An Application of Intercultural Communication Theories in the Spanish Workplace

This research project examines intercultural communication as seen in a Spanish workplace, by looking at the application of certain intercultural communication theories in the context of Grupo SM\u27s University of Dayton Publishing (UDP), an educational publishing company where people from Spain, Great Britain, Canada, and the United States co-create electronic and print learning materials for foreign language programs in the Spanish- speaking world. The communication theories I studied and later applied to UDP include William Gudykunst\u27s Anxiety-Uncertainty Management Theory, Stella Ting-Toomey\u27s Face-Negotiation Theory, Geert Hofstede\u27s Cultural Dimensions Theory, and Edward Hall\u27s theory of high context versus low context cultures and styles of communication. While interning for UDP, I conducted semi-structured interviews with my colleagues and then supplemented these interviews with ethnographic observations in order to determine whether the theories that I studied held up in a real-life atmosphere of cultural and linguistic bilingualism.https://ecommons.udayton.edu/stander_posters/1301/thumbnail.jp