This book explores the covert and overt creative potential of
misunderstanding. Viewed from the authors' perspective, misunderstanding
proves an elementary and unavoidable aspect of linguistic and cultural
communication that can have a surprisingly beneficial impact on social
relations and concomitantly stimulate the emergence of new cultural
forms. As the authors of the book prove, cross-cultural contact is
definitely a dynamic and asymmetric process rather than a static and
symmetric transfer of values from one culture to another.