Communicating in the Mediterranean area: a matter of intercultural awareness

economic growth in the Mediterranean Region has strengthened the emphasis on interpersonal communication in an intercultural setting. Interpersonal communication is a form of communication that involves a small number of people who can interact with one another and who therefore have the ability both to adapt their messages specifically to the others and to obtain immediate interpretations from them. Within an intercultural setting, nonverbal and verbal communication emphasize the differences in cultures: the way we act and the things we say (and the ways we say such things) determine whether or not we belong to a certain culture. Intercultural communication is a central process in international business; in this paper I will try to formulate a practical model providing some principles useful to the development of skills and methods appropriate to doing business in the Mediterranean Region. The focus of this paper is on communication between Italians and their Greek and Algerian counterparts, giving a key to communication within the management of difference. Examples have been selected from research carried out in Greece and Algeria. The research is supported by theories and perspectives from a field where lines from social psychology, education, linguistics and applied linguistics cross.