"Was That My Misunderstanding?": Managing Miscommunication and Problematic Talk at Work

<p>Where workplace communication is ineffective or problematic there will often be negative outcomes for individuals, teams or organisations as a whole. This thesis examines these issues using data from a variety of New Zealand workplaces, including most importantly an in depth case study of problematic communication in a multicultural factory team. The thesis provides an illustrative analysis of the communication issues that typically arise in these workplaces and the discursive strategies used to manage miscommunication and problematic talk, as well as exploring some of the analytic and theoretical issues which emerge when we attempt to identify instances of miscommunication and diagnose how they came about. The practical implications for workplaces are also discussed. After evaluating previous approaches, the author proposes a comprehensive working model for analysing miscommunication or problematic discourse in workplace interaction which is based on a flexible multi-layered theoretical and methodological framework. The analytic approach taken is to apply the tools of sociolinguistic discourse analysis to data from actual interactions along with associated ethnographic information, in conjunction with a critical analysis of organisational communication practices and processes as seen from a community of practice perspective. A multi-dimensional intertextual approach such as this allows analysis of miscommunication and problematic talk at a number of different levels in order to relate what is happening sequentially and 'on-line' during particular interactions or sequences of interaction to factors such as social identity, group membership, team culture and other aspects of the wider communicative and socio-cultural context.</p>

"Was That My Misunderstanding?": Managing Miscommunication and Problematic Talk at Work

<p>Where workplace communication is ineffective or problematic there will often be negative outcomes for individuals, teams or organisations as a whole. This thesis examines these issues using data from a variety of New Zealand workplaces, including most importantly an in depth case study of problematic communication in a multicultural factory team. The thesis provides an illustrative analysis of the communication issues that typically arise in these workplaces and the discursive strategies used to manage miscommunication and problematic talk, as well as exploring some of the analytic and theoretical issues which emerge when we attempt to identify instances of miscommunication and diagnose how they came about. The practical implications for workplaces are also discussed. After evaluating previous approaches, the author proposes a comprehensive working model for analysing miscommunication or problematic discourse in workplace interaction which is based on a flexible multi-layered theoretical and methodological framework. The analytic approach taken is to apply the tools of sociolinguistic discourse analysis to data from actual interactions along with associated ethnographic information, in conjunction with a critical analysis of organisational communication practices and processes as seen from a community of practice perspective. A multi-dimensional intertextual approach such as this allows analysis of miscommunication and problematic talk at a number of different levels in order to relate what is happening sequentially and 'on-line' during particular interactions or sequences of interaction to factors such as social identity, group membership, team culture and other aspects of the wider communicative and socio-cultural context.</p>

Refugees or Illegal Immigrants: The Problem of the Group in Refugee Protection

ABSTRACT This research excavates the case of Jewish refugees in Cyprus between 1946 and 1948. I argue that this case is formative of the development not just of the refugee, but—perhaps more interestingly—of the concept of “illegal immigration,” which relies on the constructed impossibility of group-based refugee protection. I contend that there is a paradox residing at the heart of the 1951 Refugee Convention definition of a refugee that produces the refugee as a singular victim while supporting the very conditions that create that victimhood—that is, persecution targeted at an identity group where the persecution is motivated by the shared identity (defined in the Refugee Convention by race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion). As the architecture of international human rights was built, the refugee definition was drafted in a way that embedded group-based exclusion in the design of the definition. I exemplify this through the case of Jewish refugees attempting to reach British Mandate Palestine in the 1940s, who were intercepted and detained in Cyprus. The case is worthy of attention because it exposes the absence of group protection in the refugee definition and the effect of that absence: a group is constituted as a threat and cannot be defined collectively as refugees. Instead, they become “illegal immigrants.” This case study of Jewish detention in Cyprus provides a key empirical example of oppression residing inside a historically liberal movement and in the resulting conditions of refugee protection.

On Fuzzy Fundamental Groups and Fuzzy Folding of Fuzzy Minkowski Space

In this paper, we studied the relations between new types of fuzzy retractions, fuzzy foldings, and fuzzy deformation retractions, on fuzzy fundamental groups of the fuzzy Minkowski space M ˜ 4 . These geometrical transformations are used to give a combinatorial characterization of the fundamental groups of fuzzy submanifolds on M ˜ 4 . Then, the fuzzy fundamental groups of the fuzzy geodesics and the limit fuzzy foldings of M ˜ 4 are presented and obtained. Finally, we proved a sequence of theorems concerning the isomorphism between the fuzzy fundamental group and the fuzzy identity group.

Framing the societal value of community interpreting

After presenting the concept of communicative autonomy and how it can help professionals with ethical decision-making (micro), I draw on two different visual examples to analyze framing strategies for the profession by society at large (macro). One strategy relies on experiences of identity and belonging, while the other moves away from considerations of identity. I discuss what their respective advantages and disadvantages might be. I connect these strategies to the concept of “identity politics” and its counterpart “identity override”. For the final step of this article, I resort to some examples of groups that have made progress in the political agenda with their civil rights claims. It helps me make the case for a bi-faceted strategy for the advancement of community interpreting that both leverages identity group dynamics and is simultaneously able to appeal to the overarching concept of communicative autonomy.

The Migrant Other: Exclusion without Nationalism?

Migrants are an easy, visible Other, seeming to fall neatly into the us-versus-them framework of nationalism. Nevertheless, much of the scholarly approach to migrant identity, with the partial exception of a largely separate literature on citizenship, has eschewed overt ties to nationalism studies. When us-versus-them language is used in relation to nationalism, the focus or nodal point is the identity of the seemingly homogenous “us” of the nation. However, when migrants are othered, the focus is not always the nation, and while othering migrants always creates exclusion, it is not always exclusion from a nation or identity group. This state of the field article analyzes the literature on populism, securitization, biopolitics, and other critical scholarship related to the issue of othering migrants. In each of these bodies of work, different sets of “us” are set against migrants, some of which evoke identity and others of which do not, elucidating the links (or the lack thereof) of each approach to the study of nationalism. In each of these frameworks, the migrant Other comes up against a different frame of reference, leaving migrants themselves (or any sense of migrant identity) somewhat lost amid the analytical frameworks, at continual risk of being re-othered as victims of circumstance without agency.

A Red Flag for Participation: The Influence of Chinese Mainlandization on Political Behavior in Hong Kong

This article assesses how contemporary forms of regional assimilation by centralizing states affect the political behavior of threatened social groups within peripheral polities. Recent mainlandization, “the blurring of the physical, social, cultural and psychological border between Mainland China and Hong Kong,” has constrained the region’s autonomy. Here, we consider the political consequences of Chinese mainlandization. How does mainlandization affect the likelihood of political participation in Hong Kong? Drawing and expanding upon theories of social identity, we argue that mainlandization increases the political involvement among those who make the choice to identify as Hong Konger because this is the group under threat by China’s recent actions. Hong Kongers politically mobilize as a response to mainlandization to combat Chinese threat and to improve the status of their identity group, of which their own sense of selves is also tied to. Using an original survey experiment, we find support for our theory. Hong Kongers are influenced by mainlandization to attend contentious protests, recruit others to attend such rallies, and sign pro-democratic petitions. We conclude by noting implications for China’s increasing attempt to assimilate this electoral autocracy and discuss how our research informs Hong Kong political activism in 2019 and 2020.