Element of Politeness in Intercultural Communication: The Case Study of Japanese and Malaysian Tourists

The number of Japanese tourists visiting Malaysia has consistently ranked in the top ten over the last 20 years. Japan has been the country of choice for Malaysian tourists over the previous ten years. It is, therefore, crucial that tourism communication in the cross-cultural context between Malaysia and Japan is used as a reference to improve the cross-cultural communication skills of the tourism employees involved. This article discusses the external structure of Japanese conversation between native Japanese speakers and Malaysian tourist guides and native Malay speakers with Japanese tourist guides. This study is qualitative and uses the discourse analysis approach. A total of four conversation sessions in the form of Free Independent Travel (FIT) tourism were held in Malacca and Tokyo. The conversations were recorded, and the researchers also made notes throughout the conversation to see the sentence structures and non-linguistic elements to complete the data. The recording was then transcribed and encoded before being analysed. Only the conversations by tourist guides were analysed and included in the contents of this article as the focus of the study is more on the external form and politeness of the Japanese language used by Malaysian and Japanese tourist guides in demonstrating solidarity and similarities in the context of cross-cultural conversation. Data analysis shows many similarities in the selection of vocabulary and specific verb forms by Japanese and Malaysian tourist guides to show courtesy and friendliness in the conversation. This proves that Japanese language skills by Malaysian tourist guides are almost on par with Japanese tourist guides. Malaysian tourist guides also have a vast knowledge of the culture and nature of the Japanese language.

You Could Never Have a Third Place in a Sausage Factory

<p>In the face of climate crisis, we must take action to curb greenhouse gas emissions. One key strategy for doing this is to decrease travel by private vehicles through increasing the use of other travel modes like walking and cycling. However, children’s travel by these active travel modes has decreased significantly in many western countries over recent generations. One of the main factors associated with this decrease is the proliferation of attitudes that constrain children’s presence in public spaces, including those of their home neighbourhood. These attitudes can result in local parenting norms where children are habitually taken by car, even for short trips. Apart from the contribution to traffic these attitudes and behaviour have, there are also a number of other benefits from active and independent travel that children miss out on. As well as providing a good source of physical activity, the experience of actively travelling through their neighbourhood equips children with a good knowledge of their local environment and can support a child’s development towards being an active participant in their society. This thesis aims to investigate whether child-led placemaking -where participants work collaboratively to take action in addressing a problem in their local area- can change these attitudes to increase children’s use of public spaces and active travel. This research was conducted in partnership with a primary school. Data was collected during a co-researching process where 30 children designed and built places within the marginal public spaces of their neighbourhood. These places were designed to provide opportunities for the wider community to engage with these spaces and each other. This study found that this placemaking process increased children’s sense of connection to their neighbourhood and created opportunities for spontaneous informal social interaction. There was also some increase in independent and active travel, but this was mainly for boys.</p>

You Could Never Have a Third Place in a Sausage Factory

<p>In the face of climate crisis, we must take action to curb greenhouse gas emissions. One key strategy for doing this is to decrease travel by private vehicles through increasing the use of other travel modes like walking and cycling. However, children’s travel by these active travel modes has decreased significantly in many western countries over recent generations. One of the main factors associated with this decrease is the proliferation of attitudes that constrain children’s presence in public spaces, including those of their home neighbourhood. These attitudes can result in local parenting norms where children are habitually taken by car, even for short trips. Apart from the contribution to traffic these attitudes and behaviour have, there are also a number of other benefits from active and independent travel that children miss out on. As well as providing a good source of physical activity, the experience of actively travelling through their neighbourhood equips children with a good knowledge of their local environment and can support a child’s development towards being an active participant in their society. This thesis aims to investigate whether child-led placemaking -where participants work collaboratively to take action in addressing a problem in their local area- can change these attitudes to increase children’s use of public spaces and active travel. This research was conducted in partnership with a primary school. Data was collected during a co-researching process where 30 children designed and built places within the marginal public spaces of their neighbourhood. These places were designed to provide opportunities for the wider community to engage with these spaces and each other. This study found that this placemaking process increased children’s sense of connection to their neighbourhood and created opportunities for spontaneous informal social interaction. There was also some increase in independent and active travel, but this was mainly for boys.</p>

Understanding Chinese Independent Travel Market To South Korea: a Segmentation Approach

The rapid growth of the Chinese travel market has gained attention in the tourism industry. However, very few studies have been conducted to examine travel constraints that prevent Chinese outbound travelers from going somewhere quite accessible to their major destination from a multidestination perspective. Drawing upon the leisure constraint model (LCM), this study explored Chinese independent tourists' perceived travel constraints in selecting second-tier destinations in their destination choice and analyzed the market segments. A self-administered survey was collected from 393 Chinese travelers who did not visit Gyeonggi Province close to Seoul during their travels in South Korea. Based on the findings, four distinct groups were formed. The findings provide important insights into destinations that desire to attract more Chinese independent travelers.

Fully Autonomous Vehicles for People with Visual Impairment

A significant number of individuals in the United States report a disability that limits their ability to travel, including many people who are blind or visually impaired (BVI). The implications of restricted transportation result in negative impacts related to economic security, physical and mental health, and overall quality of life. Fully autonomous vehicles (FAVs) present a means to mitigate travel barriers for this population by providing new, safe, and independent travel opportunities. However, current policies governing interactions with the artificial intelligence (AI) ‘at the wheel’ of FAVs do not reflect the accessibility needs articulated by BVI people in the extant literature, failing to encourage use cases that would result in life changing mobility. By reviewing the legislative and policy efforts surrounding FAVs, we argue that the heart of this problem is due to a disjointed, laissez-faire approach to FAV accessibility that has yet to actualize the full benefits of this new transportation mode, not only for BVI people, but also for all users. We outline the necessity for a policy framework that guides the design of FAVs to include the concerns of BVI people and then propose legislative and design recommendations aimed to promote enhanced accessibility, transparency, and fairness during FAV travel.

Anxiety and spatial navigation in Williams syndrome and Down syndrome

Individuals with Down Syndrome (DS) and individuals with Williams syndrome (WS) present with poor navigation and elevated anxiety. This study is the first to investigate the relationship between these two characteristics, using a cross-syndrome comparison approach. Parent report questionnaires were employed to measure navigation competence and anxiety in N=55 individuals with WS and N=42 individuals with DS. Anxiety was measured using the Spence Children’s Anxiety Scale (SCAS) and a novel measure of navigation anxiety. Navigation was measured using the Santa Barbara Sense of Direction Scale (SBSOD) and a novel measure of navigation competence. Categorical questions were also asked regarding navigation behaviours and difficulties, independent travel and travel training received. Finally respondents answered open-ended questions regarding travel training needs and travel training received. The majority of individuals were not permitted to travel independently. A relationship between navigation anxiety and SBSOD scores (but not navigation competence) was observed for both groups. For the DS group only, separation anxiety was related to SBSOD and navigation scores. Additional impacts on independent navigating related to difficulties specific to road crossing situations, a higher tendency to ask for help in WS than in DS, as well as a strong impact of parental confidence for both groups. This first step to understanding the complex relationship between anxiety and navigation in WS and DS suggests that navigation training should take into account elevated anxiety in these groups, and thus should include training in dealing with unforeseen changes and anxiety management.

Fast Tomography: A greedy, heuristic, mesh size–independent methodology for local velocity reconstruction for AE waves in distance decaying environment in semi real-time

Tomographic reconstruction is an important step toward visualization, identification and quantification of local damage through of structural elements. We have developed mathematical guiding principles for passive wave tomography. We have then utilized these guiding principles to develop a novel technique: Fast Tomography for computational and information efficiency in tomographic reconstruction with passive stress waves in a distance decaying (sensing) environment. In fast tomography, (i) a node-independent travel path is developed for computational efficiency and (ii) Apriori ranking of AE events using power spectral entropy (PSE) of the AE waveform to distinguish waveforms with high information content for tomographic reconstruction for information efficiency are proposed. Fast Tomography was studied theoretically and experimentally to benchmark the proposed method in terms of computational and information efficiency. Our algorithm provides a significant (>100x) improvement of computational efficiency over an existing approach. And a PSE-based ranking system for AE events enhances information efficiency by 50% as compared to a non-ranked system. Finally, we have validated the application of our method with intractably generated AE events in an accelerated damage test of a steel fiber–reinforced concrete beam.

Towards Designing Mobile Apps for Independent Travel

Performing daily independent activities can be a challenge for people with Down's Syndrome (DS). This article investigates how to better support these activities with smart devices based on three cycles of a collaborative participatory action research (PAR) process. The first cycle involved semi-structured interviews ( n = 4 ) with parents and an online survey ( n = 39 ) with people with DS and their parents to explore barriers and opportunities for independent activities. This cycle highlighted that travelling independently was a common challenge among discussed barriers to independent activities for young adults with DS, an issue that smart devices have the potential to overcome. The second cycle involved seven focus group discussions ( n = 20 ) with parents ( n = 13 ) and young adults with DS ( n = 7 ) for gaining deeper insights into barriers to independent travel. We explored key barriers to independent travel and gathered design requirements for smartphone apps to overcome these barriers. In the third cycle, we designed a digital prototype based on participant recommendations and conducted seven focus group meetings ( n = 19 ) with caregivers ( n = 12 ) and individuals with DS ( n = 7 ). This final cycle reviewed the proposed digital prototype and validated the key barriers found in the second cycle. Overall, our studies confirmed that mobile technology can support people with DS in performing daily life activities that increase social inclusion. The studies resulted in identified barriers and requirements along with co-designed solutions for independent travel apps.

THE USE OF JAPANESE LANGUAGE DIRECTIVE SPEECH ACTS BY MALAYSIAN TOUR GUIDES

Background and Purpose: Cultural collisions in tourism communication can elicit obstacles or failure to achieve communication goals in social interactions with people of different backgrounds. A communication between cultures can present misunderstandings, vagueness in meanings and frustration due to the diverse social and cultural norms arising from various discourse systems. Among the several types of tourism communication, this study attempted to foreground delivering instructions, which is a frequently utilised speech act (SA) during tour sessions. More specifically, the study examined the use of SA in giving instructions, as expressed by tour guides throughout tour sessions. Delivering instructions is a straightforward mode of communication, even in intercultural context. Methodology: This study adopted a qualitative research method through the collection of data from audio and visual recordings, along with observational notes from interactions between tour guides and tourists particularly during the five Free Independent Travel (FIT) packages. Five Japanese speaking Malaysian tour guides and 17 Japanese tourists (JTs) were recruited for this study. Categorisation of directive speech act (DSA) by Searle (1979) and structure formation of SDA by Blum-Kulka (1989) were employed to analyse the subcategories of directive. Findings: Findings indicate that only three subcategories were used, namely the command, insist, and request. The findings also reveal that there were alignments and adjustments to the expressions or utterances when giving instructions. With the aim of effective intercultural communication, the tour guides were identified to have adapted to the tourist culture. The expression of instructions even in an intercultural context did not confer any contradiction of cultural norms, and were unlikely to cause conflict between the tour guides and the JTs. Contributions: This research is expected to serve as a foundation and reference for parties involved in the teaching and learning of the Japanese language, especially in the expression of SA for tourism communication. Keywords: Speech act, giving directive, Malaysian tourism, tourism communication, Malaysia tour guide. Cite as: Rashid, R. A., Mat, N. H., Kamaruzaman, A. S., Ibrahim, M. Y., Noh, C. H. C., & Matsutani, S. (2021). The descriptive analysis of Japanese language directive speech acts in intercultural context by Malaysian tour guides in tour sessions communication. Journal of Nusantara Studies, 6(2), 358-378. http://dx.doi.org/10.24200/jonus.vol6iss2pp358-378

Self-reported use of technology by orientation and mobility clients in Australia and Malaysia before the COVID-19 pandemic

Since the 1960s, many electronic travel aids have been developed for people with low vision or blindness to improve their independent travel skills, but uptake of these specialist devices has been limited. This study investigated what technologies orientation and mobility (O&M) clients in Australia and Malaysia have, use, like, and want to support their travel, to inform technology research and development. This two-phase mixed-methods study surveyed O&M clients face-to-face in Malaysia ( n = 9), and online in Australia ( n = 50). Participants managed safe walking using a human guide, long cane, or guide dog when their vision was insufficient to see hazards, but a smartphone is now a standard travel aid in both Australia and Malaysia. Participants relied on smartphone accessibility features and identified 108 apps they used for travel: for planning (e.g., public transport timetables), sourcing information in transit (e.g., GPS location and directions, finding a taxi), sensory conversion (e.g., camera-to-voice, voice-to-text, video-to-live description), social connections (e.g., phone, email, Facebook), food (e.g., finding eateries, ordering online), and entertainment (e.g., music, games). They wanted to ‘carry less junk’, and sought better accessibility features, consistency across platforms, and fast, reliable, real-time information that supports confident, non-visual travel, especially into unfamiliar places.