As Jan Walls says in his foreword to this instructive and entertaining book, Andrew Horvat provides "a new way of looking at language . . . a guide to communicative competence based upon a holistic view wherein communication is seen as a combination of speech and behavior."
Competence in a foreign language, says Horvat, involves much more than knowing the proper words, and it takes place in contexts far other than that of the classroom. It takes place in the office, the home, the street itself. It involves not only what you say, but how you say it, how you dress, how you move, what you do, what you don't.
The author gives the example of his taking a visiting editor to meet a senior official in the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. All went well until the editor started playing with the official's business card. Holding it in one hand and his ball-point pen in the other, he nervously slipped the card back and forth between the pen and its clip.