East-West

Abstract

Expansion of contemporary trade and information exchange relations does not seem to alter significantly the multi-layered requirements of inter-cultural communication. In a very important sense of this term, many of individual decisions related to communication in a multi-cultural environment are inevitably narrowed to single-context world. Only to some extent, this unavoidable limitation of communication on the verge of heterogeneous cultures may be overridden by omnipresent stereotypes and ad hoc generalizations. On a more advanced level of communication, it is the stereotypes that may foster the instances of miscommunication and lead to serious misunderstandings. In the paper, a short account on stereotypes in inter-cultural communication is going to be presented, with some examples of actual instances of miscommunication in Japanese-Polish corporate environment. A proposition of a systematized approach towards the issues and intricacies of Japanese-Polish communication will follow.