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We can learn to speak other languages, but do we truly understand what we are saying? How much detail should we offer when someone asks how we are? How close should we stand to our conversational partners? Is an invitation genuine or just pro forma? So much of communication depends on culture and context. In Getting Through, Roger Kreuz and Richard Roberts offer a guide to understanding and being understood in different cultures. Drawing on research from psychology, linguistics, sociology, and other fields, as well as personal experience, anecdotes, and popular culture, Kreuz and Roberts describe cross-cultural communication in terms of pragmatics - exploring how language is used and not just what words mean.

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"What a pleasure and surprise to read this wonderfully accessible volume on cross-cultural language use! The fact is that in this increasingly globalized and transnational world, nothing could be more important than knowing - more than what to say and when - what NOT to say and why not. The authors write about timely issues from the perspectives of their own cross-cultural and cross-linguistic lived histories." - Diana Boxer, Professor and Distinguished Teaching Scholar, Department of Linguistics, University of Florida; author of The Lost Art of the Good Schmooze

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Roger Kreuz is Professor of Psychology and Associate Dean in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Memphis. Richard Roberts, a Foreign Service Officer in the US Department of State, taught psychology in Europe and Asia with the University of Maryland University College.

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