Searching for Understanding in Cross-Cultural Communication

Abstract Speaking a foreign language implies more than knowing its vocabulary and grammar. As such, teachers of foreign languages should keep this in mind and consider also other aspects than the ones mentioned. Attention should be paid to pragmatics and cultural issues, among others. The present essay aims to highlight the importance of raising foreign language students’ awareness of national and international linguistic and cultural behaviours. It describes briefly the field of cross-cultural pragmatics, focusing on speech acts and their culture-sensitive features. Then, it turns to one of the most important types of speech acts, namely compliment exchanges. Taking into consideration the key role played in cross-cultural communication by the appropriateness of compliments and their expected answers, the article proposes several activities to do in class in order to (1) raise students’ awareness regarding the importance of compliments for successful communication, (2) present them the usual patterns, topics, and cultural particularities of compliments, (3) familiarise students with possible communication threats, and (4) provide them with possible strategies to answer compliments. The activities are not restricted to students of foreign languages in general but are recommended also to those studying specialised subjects in foreign languages, such as communication, translation and interpreting.

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PRAGMATICS IN EFL CLASSROOM: AVOIDING PRAGMATIC FAILURE IN CROSS-CULTURAL COMMUNICATION

ENGLISH EDUCATION JOURNAL OF ENGLISH TEACHING AND RESEARCH ◽

10.29407/jetar.v5i1.14310 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 5 (1) ◽

pp. 74-91

Author(s):

Nailul Author Restu Pamungkas ◽

Lutfina Tarita Wulandari

Keyword(s):

Foreign Language ◽

Language Learners ◽

Cross Cultural ◽

Cultural Communication ◽

Cross Cultural Communication ◽

Teaching Language ◽

Foreign Language Learners ◽

Pragmatic Awareness ◽

Pragmatic Failure ◽

Cultural Pragmatics

In teaching language along with its culture, teacher should take pragmatic aspects into consideration, since understanding pragmatics will help foreign language learners to avoid false interpretation which will cause misunderstanding in communication between speakers with different culture and social backgrounds. It is called as pragmatic failure which usually takes place in cross-cultural communication. Since pragmatics plays quite important role in communication, it is important for foreign language learners to have sensitivity of cross cultural pragmatics, which is commonly known as cross cultural or intercultural pragmatic awareness. However, teaching language along with culture seems to be problematic, since it is relatively difficult to choose which aspect(s) of culture to teach, what content to include, and to represent cultures implicitly under study which presents differences from the norm of students’ local culture. Therefore, this paper tries to explore the essential issues of spoken discourse, pragmatics, cross cultural pragmatics, pragmatic failure, pragmatic awareness, and its implication to pedagogy.

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Research on the infiltration of cross-cultural awareness in higher education stage in the background of globalization

E3S Web of Conferences ◽

10.1051/e3sconf/202125702075 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 257 ◽

pp. 02075

Author(s):

Xi Sun

Keyword(s):

International Students ◽

Communication Skills ◽

Cultural Awareness ◽

International Communication ◽

Cross Cultural ◽

Cultural Communication ◽

Cross Cultural Communication ◽

University Level ◽

The Cross ◽

The University

At the university level, the penetration of cross-cultural awareness is of great significance to talent training. This article uses empirical research to study the cross-cultural adaptability of international students, and on this basis, puts forward four suggestions for the penetration of cross-cultural awareness among university students. This is of great significance for strengthening the penetration of cross-cultural awareness during colleges and universities, cultivating and enhancing the cross-cultural communication skills of college students, and adapting to the trend of global international communication.

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Virtual Environments and Serious Games

Virtual Environments for Corporate Education - Advances in Higher Education and Professional Development ◽

10.4018/978-1-61520-619-3.ch015 ◽

2010 ◽

pp. 264-283

Author(s):

K. A. Barrett ◽

W. Lewis Johnson

Keyword(s):

Virtual Environments ◽

Serious Games ◽

Cross Cultural ◽

The Internet ◽

Cultural Communication ◽

Corporate Education ◽

Skill Sets ◽

Language And Culture ◽

Cross Cultural Communication ◽

Use Of The Internet

The Alelo language and culture game-based training has been successfully applied in the K-16 education, government, and military sectors. With increasing globalization of business and widespread use of the Internet, this same approach is applicable for corporate education. The chapter will suggest how virtual environments using cross-cultural simulations that include communicating with virtual avatars could be adopted for corporate use to effectively train and educate employees in cross-cultural communication, as well as other skill sets.

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Virtual Environments and Serious Games

Gaming and Simulations ◽

10.4018/978-1-60960-195-9.ch608 ◽

2011 ◽

pp. 1577-1596

Author(s):

K. A. Barrett ◽

W. Lewis Johnson

Keyword(s):

Virtual Environments ◽

Serious Games ◽

Cross Cultural ◽

The Internet ◽

Cultural Communication ◽

Corporate Education ◽

Skill Sets ◽

Language And Culture ◽

Cross Cultural Communication ◽

Use Of The Internet

The Alelo language and culture game-based training has been successfully applied in the K-16 education, government, and military sectors. With increasing globalization of business and widespread use of the Internet, this same approach is applicable for corporate education. The chapter will suggest how virtual environments using cross-cultural simulations that include communicating with virtual avatars could be adopted for corporate use to effectively train and educate employees in cross-cultural communication, as well as other skill sets.

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Report from the 13th International Conference on Researching and Applying Metaphor: "Metaphorical Creativity in a Multilingual World" (Hamar, Norway, 18–21 June 2020)

Acta Baltico-Slavica ◽

10.11649/abs.2446 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 45 ◽

Author(s):

Julia Ostanina-Olszewska

Keyword(s):

Applied Sciences ◽

Cross Cultural ◽

Cultural Communication ◽

Local Data ◽

Culture Studies ◽

Spoken Discourse ◽

International Conference ◽

Cross Cultural Communication ◽

University Of Applied Sciences ◽

Research Findings

Report from the 13th International Conference on Researching and Applying Metaphor: Metaphorical Creativity in a Multilingual World (Hamar, Norway, 18–21 June 2020)The RaAM 2020 conference on metaphor research was held online on 18–21 June 2020, hosted by the Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences (INN) in Hamar, Norway. The aim was to exchange ideas and research findings of historians, culture studies specialists, and cognitive linguists from all around the world. The theme of the event was Metaphorical Creativity in a Multilingual World, including the following areas: multimodal metaphor, metaphor in spoken discourse, metaphor in gesture, metaphor in cross-cultural communication, metaphor and translation, metaphor and film, metaphor in education. Among the large group of researchers, specialists from Lithuania and Latvia presented their findings in metaphor research based on local data (Lithuanian media, posters, advertisements and billboards, film translation into Lithuanian). Sprawozdanie z trzynastej międzynarodowej konferencji dotyczącej badania i zastosowania metafory pt. Metaphorical Creativity in a Multilingual World (Hamar, Norwegia, 18–21 czerwca 2020)Wirtualna konferencja naukowa RaAM 2020 poświęcona badaniom nad metaforą odbyła się w dniach 18–21 czerwca 2020 roku w Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences (INN) w Hamarze w Norwegii. Celem spotkania była wymiana myśli i wyników badań naukowych historyków, kulturoznawców i językoznawców kognitywnych z całego świata. Tematem konferencji była kreatywność metaforyczna w wielojęzycznym świecie i obejmował on następujące obszary: metafora multimodalna, metafora w dyskursie mówionym, metafora w gestach, metafora w komunikacji międzykulturowej, metafora i przekład, metafora i film, metafora w edukacji. Wśród licznych badaczy byli również specjaliści z Litwy i Łotwy, którzy zaprezentowali wyniki badań nad metaforą na podstawie danych ze źródeł krajowych (media litewskie, plakaty, reklamy i bilbordy, tłumaczenie filmów na język litewski).

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Sociocultural stereotypes in cross-cultural communication

Moscow State University Bulletin Series 18 Sociology and Political Science ◽

10.24290/1029-3736-2020-26-3-127-148 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 26 (3) ◽

pp. 127-148

Author(s):

G. V. Denissova

Keyword(s):

Human Mind ◽

Cross Cultural ◽

Basic Knowledge ◽

Cultural Communication ◽

Human Beings ◽

Positive Role ◽

Communicative Behavior ◽

Language And Culture ◽

Cross Cultural Communication ◽

The World

The relationship between language and culture has long been the subject of fierce debates among philosophers, linguists and social scientists. In spite of Chomsky’s theory about an innate biological basis for language and Steven Pinker’s concept of language instinct, language use, however, is social, so the idea of a biological language instinct seems to be controversial from the perspective of sociolinguistics. The concept of “linguistic worldview” refers to the cognitive function of language. Human beings have the ability to communicate with one another by means of a system of conventional signs, which refers to classes of phenomena in an extra-linguistic reality. Thus, a certain cognitive view of the world, its categorisation and conceptualisation of the identified phenomena are encoded in the human mind. People who identify themselves as members of a social group acquire common ways of viewing the world through their interactions with other members of that same group. Common attitudes, beliefs and values are reflected in the way all members of the group use language, i.e. what they choose to say or not to say and how they say it. The view of the world, established in a language, is not identical to any encyclopaedic knowledge of the world. The present paper is a general overview of stereotypes as part and parcel of the linguistic worldview that influence on cross-cultural communication. Most definitions characterize a stereotype as a schematic, standardized, constant, conventional, nationally dependant phenomenon and the last feature is especially important for cross-cultural communication. Some claim that stereotypes can cause problems in cross-cultural communication as they concentrate on generalized simplified perceptions about a certain nation. Others consider that stereotypes can play a positive role in cross-cultural communication since they help people to acquire basic knowledge about another nation. The ongoing cultural globalization, however, determines certain changes in the principles of interaction of different types of intertextual encyclopediae and reveals the necessity to reconsider the kind of cultural and sociological competence required nowadays. The author hypothesized that stereotypes of consciousness, being psychological phenomena, correlate with sociolinguistic phenomena — language cliches, linguistic specific words and expressions that manifest themselves in communication through different associations. The experiment conducted in Russia and in Italy among bilinguals clearly showed the dominance in the communicative behavior of native encyclopedic code that may be the main cause of misunderstanding in cross-icultural communication.

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THE CULTURAL CONTEXT IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHING.Martin Pütz (Ed.). Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1997. Pp. vii + 243. $51.95 paper.

Studies in Second Language Acquisition ◽

10.1017/s027226310024206x ◽

2000 ◽

Vol 22 (2) ◽

pp. 285-286

Author(s):

Dieter Wolff

Keyword(s):

Foreign Language ◽

Cultural Context ◽

Business Communication ◽

Foreign Language Teaching ◽

Cross Cultural ◽

Cultural Dimension ◽

Cultural Communication ◽

Frankfurt Am Main ◽

Cross Cultural Communication ◽

The University

This volume consists of a collection of 13 papers from the 23rd International L.A.U.D. conference on “The Cultural Context in Communication Across Languages” held at the University of Duisburg, Germany, in March, 1997. The conference was concerned with two different aspects of cross-cultural communication: business communication and the cultural dimension of foreign language teaching. The papers dealing with this second aspect are collected in the present volume.

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