Developing a curriculum designed to overcome intolerance: A conceptual approach

The paper examines the theoretical foundation of intolerance and explores potential topics for a curriculum designed to overcome intolerance. Previous research has shown that a negative self-image and low self-esteem seem to foster intolerance. Likewise, individuals with low levels of self-awareness tend to be more willing to express intolerance while paying less attention to the impression their behaviour and communication has among others. Individuals with a negative self-image and low self-esteem often resist change and tend to look for information that confirms and reinforces their existing viewpoints while ignoring information that contradicts their viewpoints. The research of Kruger and Dunning (1999), though, suggests that instruction in metacognition can overcome these negative characteristics. Especially if metacognitive training is coupled with multicultural education, cultural diversity training, and foreign language instruction as other research has revealed.

Deconstructing impoliteness in professional discourse: The social psychology of workplace mobbing. A cross-disciplinary contribution with conclusions for the intercultural workplace

Workplace politeness concerns the structural, interactional and individual level. Using the example of mobbing, it is illustrated how small acts of impoliteness can lead to the destruction a person psychologically and physically. Particularly, so-called downward mobbing is an increasing problem worldwide; most of the cases are orchestrated by superiors, the people subordinates depend on the most. Data clearly illustrate the social toxin created by up to 45 seemingly small actions in five areas of work life. These actions result in health hazards and ultimately loss of jobs. By example of workplace harassment, it is illustrated how systematic acts of impoliteness are used to manipulate a person's emotion and identity, to ensure anxiety-born solidarity in others while abusing power, with high costs for the target, the organisation, and society. The discussion gives way to considerations about intercultural cooperation at the workplace, showing similarities between subtle devaluations in intercultural communication called microaggression and what has been discussed as mobbing. Overall, impoliteness is deconstructed as a sign of degrading social bonds, security and health, thereby raising awareness of the importance of intercultural interaction without microaggression. The practical value of linguistic impoliteness research and its connection to work psychology becomes apparent.

Fostering civility and politeness awareness in professional discourse: Critical genre analysis of course books in professional communication

This paper aims to analyse a set of communicative events within the service encounter genre in tourism and leisure interdiscursive domains as displayed in course books on professional communication in English (commonly pointing to ESP). These supposedly replicate interaction in real life settings. Therefore, it is relevant to uncover the ways authentic interactions can be interpreted in the pedagogical setting of workplace conversation from a discursive and pragmatic perspective. More specifically, this empirical and exploratory study discusses ways of improving rapport management skills in interpersonal and intercultural communication, in general, and in professional interaction, in particular, in a selection of excerpts on greeting / asking for info exchanges. The study uncovers participants’ possible co-constructions of civility and politeness strategies in naturally occurring classroom discourse supported by course materials in English for glocal communication across segments in the tourism domain as object of this study.

Impoliteness on the political stage: The case of the 2019 final Macedonian presidential debate

Electoral debates are a win-lose game in which the stakes for the political contenders are extremely high. The antagonistic nature of these encounters very frequently results in impoliteness or face aggravating moves with which the debaters aim to hurt the opponent’s positive or negative face. The aim of this research is to investigate the impoliteness strategies employed by politicians during electoral debates. Garcia-Pastor’s (2008) positive-face and negative-face impoliteness strategies are taken as a starting point in the analysis at hand. The final electoral debate of the 2019 presidential elections in the Republic of North Macedonia is used as a data source for this research, which is based on several different hypotheses and is both qualitatively and quantitative oriented. The findings of the research are in line with the insights gained from previous studies, which, more or less, suggests that Macedonian politicians follow the mainstream “rules” when it comes to using impoliteness in political debates.

Media framing of the Macedonia name change issue: The use of fear-inducing language strategies

It is considered a huge socio-political step for a country to change its name, especially under pressure imposed by another country. In January 2019, Macedonia officially became the Republic of North Macedonia after a three-decade long dispute with its neighbouring country Greece. Macedonian citizens have long suffered the consequences of this dispute and have often expressed their dissatisfaction on the social media. However, the media played a crucial role in shaping their opinions regarding this situation. This paper attempts to present how pro- and anti-government oriented media sources framed the issue and influenced the citizens’ perceptions of it. More precisely, it conducts a critical discourse analysis of 30 online newspaper articles, written during three specific periods on a timeline from January 2018 to February 2019, before, during and after the name change. The analysis sets out to identify lexical, pragmatic and discursive devices acting as potential fear triggers through which threat frames are being constructed. The results showed that both pro- and anti- government media sources appeal mostly to people’s emotions by generating fear related to a hypothetical future – in the case of the former it instigated fear of what might happen with the future of the country provided the name was not changed, while in the case of the latter, if the name was changed.

Deconstructing the linguacultural underpinnings of tolerance: Anglo-Slavonic perspectives

The cross-cultural study of the words defining social values are of particular importance in interdisciplinary contexts, as the knowledge of their culture-specific semantic as well as discursive characteristics contributes to a better understanding of how people think and act in a society. The paper focuses on the English lexeme tolerance and its translation equivalents in Russian and Serbian. It aims to specify linguacultural characterizations of the notion of tolerance in British, Russian and Serbian cultures. The data were taken from dictionaries, British National Corpus (BNC), Russian National Corpus (RNC), Corpus of Contemporary Serbian (SrpKor), as well as media and Internet resources. The combined methodology (pragma-semantic, discourse and lingua-cultural analysis) enabled us to reveal that the dictionary equivalents of the English lexeme tolerance are not complete, but partial. The findings show that in Russian and Serbian the words of Latin etymology tolerantnost’ and tolerancija seem to invoke both positive and negative attitudes, reflecting cultural norms and values. The paper contributes to the understanding of tolerance in the observed linguacultures and confirms that it is important to consider interdisciplinary approaches to language studies.

Developing Pragmatic Competence in English Academic Discussions: An EAP Classroom Investigation

This qualitative classroom study investigated the development of pragmatic competence in academic discussions through content analysis of student reflective writing. The aims of the study were: to understand the greatest challenges that students faced during the learning process, the causes of those challenges, and the most successful strategies that students employed to overcome the challenges. In addition, the analysis investigated other significant themes in the reflective writing that related to the students’ experiences in developing their pragmatic competence in discussions. Five advanced English for Academic Purposes (EAP) students at a Sino-US institution in China participated over the course of a semester. Results showed that common challenges included: hesitation resulting in missed opportunities to speak, lack of clarity when speaking, inability to repair communication breakdowns, and difficulty with listening comprehension. Self-reflection allowed the learners to understand the various reasons for the challenges they faced and to develop appropriate pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic strategies for coping with them. It also enabled the instructor to make suggestions suited to learners’ specific needs. In addition to revealing specific challenges, causes, and strategies that students employed, themes that emerged through content analysis included the impact of students’ emotional lives on their learning and performance, as well as the value of authentic communication in the development of pragmatic competence for academic discussions. This exploratory classroom investigation provides suggestions for teaching pragmatic competence in academic discussions and for additional classroom explorations that empower learners to develop autonomy.

Assessing the L2 pragmatic awareness of non-native EFL teacher candidates: Is spotting a problem enough?

The assessment of pragmatic skills in a foreign or second language (L2) is usually investigated with regard to language learners, but rarely with regard to non-native language instructors, who are simultaneously teachers and (advanced) learners of the L2. With regard to English as the target language, this is a true research gap, as nonnative English-speaking teachers (non-NESTs) constitute the majority of English teachers world-wide (Kamhi-Stein 2016). Addressing this research gap, this paper presents a modified replication of Bardovi-Harlig and Dörnyei’s (1998) renowned study on grammatical vs. pragmatic awareness, carried out with non-NEST candidates. While the original study asked the participants for a global indication of (in)appropriateness/ (in)correctness and to rate its severity, the participants in the present study were asked to identify the nature of the violation and to suggest a repair. Inspired by Pfingsthorn and Flöck (2017), the data was analyzed by means of Signal Detection Theory with regard to Hits, Misses, False Alarms and Correct Rejections to gain more detailed insights into the participants’ metalinguistic perceptions. In addition, the study investigated the rate of successful repairs, showing that correct problem identification cannot necessarily be equated with adequate repair abilities. Implications for research, language teaching and language teacher education are derived.