Example:"I was working as a part time support staff member at a super market chain. My work was to assist the regular staff members in different chores. I was new and I did not know about many aspects of the work. One day a senior manager came to our floor and instructed me to arrange the shelves according to a new marketing campaign. I was new and did not understood what he meant but as he was a very senior manager hence I was shy to tell that I did not understood what he meant. As result I made a wrong arrangement. Here in this case the manager assumed that I was experienced employee and knew about the new campaign and about arranging the shelves. But this was exactly the opposite. Hence it can be understood that one of the major cause of miscommunication is assumption and communications should not be made on assumption. In this case if the manager would have enquired about my experience and qualification he would not have asked me to do this job or would have provided with proper instructions and received a positive response."

Take a look at the long definition of intercultural communication that the book provides: "Intercultural communication is the symbolic exchange process whereby individuals from two (or more) different cultural communities attempt to negotiate shared meaning in an interactive situation within an embedded societal system." Using the book's definition of these terms, which part(s) of this process broke down in the example above? Was it the symbolic exchange process? Something about the negotiated shared meaning? The interactive situation? The embedded societal system? Again, use the book's explanations of these terms to guide you.