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The current study investigates a group of Chinese undergraduates' perceptions of Chinese culture. It examines the discourses that the students drew on to assign meaning to Chinese culture and how the students used these discourses in constructing their Chinese cultural identity. A qualitative study was conducted collecting written self-reflective reports on critical intercultural incidents from 39 Chinese undergraduates at a university in Beijing. Questions designed to evoke reports from the students had them describe incidents in their past intercultural experiences that made them acutely aware of themselves "being Chinese" and specify aspects of Chinese culture that they felt such awareness could be attributed to. A discourse analysis reveals the multiplicity and contextuality of the students' notions of Chinese culture. The findings raise important considerations for contemporary Chinese undergraduates' cultural identity and their much debated "identity crisis." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taking the Russian and Irish teleconference team of a multinational IT company as the subject of analysis, this paper problematizes the assumption that a community of practice () will converge on a set of conventions through prolonged, recurrent interaction. Although the teleconference team successfully achieves a level of communication sufficient to carry out their task, key pragmalinguistic conventions remain resistant to passive assimilation, affecting the level of engagement expressed by team members. Thus the study of participation frameworks () can reveal how participant engagement is established and sustained, as well as where crosslinguistic transfer of pragmalinguistic norms may hinder participation. By means of discourse analysis, CA analysis, and deviant case analysis, normative discourse practices and linguistic strategies in the intra- and intercultural data are identified in terms of their pragmatic function and the participation frameworks they elicit. Attempts to facilitate engagement are analyzed, and general recommendations are made for why the study of culturally specific participation frameworks may have particular relevance for high-level nonnative speakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The analysis of intercultural communication, which is adopted in mainstream applied linguistics and communication studies, aims to explain the meaning of cultural differences and identities in the present global world. The present analysis of intercultural communication is based on theories of cultural variability, which highlight the basic distinctions between values determining cultural differences and identities. Some studies in applied linguistics observe cultural variability as a discursive construction based on a form of epistemological essentialism, produced in the Western part of the world to give meaning to its hegemony. However, these studies share some epistemological foundations with theories of cultural variability. This paper proposes a theorization of intercultural communication, which explains cultural differences and identities as constructed in communication systems and based on their particular structural presuppositions. In this perspective, the hegemonic structure of intercultural communication is ethnocentrism, including the presuppositions of Us/Them basic distinction, positioning of individuals as members of cultural groups and normative expectations about displays of We-identities. This theorisation also provides an explanation of the discursive construction of new hybrid forms of identity, which are observed as a result of globalisation, and of the interdependence between local and global communication systems. Finally, this theorization leads to explain the meaning of intercultural dialogue, which is presented as an alternative to ethnocentrism. The open question regards the explanation of dialogue as either a new discursive construction of hegemonic Western culture or a new structure, introducing equality in participation, sensitivity for participants' personal expressions and expectations of participants' empowerment in local and global communication systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taking its point of departure in ten semi-structured interviews with ten members of staff in a Danish-owned, cross-border software company, Softia, this article analyzes how members of staff talk about and make sense of ways of ''doing culture'' in a corporate context. The article adopts a discourse analytical perspective and applies systemic functional grammar in order to identify the characteristics of three major discursive constructions which members of staff draw on interchangeably, and to a greater and lesser extent, to give expression to their intercultural practices in Softia. This text-focused, practitioneroriented, discursive approach provides valuable insights into the practitioners' understandings of intercultural practices, and, therefore, offers a welcome contribution to the ever-growing, but less text-focused, literature on intercultural business communication and cross-cultural management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]