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Barnlund text: On cross-cultural communication
Below we identify a large number of clues which indicate what information or perspective the writer is considering but ultimately dismissing (we omit the original 1st paragraph). We also note some expressions which point positively to the view the writer favours: studying communicative style. What cannot be highlighted this way, is the way the 2 ‘ways of studying a culture’ to be dismissed are dealt with first, leaving the scene clear for an exploration of the favoured ‘way’. This is the given-new structure on a wider stage.
There are three ways in which people become aware of new cultures: through studying the language and talking to people who speak it; through study of the history of the economics, government, religion and aesthetics of society; and by examining the dynamics of culture itself - the ways in which people of a culture communicate with each other.

The study of language is, of course, essential to intercultural learning and communication; we have to learn to understand what is being said and to make ourselves understood. But, as many of us have seen, simply knowing a language does not mean we are always able to communicate with speakers of that language.

Studying the social structures, history, religion and abstract values of a culture is helpful to understanding the culture, but it provides a student with only an abstract understanding of a culture. Knowledge of the economic policy, history of art and literature of the United States, for example, is useful knowledge, but it will do very little to explain interaction of family members, forms of address and dating and marriage customs in America - very important aspects of any culture.

As the famous anthropologist Edward Hall has said, ‘Culture is communication’. In order to study and understand a culture, we must examine its communicative style: how members of a culture interact.

There are several things to look at when looking at communicative
style: .....

Note that there are not only connectors playing a role in this process of cession and dismissal. In the preliminary ‘classification’ paragraph, not only the sequence but the length of the propositions for the 3 alternatives indicates the writer’s preferences: short, short, long!