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This paper presents an ethnographic account of how cultural otherness is discursively constructed in Belgian first instance criminal courtrooms, based on field observations and on the analysis of transcribed video-recordings. It contrasts unproblematic culturalizations of deviant conduct, in which mentioning the defendants’ cultural identity does not interfere with the smooth progression of discourse, with cases in which the foregrounding of their identity as a minority-member results in the ‘silencing’ of the defendants. The identity of the participant initiating culturalization as well as the difference between the expert and the lay perspective on the criminal process prove determining factors here: in the case of ‘unproblematic’ culturalizations, cultural otherness is emphasized by the defense attorney as part of an extenuation strategy, while in the ‘problematic’ cases, it is the defendants themselves who stress the relevance of their being a cultural other. The analysis argues that the judiciary's symbolic self-representation as ‘empty,’ i.e., as not co-substantial with any social body in particular, lies at the heart of this differential treatment.

This paper examines naturally-occurring university seminar interactions 1 in Australia and reports an analysis of the politeness orientation of participants with Japanese and Australian backgrounds in relation to speech and silence. Although the silence of students from Asia, attending universities in countries such as the US, UK and Australia, has been discussed extensively in the literature, empirical studies of silence in classroom settings are still scarce. This paper aims to explain such phenomena, using participant interviews, classroom observation and detailed discourse analysis of classroom interaction. While silence was commonly used by Japanese students to save face, verbal strategies were more common among Australian students. The extensive use of face-saving silences by Japanese students was found to be negatively evaluated by Australian lecturers whose response strategies, while meant to avoid imposition on Japanese students, also resulted in lack of rapport. However, the study also finds that silence may be negotiated when shifts occur in the participants’ perceptions about the footing of their own and/or their interactants.

Over the past several decades, extensive reading research has shown the beneficial role that contextualization markers play in written text comprehension. However, far less is known about their effects on L2 spoken text comprehension. The few studies concerning the effects of markers on L2 listening comprehension failed to examine their role through a qualitative analysis. To fill this gap, the current study attempts to provide a qualitative analysis of the role of markers in L2 listening comprehension. More specifically, the analysis focuses on how L2 learners misunderstood the text when the markers were absent in the academic monologue. The results show that the lack of markers seems to contribute significantly to L2 learners’ misinterpretation of the text. The current findings extend previous research documenting the facilitating role of the markers in listening comprehension. That is, in communication, speakers and listeners share the expectation that listeners are aided in their interpretation of the message by speakers’ use of contextualization markers. Listeners expect to be guided in their understanding of message via markers that overtly highlight the relative importance of ideas, and signal cohesive links between ideas. When these markers are missing, listeners experience difficulty understanding the message, and communication problems ensue.

The purpose of the study is to investigate the rhetorical properties of Arabic research article introductions, using Swales’ CARS model. It is shown that Arabic introductions are varied in terms of their organization, resulting in a hybrid rhetorical structure: A few of them include features proposed in the CARS model, while the majority differs from it substantially. It is also shown how main features of Arabic discourse such as repetition and high-flown, ornamented expressions interact with rhetorical aspects of introductions. The significance of the findings is discussed using insights from the converging fields of genre analysis, contrastive rhetoric, and cross-cultural communication.

This article examines the role of the interpreters in cross-linguistic discourse, arguing that earlier analyses of their functions as ‘voiceboxes’ or mere instruments of linguistic conversion do not adequately describe the processes by which linguistic common ground is constructed between speakers of different languages (Clark, Herbert H., 1992. Arenas of Language Use. University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Clark, Herbert H., 1996. Using Language Cambridge Uniiversity Press, Cambridge). Central to this analysis is the notion that the interpreter must be engaged in the (re)construction of contextually relevant meaning (Wadensjo, Cecilia, 1998. Interpreting as Interaction. Longman, London and New York). These findings are demonstrated through the development of a model that accounts for all possible turn-types within interpreted discourse, and the application of this model to several stretches of naturally occurring interpreted medical discourse.