Researchers into the use of communication strategies by second language learners are increasingly interested in relating their taxonomies to psychological processes. This article describes a study which does this by relating different communication strategy preferences to the holistic/analytic cognitive style dimension. Holistic students were found to use more communication strategies that were based on comparison, and analytic students were found to use more strategies that involved focusing on individual features of the target item. The statistical significance of these findings suggests that individual differences in patterns of communication strategy usage can be attributed, at least in part, to cognitive style.