Page 38 - Reading Between the Sign Intercultural Communication for Sign Language Interpreters

The Study of Culture 23

The role of the anthropologist in preparing people for
service overseas is to open their eyes and sensitize them
to the subtle qualities of behavior—tone of voice, ges-
tures, space and time relationships—that so often build
up feelings of frustration and hostility in people with a
different culture. (89)
Hall broke new ground with the publication of his first book
on the subject of intercultural interaction, the first edition of The
Silent Language (1959), which laid the foundation for the estab-
lishment of this new field. He later became the head of FSI and
earned himself the sobriquet of Founding Father of Intercultural
Communication.
The other four threads that, together with Hall’s work at FSI,
led to the emergence of this fledgling field were the large num-
bers of business executives who were flung with their families
onto distant shores, the influx of foreign students descending upon
our college campuses, the establishment of the Peace Corps, and
the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s.
In the decades following World War II, large American com-
panies foresaw the potential benefits of establishing contacts, of-
fices, and factories in Europe and Asia in order to take advantage
of untapped markets. In their rush to achieve a competitive edge,
however, they did not routinely provide their executives with even
as much preparation for their interactions abroad as the early
diplomats had received. Often completely forgotten were the ad-
justment needs of the executives’ family members, who were
plopped down in a foreign country with virtually no preparation
and expected to carry on their lives for the next two or three years
without complaint. The inability of his family to adjust to the new
culture was often the impetus for the executive to abandon his
post earlier than expected. Just as often, however, the frustrations
stemmed from the executive himself as his expectations of
progress and achievement seemed to be thwarted almost daily.
Although this high failure rate resulted in the loss of great sums
of money invested in moving families abroad, these companies,
rather than noticing a pattern and investigating its source, at first
tended to ignore the problem, even going so far as to purposely
not record these “failures” in their employees’ files. After a while,
however, this denial was deemed counterproductive. Attention,
therefore, began to be paid to those business executives who were

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