultural communication to a hypermediated student audience. The structure of each chapter reflects a pattern: a core topic is addressed, interspersed with a “Theory corner”, “Case study”, questions for discussion, references and further readings, offering plentiful options for in-depth exploration. This makes the book suited to selective application of one or more chapters to a unit of study.

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There is a risk, in a broad presentation of foundational theoretical perspectives on language, culture and communication that the reader is left with the task of critically resolving loose ends. The risk arises from the presentation of theoretical paradigms in isolation. For example, the reader is left with the implicit essentialism in Hofstede’s dimensions of culture in Chapter 5. While the inclusion of Hofstede is important in a foundational treatment of intercultural relations, there is the possibility that the student reader will adopt uncritically Hofstede's understanding of cultures through a set of dualisms.

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Notwithstanding, this book does offer a solid foundation for developing an understanding of intercultural communication, with a practical orientation that aims to equip the reader with skills for analysing and solving intercultural problems arising in local and global contexts.

Dr John Hannon
Lecturer at the Curriculum, Teaching and Learning Centre, La Trobe University, Melbourne

Introducing intercultural communication to Englishspeaking readers from potentially the entire world is a real challenge and necessitates selecting authors, theories, etc. to fill 300 pages.It also involves positioning oneself in this confusing jungle: the ‘intercultural’ has been theorized and researched in many different ways and I believe it is important to make students aware of this fact and to help them to situate their own work within a clear intercultural ‘paradigm’ to avoid confusion (for both novice researchers and their readers, that is).

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If I had to use this book with firstyear students, I would first train and educate my students to develop critical competences, present different ways of working on the ‘intercultural’ and then work through the book with them…