An-Najah Staff

There is no denying that part of the cultural war that is taking place these days can be attributed to the misconceptions that people from diverse cultures have formulated about one another. There is also no denying that such misconceptions are due to linguistic and cultural differences. In this paper, I attempt. to point out some of the linguistic and cultural constraints that have been responsible for the breakdown of inter/cross-cultural communication with the Arab world. Research on Arabic-speech patterns indicate that Arabic ­speaking individuals have a tendency to use 'certain rhetorical devices such .as exaggeration, repetition, and assertion which render their speech patterns indirect and implicit:. While the findings 'of the studies that I have drawn on are sound and convincing from an anthropological and cultural standpoint of view, there are some important inadequacies about the methodologies, which these studies have used to define the causes of indirectness in a particular culture (see, Hall, 1959, ,1976,1982; Patai, 1973; Levine, 1985; Cohen, 1987; Dodd, 1992)