Empirical studies of Japanese work ethics have tended to focus on male workers while neglecting women. In addition, work values in both Japan and the United States appear to be changing. More information is needed on the work values of American and Japanese female workers. A study was conducted to explore the work ethics of Japanese women and to…

This paper contains a critical examination of how the intercultural communication field has evolved and how its future development might be planned. A variety of text and trade books, conference papers, research studies, and annotated bibliographies are examined in an attempt to discern general propositions on intercultural communication. It is…

Members of minority groups in Germany were subjected to extreme forms of repression and in some cases extermination at the hands of the Nazis. Today, for many different reasons, members of minority groups are living in West Germany again. This paper presents the experience of minorities in West Germany since 1945 in light of the following factors:…

A verbal clash at an international seminar between Harold Rosen of the United Kingdom, who for years had called for broader views of cultural literacy, and Robert Pattison of the United States, who also had called for a similar broadening of the definition of literacy, illustrates how perceptions of a shared ideology can be surprisingly…

The current Australian scene is a good example of how American culture as portrayed in the mass media is reflected by a receptor national culture. Australia, sharing a similar history and a common language with the United States, has virtually no resistance to American culture. Some differences in national characteristics, such as the Australian…

Individuals in Arabian cultures, as in any other culture, are forced into different life experiences and therefore, deliberately and inadvertently, develop many different and unique cultural values and perspectives. When practicing therapy, these differences must be taken into account before maximum success can be achieved. This paper concentrates…

Cultural differences in homesickness were studied for 75 U.S. and 69 Turkish female first-year students attending a private U.S. liberal arts college for women in the southeast and a coeducational university in Istanbul, respectively. Some aspects of the experience of homesickness transcended cultural boundaries, but others were culture specific.…

The media's portrayal of the ideal body image has been shown to be a large determinant of one's body image perception. The desire to be excessively thin can be conceived of as an artifact of White-American culture largely due to the media's influence. This study looks at cultures that have had limited exposure to the American ideal and examines…

A study of American Indian practices and beliefs is useful as a counterpoint to the assumptions of western technological societies. American Indian culture includes a spiritual heritage that integrates both a tribe and individuals with the universe. It emphasizes harmony with all aspects of life and provides a model for redefining the…

This paper discusses an approach to multicultural education aimed at sensitizing teachers and teacher trainees to diverse cultural patterns. This approach, which is called "Functional Multicultural Education", uses literary writings to emphasize awareness of the levels of cultural differences, both overt and pervasive, that exist in a pluralistic…

To test the cross-cultural validity of uncertainty reduction theory, a study was conducted using students from South Korea and the United States who were chosen to represent high- and low-context cultures respectively. Uncertainty reduction theory is based upon the assumption that the primary concern of strangers upon meeting is one of uncertainty…

Images that nations have of each other become barriers to effective intercultural communication if they are overgeneralized, oversimplified, or unfairly exaggerated. The communication difficulties between Japan and the United States, for example, exemplify how images negatively influence the political and economic relations between two countries.…

The Fundamental Interpersonal Relations Orientation--Behavior (FIRO-B) was administered to 504 Japanese, 219 Australian, 73 Korean, and 397 United States college students to assess interpersonal needs in the four cultures. The FIRO-B provides ratings for inclusion, control, and affection needs on an "expressed" dimension to indicate the…

Economic analysis, with its explicit assumption that people are rational, is applied to the Japanese and American business cultures to illustrate how the approach is useful for understanding cultural differences. Specifically, differences in cooperative behavior among Japanese and American workers are examined. Economic analysis goes beyond simple…

This paper examines the problems of dispelling mistaken concepts about a country, or de-mythologizing students' ideas about a country's daily life, in foreign language instruction. Some conclusions about teaching culture are offered, and the teaching experiences which led to those conclusions are related. It is felt that much teaching about the…