236 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION, VOL. 46, NO. 3, SEPTEMBER 2003 Making Contact in International Virtual Offices: An Application of Symbolic Interactionism to Online Workplace Discourse Interface Index Terms—Cultural differences, intercultural communication, international virtual offices (IVOs), international workplace, minding, symbolic interactionism. —Feature by KIRK ST.AMANT, ASSOCIATE, IEEE Manuscript received February 6, 2003; revised May 5, 2003. The author is with the Institute of Technical and Scientific Communication, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, VA 22807 USA (email: stamankr@jmu.edu). IEEE DOI 10.1109/TPC.2003.816785 H. Blumer, Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice–Hall, 1969. At one time, the office was a physical place, and communicating with colleagues meant visiting their cubicles to discuss ideas or ask questions. Online media, however, have expanded the office to virtual environments in which one regularly interacts with co-workers from different cultures and countries [1, p. 306], [2, p. 79–80]. Additionally, factors of cost, speed, and demographics indicate that technical communicators will become increasingly involved in international virtual offices (IVOs) [3]. This online work environment brings with it factors that can create problems in crosscultural interactions. Technical communicators, therefore, need to understand how cultural communication expectations can affect discourse in IVOs. This article overviews one area—contact—in which cultural differences could cause online communication problems. The article also uses the theory of symbolic interactionism to examine these problems and to posit strategies for avoiding them. SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM: AN OVERVIEW SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM, as presented by Herbert Blumer in his book Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method, examines the relationship between thought and action in the communication process. The idea is that all communicative acts involve the transfer of meaning from one individual (presenter) to another (audience) [4]. In this system, presenters use mechanisms such as words to convey a particular meaning to an audience. Different individuals, however, have varying backgrounds, and no two individuals may associate the same meaning with the same word. Presenters, therefore, make assumptions about an audience’s expectations when planning the best way to convey meaning to that audience. As Blumer puts it, “One has to fit one’s own line of activity [communication behavior] in some manner to the [communicative] actions of others [the audience]” [4, p. 8]. These assumptions serve as mechanisms for testing different presentation strategies. According to symbolic interactionism, before a presenter conveys meaning in an actual discourse situation, he or she considers how the audience will respond to a particular method of conveying meaning (a message). That is, the presenter creates a mental model of how the audience will react to different strategies for presenting information. As Blumer explains, “To indicate to another what he is to do, one has to make the indication from the standpoint of that other” [4, p. 9]. This reflective process is often referred to as “minding” [5]. In minding, a presenter uses an imagined audience response to 0361-1434/03$17.00 © 2003 IEEE