Book Review: Gudykunst, W. B. (2005). Theorizing about intercultural communication. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Pp. 492

• Author: Adrian Holliday
• Date: 01 December 2007
• Published date: 01 December 2007
• DOI: 10.1177/1057567707310554
• Subject Matter: Articles

as a whole. Given that the sweep of the work deals largely with nationhood, political structures,

independent states, peoples, and their identities, there is sparse mention of Islam. In the discussion

of Libya there is reference to a growing pan-Arab sense of super-nation; however, of course no hint

of what was to come. Bosnia had not yet “happened,” Osama bin Laden was hardly known,and 9/11

was out there somewhere. A reality today, as we all know, is that militant Islamism can be found in

many parts of the world: it is not a phenomenon restricted to the Middle East. Its links go beyond

national borders and therefore beyond nationality.

Closer attention should have been given to the book’s production, and it would have been timely

to improve on the earlier edition. The contributing authors’ names are missing from the table of

contents, some of the page numbers included in the index are wrong, the terms in the index do not

adequately cover concepts used in the book, and occasionally the layout is inadequate (e.g., the bullet

points displayed in chapter 19).

What surprises this social psychologist is that there is nary a mention of the self, self-concept and

identity, the independent or individualistic self, the interdependent or collective self, or the role that

the state/culture/history/physical environment can play in determining fundamentally different kinds

of social selves or identities. There is nothing on major studies of ethnic identity development from

any part of the world, including the seminal findings of Kenneth and Mamie Clark that contributed

to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on desegregation (Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka,

Kansas). John Berry’s writings on immigration and the difficulties that migrants face in adapting to

a new country are nowhere to be seen. Michael Bond’s in-depth analyses of the social psychology

of Chinese culture and the connections of East–West psychologies with communication and under-

standing are missing. All of these topics were researched and widely disseminated before the 1990s,

and these authors are high profile.

So there is a book out there waiting to be written, dealing with similar topics, that could do more

to meld the political and social sciences, as well as be up-to-date.

Graham Vaughan

University of Auckland, New Zealand

Gudykunst, W. B. (2005). Theorizing about intercultural communication. Thousand Oaks,

CA: Sage. Pp. 492.

DOI: 10.1177/1057567707310554

Intercultural Communication provides an extensive compendium of current theory. The general

tone is one of detailed accounting for and categorization of the nature of intercultural communication

in a wide range of circumstances. Each chapter takes on the issue at hand with a considerable degree

of rigor that incorporates extensive literature reviews, theoretical backgrounds, and detailed expla-

nations of the development of each theoretical perspective.

The comprehensiveness of coverage is reflected by the seven parts of the book that deal with different

areas of theory in the following way. In the section on communication incorporating culture, Pearce

addresses the new challenges of globalization and modernization and provides in-depth study of how

groups with different cultural backgrounds can negotiate common ground and present different moral-

ities on important concepts such as terrorism. Philipsen et al., in the same section, make the important

contribution of showing how their work counters the critique of ignoring power in discourse and treat-

ing culture as overly deterministic.

In the section on cross-cultural variability in communication, Ting-Toomey deals with how the

universality of face saving and negotiation is realized in different cultural settings. Min-Sun Kim looks

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