Looking Out the Window: Framing Different Verbal Styles

Taken-for-granted concepts, like low/high-context communication, direct/indirect verbal styles, and self-enhancement/humbling styles, in an intercultural communication class can present challenges for students to understand and recognize in their communication patterns. By interrupting the typical teaching and learning routines in a communication studies course by writing and analyzing poetry, it becomes possible to move students to see their internalized cultural frames while learning course concepts through this unfamiliar approach. Poetry provides students with a window through which they observe their communication patterns, exposing them in ways they often do not suspect. Additionally, the novelty of poetic writing helps the students engage in sentipensante pedagogy, a full sensory active learning process. In doing so, the students enhance their learning of these significant intercultural communication concepts while developing a deep awareness of their communication patterns. Keywords: verbal styles; poetry; intercultural communication; sentipensante pedagogy