Page 263 - Handbooks of Applied Linguistics Communication Competence Language and Communication Problems Practical Solutions

Editors’ introduction 241

of universalism in media interpretation, but Hinton disputes this. He maintains
that media interpretation is a dynamic process in which people actively make
sense of media products in terms of their own cultural expectations.
The final chapter in this section, Chapter 17 by Piller, turns to a rather dif-
ferent topic: cross-cultural communication in intimate relationships. Focusing
on couples from different national and/or linguistic backgrounds, she starts by
illustrating how the number of international marriages has risen markedly in re-
cent decades, and she considers possible reasons for this. She singles out three
aspects of globalization that mediate cross-cultural intimate relationships: inter-
national mobility, international data flow (especially with the help of the Inter-
net) and international cultural exchange. Using data from ‘dating websites’,
she illustrates how people position themselves ideologically in terms of gender,
race and family, often pitching themselves against other people of their own
nationality.