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This study investigates how people from different cultures negotiate meanings in email interactions. The data is composed of 120 emails written by two groups of students: sixty emails are written by Jordanian university students and sixty by American university students. The emails are supposed to be written to hypothetical friends. The data were analysed qualitatively, relying primarily on discourse analysis complemented by the theory of politeness, in addition to the notion of cultural stereotypes. The evaluation of the data indicated that the American students used much more indirect strategies than their Jordanian counterparts. The results of this study offer insights into the nature of politeness strategies as employed by the two groups of students. This study argues for the importance of including pragmatic and intercultural communication instruction in language classes to teach students how to be polite in a foreign language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper problematizes the stereotypical view that leadership is culturally linked and underlines the significant role of subordinates in shaping leadership styles. Employing micro-analytic techniques, the study analyses meetings of two work teams in an international corporation. Findings reveal that although the team leaders are of the same national culture (Swedish), leadership is practiced in a very different manner and can be enacted in ways not adhering to their cultural norms. Moreover, leadership is collaboratively constructed by all participants. This paper highlights the importance of studying authentic leadership discourse and going beyond cultural stereotypes for future research into leadership practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although significant attention has been devoted to the notion of facework and its functions, facework among L2 speakers, whose cultural backgrounds and language proficiencies vary, has remained unexplored. The present study attempts to explore situations of intercultural communication in which facework is used as a way to remedy moments of potential face loss. The data are drawn from communication among Korean, Malaysian, and Japanese students who were enrolled in an online synchronous class. On the basis of these data, three different types of facework were identified: self-mocking humour, group embarrassment, and attempts to build group cohesion. Tensions among the intercultural group, which could have led to a potential break in face maintenance, emerged. These tensions resulted from discrepancies within the cultural groups concerning recognition of face, cultural assumptions, and language use. When participants did not find an equitable resolution of tension in words, nonverbal face-saving strategies functioned to resolve conflict and mitigate loss of face by re-contextualising the interaction. Overall, this paper highlights the complexities of intercultural communication in relation to face maintenance and offers insights for future research into L2 speakers’ use of facework in intercultural communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A lot of work has been done on the major turns that have taken place within Translation Studies. The moves from the prescriptive to the descriptive method of analyzing and conducting translation allow for appropriating the whole process of translation to the service of individual and institutional interests. These changes have been triggered by the juggernaut of globalization and have touched upon the ethics of intercultural communication and representation. As such, responding to the present international scene, dominated with cultural paranoia and reluctance to get immersed into the historically inevitable stage of cultural co-existence, the present paper suggests the transcultural approach to translation as a working alternative to the separatist and nationalist discourses that are fraught with essentialist ideologies. Within the transcultural dynamics of translation, the collision between the ethnocentric authority and peripheral minority is replaced with collaborative intersection of belonging senses and political voices to circumvent the devastating effects of the dichotomizing rhetoric. The American writer Paul Bowles’ project of translating Moroccan culture in the context of his collaboration with the Moroccan preliterate storyteller Mohamed Mrabet can be, therefore, read through the transcultural prism, which is in this case subtly sustained by the contact zone of Tangier. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with results from an ongoing research project about how patients and health professionals talk about and enact culture in a specific Danish hospital ward, whether this may have implications for staff–patient relationships and how knowledge of cultural complexities may add value to patient care. The project and this paper are based on a discourse analytic and social constructivist approach and, contrary to some earlier studies focusing on health professionals’ perceptions of culture in relation to the care of minority ethnic patients, this project and paper deal with culture seen from a patient perspective. Data have been collected from interviews with minority ethnic patients and with nurses about the intercultural encounter in an infectious diseases ward, and the analysis focuses on evaluating statements present in the discourses. The analysis aims at studying how such discourses may display the patients’ roles and self positioning, to discuss whether such positions and roles are attributable to culture, language proficiency or social conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understandings of culture and multiculture are broad and deeply embedded in every day talk and practices. In an increasingly globalised world, how we understand and work with these terms affects how parents and their families experience health care services and the support intended by health care professionals. This is particularly important for parents who are new to Australia. In this paper we report on findings from an ethnographic study undertaken across two community child and family health nursing sites in South Australia. Using examples, we explore how child and family health nurses appear to understand and use constructs of culture and multiculture during everyday, intercultural communication with parents who are new to Australia and Australian health services. By analysing these understandings through postcolonial and feminist theories we found pervading evidence that neo-colonial constructs of a white western monoculture shaped intercultural communication practice. We conclude by reflecting on how these constructs might be addressed to improve intercultural communication in child and family health settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyzes multicultural teams in decision-making meetings and uses discourse analysis and observational methods to study how member participation in meetings changes when teams are comprised of multicultural members. We use a four-by-four design to document differences in discourse patterns of teams of different composition. Our findings suggest that among high-proficiency English speakers of East Asian origin, there are no significant cultural differences in the discourse patterns when compared to US-born English speakers when speaking English and working in homogeneous groups. However, differences in discourse patterns do emerge when members are combined in mixed groups. Americans tend to increase their participation while East Asians withdraw. The paper examines possible causes of this divergence in communication styles and outlines directions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the circulation of Bourdieu's symbolic capital at the level of face-to-face interactions. Recounting a single interaction between three individuals, this study provides an example of (1) the negotiated nature of capital articulation and (2) the relationship between identity practice and capital articulation, when addressed at the microlevel of interaction. Given a group task which forced participants to negotiate at an explicit level symbolic capital affordances, one participant - a non-native speaker of English in an English conversation - was able to articulate cultural capital by way of her links to academic institutions. However, later in the group task her attempt to index capital by way of her reflexive positioning as Asian was rebuked, leading her to disengage from the group task. This study emphasizes the need to analyze symbolic capital from the 'ground-up' for that is where its distribution is reproduced but also potentially transformed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the problems that translators and Arab learners of English encounter in translating Arabic sentences containing the Arabic discourse marker 'fa' into English. Several types of texts were surveyed in order to identify the salient functions that this marker has in Arabic discourse. Five major functions were identified: Explanatory, Consequential, Causal, Sequential and Adversative. A translation task was designed to find out how this marker translates into English. The subjects were 50 English-major Arab students studying at the University of Sharjah. The difficulties that Arab learners encounter in translating Arabic 'fa' into English were identified and rank ordered in terms of difficulty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research describes and analyses the type of verbal discourse and interactions among the children in a group-solving situation. Two groups of five children ages 6,7 and 8, from two different cultures, were observed: one at an English-speaking summer camp in Beirut, Lebanon, and another at a parallel site, a neighbourhood group in Kentucky, in the United States. The same researcher conducted both studies and English was the language of communication. Audiotapes as well as videotapes and transcriptions were use as means for data collection. A comparative microethnographic analysis was applied to find relationships between the different verbal and nonverbal interactions and interpret the process used by the different cultures in similar situations. The rate and type of utterances as well as nonverbal moves were recorded. Evidence of commonalities between the children's verbal cognitive as well as the semantic aspect of the language was observed. More difference was observed in the nonverbal and perlocutionary acts in some segments of the discourse. Difference was also recorded in the intensity of interactions and the type of utterance and propositions produced during both groups' discourses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]