ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a story passed on at various meetings associated with intercultural trainer, the Sally. In the opening narrative Sally had certain expectations for how requests should be made and what to expect when one was made. However, the people she interacted with from the Wolof community had a somewhat different expectation for how to make successful requests. The interpretive perspective is rooted in part in early ethnographic work done by Dell Hymes, who was interested in understanding the structured, distinctive ways of speaking that particular communities had developed to make sense of their lives. Two major perspectives have developed within the field of intercultural communication: interpretive and critical. Three hazards of studying intercultural communication were identified: oversimplification, overgeneralization, and exaggeration. These hazards do not mean that one avoid noting general tendencies or trying to identify and understand differences.
