The significant increase of Japanese students studying in the United States suggests an increase in interactions with Americans. However, it does not mean that Japanese are aware of intercultural communication. They may experience stress in their interactions and their acculturative process because of cultural differences. They also may try to cope with the stress in their own way. Their stress and coping strategies may affect their academic performance, which is the most important aspect in their student life. The purpose of this study is to examine whether there is any relationship among communication stressors, coping strategies, perceived academic self-efficacy, self-statement of grade point average (GPA), and biodemographic variables. The questionnaire was handed to 100 Japanese university students studying in Portland, Oregon and Vancouver, Washington.

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By extending the study of international trade to include cultural factors, this paper demonstrates that culture has a direct impact on Canadian and US bilateral trade flows with the world. Various cultural factors of Canadian and US's trading partners were examined through a gravity model to determine their impact on 1990 trade flows. The gravity model explains trade between two countries in terms of the economic size of the trading partners and the distance between them. The following cultural factors were added to this base gravity model to test their explanatory power: the stock of immigrants from the trading partner in Canada, whether the trading partner has English or French as a principal language, and each of four cultural dimensions as they were described by Geert Hofstede in his study of national differences in work related values. This study has established that culture does have a significant impact on Canadian and US trade. Inirnigration, English, Hofstede's Individualism/Collectivism, and Hofstede's Uncertainty Avoidance were each found to have significant regression coefficients. Countries with immigrants in Canada trade more with Canada, and English-speaking countries trade more with both Canada and the US. Individualism / Collectivism measures how members of a society relate to one another. It appears that collectivist societies trade more with Canada and the US. Uncertainty Avoidance measures how a society and its members deal with risk and it appears that countries with lower Uncertainty Avoidance ratings (i.e. less risk averse), trade more with Canada and the US. For the business person trying to compete internationally, cultural factors have been a concern for many years. However, this study suggests a prioritization of the cultural determinants of trade. With a greater understanding of the mechanisms through which culture impacts trade, managers can be more effective in the global marketplace.

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Thesis (M.A.)--Baylor University, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 95-100).

By extending the study of international trade to include cultural factors, this paper demonstrates that culture has a direct impact on Canadian and US bilateral trade flows with the world. Various cultural factors of Canadian and US's trading partners were examined through a gravity model to determine their impact on 1990 trade flows. The gravity model explains trade between two countries in terms of the economic size of the trading partners and the distance between them. The following cultural factors were added to this base gravity model to test their explanatory power: the stock of immigrants from the trading partner in Canada, whether the trading partner has English or French as a principal language, and each of four cultural dimensions as they were described by Geert Hofstede in his study of national differences in work related values. This study has established that culture does have a significant impact on Canadian and US trade. Inirnigration, English, Hofstede's Individualism/Collectivism, and Hofstede's Uncertainty Avoidance were each found to have significant regression coefficients. Countries with immigrants in Canada trade more with Canada, and English-speaking countries trade more with both Canada and the US. Individualism / Collectivism measures how members of a society relate to one another. It appears that collectivist societies trade more with Canada and the US. Uncertainty Avoidance measures how a society and its members deal with risk and it appears that countries with lower Uncertainty Avoidance ratings (i.e. less risk averse), trade more with Canada and the US. For the business person trying to compete internationally, cultural factors have been a concern for many years. However, this study suggests a prioritization of the cultural determinants of trade. With a greater understanding of the mechanisms through which culture impacts trade, managers can be more effective in the global marketplace. / Business, Sauder School of / Graduate

The field of intercultural communication has recently been introduced to Japan from the United States. The theories and concepts of this field have been developed based on Western social sciences, and they are likely to be culture-bound. This thesis investigates the possibility that modifying Western ideas in the field of intercultural communication would make the study of this subject more effective for Japanese learners.

Many Deaf people today consider themselves a linguistic minority with a culture distinct from the mainstream hearing society. This is in large part because they communicate through an independent language——American Sign Language (ASL). However, two hundreds years ago, sign language was a “common language” for communication between hearing and deaf people within the institutional framework of “manualism.” Manualism is a pedagogical system of sign language introduced mainly from France in order to buttress the campaign for deaf education in the early-19th-century America. In 1817, a hearing man Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet (1787-1851) and a deaf Frenchman Laurent Clerc (1785-1869) co-founded the first residential school for the deaf in Hartford, Connecticut. These early manualists shaped sign language within the evangelical framework of “moral government.” They believed that the divine origin of signs would lead the spiritual redemption of people who could not hear. Inside manual institutions, the religiously defined practice of signing, which claimed to transform the “heathen deaf” into being the “signing Christian,” enabled the process of assimilation into a shared “signing community.” The rapid expansion of manual institutions hence fostered a strong and separate deaf culture that continues to influence today’s deaf communities in the United States. However, social reformers in the mid-nineteenth century who advocated “oralism” perceived manualism as a threat to social integration. “Oralists” pursued a different model of deaf education in the 1860s, campaigning against sign language and hoping to replace it entirely with the skills in lip-reading and speech. The exploration of this tension leads to important questions: Were people who could not hear “(dis)abled” in the religious context of the early United States? In what ways did the manual institutions train students to become “able-bodied” citizens? How did this religiously framed pedagogy come to terms with the “hearing line” in the mid 19th century? In answering these questions, this dissertation analyzes the early history of manual education in relation to the formation and diffusion of religious governmentality, a topic that continues to influence deaf culture to this day. / published_or_final_version / Modern Languages and Cultures / Master / Master of Philosophy

This study is an empirical analysis of communication styles in Japan and the United States. In particular, the study deals with communication styles in Japanese and American television commercials as a reflection of human communication styles in the two countries.

This thesis is a review of relevant literature on business negotiation between Japanese and American and an analysis of cultural differences in negotiation from an intercultural perspective. The following four key issues are explored and analyzed with intercultural communication concepts: 1. major differences in approaches to the process of business negotiation between the United States and Japan; 2. potential friction between Japanese and Americans in business negotiation that is attributable to Japanese and American cultural differences; 3. the applicability and usefulness of an intercultural perspective in enhancing business negotiation skills; and 4. main factors affecting the use of an intercultural perspective in cross-cultural business negotiation and the degree to which they are manifested in the u.s.-Japan business negotiations.