Search

Purpose: This study aims to examine how teacher candidates (TCs) in Türkiye and the USA navigate their intercultural communication skills in a telecollaboration project. Design/methodology/approach: Forty-eight TCs participated (26 in Türkiye and 22 in the USA) in the study. TCs discussed critical issues in multicultural education on an online learning platform for six weeks. Their discussions were analyzed using content and discourse analysis. Findings: The findings indicated that TCs approached the telecollaborative space as a translingual contact zone and positioned themselves and their interlocutors in the discourse by using the personal pronouns; I, we, you and they. When they positioned themselves using we (people in Türkiye/USA), they spoke on behalf of everyone included in the scope of we. Their interlocutors responded to these positionings either by accepting this positioning and responding with a parallel positioning or by engaging in translingual negotiation strategies to revise the scope of we and sharing some differences/nuances in beliefs and practices in their community. Research limitations/implications: When TCs talk about their culture and community in a singular manner using we, they frame them as the same across every member in that community. When they ask questions to each other using you, the framing of the questions prime the respondents to sometimes relay their own specific experiences as the norm or consider experiences from different points of view through translingual negotiation strategies. A singular approach to culture(s) may affect the marginalized communities the most because they are lost in this representation, and their experiences and voices are not integrated in the narratives or integrated with stereotypical representation. Practical implications: Teachers and teacher educators should first pay attention to their language choices, especially use of pronouns, which may communicate inclusion or exclusion in intercultural conversations. Next, they should prepare their students to adopt and practice language choices that communicate respect for cultural diversity and are inclusive of marginalized populations. Social implications: Speakers' pronoun use includes identity construction in discourse by drawing borders around and between communities and cultures with generalization and particularity, and by patrolling those borders to decide who is included and excluded. As a response, interlocutors use pronouns either to acknowledge those borders and respond with corresponding ones from their own context or negotiate alternative representations or further investigate for particularity or complexity. In short, pronouns could lead the direction of intercultural conversations toward criticality and complexity or otherwise, and might be reasons where there are breakdowns in communication or to fix those breakdowns. Originality/value: This study shows that translingual negotiation strategies have explanatory power to examine how speakers from different language backgrounds negotiate second and third order positionings in the telecollaborative space.

Politeness strategies are of significant importance to maintain the face of the addressee. Senders of formal congratulatory letters seek to create a positive image in the minds of their addresses by performing particular illocutionary acts and face-saving acts (FSAs) in the form of written texts. To the best knowledge of the researcher, this topic received little attention from linguistic researchers, especially on the pragma-stylistic level. The importance of this study arises from the fact that congratulatory formal letters are an effective tool in the successful performance of foreign relations and thus deserve investigation. The current study investigates the pragma-stylistic aspects of illocutionary acts and FSA Politeness Strategies in some selected English and Arabic formal congratulatory letters written by English and Arabic officials. Findings reveal that assertive constitutes the highest frequency in English data, while expressive occurs more in Arabic. Besides, the FSA politeness strategy (Use appropriate forms of address) includes most of the total frequency in both English and Arabic data, which still it appeared more in English. Additionally, (Exaggerate interest, sympathy with H) comes next in Arabic, while (Be optimistic) appeared more in English. In addition, results show that exaggeration (Hyperbole) is the prevalent stylistic device used in Arabic. Arabic officials usually exaggerate the glorification of people in authoritative positions, while English high officials tend to be more moderate. The findings will be helpful in cross-cultural comparative studies and other related fields.

In this article, we use grounded practical theory to develop a practical theory for using "difficult data" in Language and Social Interaction university classes. "Difficult data" are transcribed, audio/video-recorded data that contain language and ideologies that could be offensive, bigoted, or otherwise disturbing. We provide contextual literature for understanding the pedagogical tensions around using these data from communication pedagogy research as well as social theory for handling the language within the data. We base our analysis on various types of data from academia: an international/intercultural pedagogical speech event, student surveys, field notes, interview, and recordings of classroom instruction using difficult data. We provide a practical theory focused on techniques for managing the central problem that instructors want students to analyze the social consequences of interaction without replicating the problematic impacts of discourse that make difficult data difficult. Our theory reveals four techniques including framing the data as difficult, surveying students before the class, using already-published research data, and metacommunicating about these dilemmas. These techniques do not promise inviolability, but instructors can foster deliberative reflection/co-orientation about classroom interaction that considers whether the use of difficult data can help students develop analysis-informed praxis.

In this study, we draw data from a tripartite telecollaborative project that involved 112 teacher candidates (TCs) from university-based teacher education programmes in France, Turkey, and the USA. Theoretically, we rely on Pantic's (2015. A model for study of teacher agency for social justice. "Teachers and Teaching" 21, no. 6: 759-778) model of teacher agency for social justice and use discourse analytic methods (Gee. 2018. "Introducing Discourse Analysis"; from Grammar to Society. Routledge) to examine how TCs negotiated their agency for social justice in small group discussions around the topics of social justice (e.g. conditions of refugees and immigrants, gender inequities, and LGBTQ+ rights) in their educational contexts. We found that when TCs used agentive positionings in their discussions, their discourse involved first person pronouns coupled with will + infinitive structure (e.g. I will teach …) followed by specific plans of action, as opposed to when agentive positioning was lacking with the use of generic pronouns and hypothetical structures (e.g. teachers/everyone would/could …). We also found that TCs used the discursive space of telecollaboration to negotiate their agencies and had variable success as they navigated tensions in their beliefs and positioned themselves as future social justice teachers in relation to the discussion topics. Their positionings demonstrated their level of engagement and their individual/collective efficacy. Our findings suggest that future research should continue to investigate the micro-level discourse involved in telecollaborative spaces.

This ethnographic case study explores intercultural and ethnographic engagement by undergraduate Hong Kong students enrolled in an Intercultural Communication course at a public research university. Ethnographic projects originated from virtual exchanges with undergraduates in a professional writing course at a private research institution on the East Coast in the US. Using a discourse approach as taught in the course, Hong Kong teams explored, analyzed, and reflected on intercultural communication topics as experienced in social networking sites. Hong Kong teams elicited from their US partners information on their personal, institutional, and professional contexts. Online interactions took place on Facebook over 10 weeks, and Hong Kong teams were encouraged to analyze their online interactions for an ethnographic project, a course requirement. The author investigates Hong Kong students' prior experiences and expectations, and if and how Hong Kong students engaged with counterparts in the US on Facebook to collect information on their topic, and if Hong Kong teams analyzed their Hong Kong-US exchanges. Data triangulation includes a pre- and post-project survey, Facebook interactions, and ethnographic projects. Findings indicate that the majority of Hong Kong teams used their online exchanges for analysis in relation to course themes (e.g., politeness, face systems, corporate ideologies) as well as commented on the cultural exchange as a learning outcome.

Our study draws from discussion board data from a telecollaboration including three teacher education courses in France, Turkey, and the USA. Our data analysis of three groups' conversations (n = 21) addressed this research question: How do participants use translingual negotiation strategies in online contact zones as they construct their cultural, linguistic, and professional identities? The findings indicate that preservice teachers employed: Envoicing and interactional strategies to create a caring teacher identity and resolve conflicts; recontextualizing strategies to maintain the frame of culturally-responsive instruction through their linguistic choices; and entextualizing strategies to locate self in time and space when discussing future teaching and diverse students.

This study investigates the interaction of native speaker--non-native speaker (NS-NNS) dyads engaged in conversational interaction as part of a video-based synchronous computer mediated communication (VidSCMC) eTandem language program. Previous work has indicated certain advantages of NNS-NS conversational interaction for language learning (e.g., Nakahama et al., 2001); however, this potential has not been tested empirically for interaction in voice-based synchronous computer mediated communication (SVCMC) platforms, despite their growing popularity among language learners (Yanguas & Bergin, 2018). Participants were 18 university students (9 L1 English-L2 Spanish; 9 L1 Spanish-L2 English) taking part in a VidSCMC eTandem language partnership between two universities, in the United States and Mexico. Building on previous interactionist work on synchronous computer mediated communication (SCMC), language related episodes (LREs) were analyzed for quantity, trigger type, initiator, reactive or preemptive status, instances of negotiation, and the provision of negative feedback. Results show a remarkably even distribution of LRE types and linguistic foci, with NSs and NNSs taking equal responsibility in promoting globally- and locally-focused target language (TL) comprehension and output through their engagement in LREs. These patterns are reflective of the simultaneously shared status of learner and expert by the members of NS-NNS eTandem exchange dyads. Results are discussed in light of the changing relationship between language and language learners brought on by modern technologies.

The present study investigated the effects of group set-up in a semester-long telecollaborative discussion forum project in second-semester German. In order to explore whether group set-up affects learning in discussion forums, small groups of non-native speakers (NNS) of German were partnered either with native speakers (NS), other NNS with the same L1, or other NNS with different L1s. The study compared participation and negotiation of meaning routines between the three groups, and assessed overall writing development of the second-semester German learners as a result of forum participation. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics as well as an analysis of the negotiation of meaning episodes (Varonis & Gass, 1985) to reveal whether any of the three groups offers a more productive language learning environment. Results indicate that the NS--NNS groups participated the most in the forum and produced the highest amount of negotiation of meaning routines. Students reached higher writing proficiency than comparable second-semester students who did not complete a discussion forum task.

This study examined the online exchanges of 28 pre-service foreign language teachers (14 in Russia, 14 in the US) as they discussed in English their opinions about cultural products, practices, and perspectives, and their study abroad experiences via voice-based telecollaboration. Informed by intercultural competence frameworks, a qualitative analysis of participants' oral exchanges revealed six intercultural learning moves performed by participants in order to develop their own and/or others' intercultural competence during interaction. A follow-up analysis of the intercultural learning moves that emerged in response to five purposefully selected discussion question prompts suggested that one prompt type--i.e. a combined Brainstorm + Reflection Question on Cultural Experiences--encouraged participants to make a higher number and a wider range of high-level intercultural learning moves. The study concluded with guidelines for developing discussion question prompts that are likely to promote the emergence of advanced intercultural learning moves via telecollaboration with global partners.

This study examines the linguistic resources by which foreign language (L2) learners express their ideological positions in online discussions taking place in a telecollaborative encounter during one semester. More specifically, the study attempts to decipher how L2 learners discuss and argue their points of view regarding their first culture, their second culture, and the topic in general, depending on the issue under discussion (immigration and nationalism or patriotism) and to the country where the learners were based (US or Spain). Twenty-four learners, organized into six groups, each with two students from the US and two from Spain, participated in three online forums. For the analysis, learners' postings were subjected to quantitative and qualitative content analysis applying two discourse-semantic subsystems of the Appraisal framework, Engagement--the linguistic resources used to reflect the writer's position and willingness to recognize alternative positions--and Attitude--the linguistic resources used to indicate positive or negative assessment of people, places, things, and states of affairs. This study concludes that there were clear differences in the discursive styles between both sets of learners and topics. Overall, for instance, the learners employed more monoglossic statements when discussing nationalism or patriotism rather than immigration and Spain-based learners made more use of judgment markers than their US-based counterparts did.

In foreign language education, the teaching of culture remains a hotly debated issue. What is culture? What is its relation to language? Which and whose culture should be taught? What role should the learners' culture play in the acquisition of knowledge of the target culture? How can we avoid essentializing cultures and teaching stereotypes? And how can we develop in the learners an intercultural competence that would shortchange neither their own culture nor the target culture, but would make them into cultural mediators in a globalized world? This paper explores these issues from the perspective of the large body of research done in Australia, Europe and the U.S. in the last twenty years. It links the study of culture to the study of discourse (see, e.g., Kramsch 1993, 1998, 2004) and to the concept of translingual and transcultural competence proposed by the Modern Language Association (e.g., Kramsch, 2010). Special attention will be given to the unique role that the age-old Persian culture can play in fostering the cultural mediators of tomorrow.

This study explores pre-service teachers' beliefs about citizenship across two nations, the United States and Singapore; the nature of their conversation about those beliefs; and the impact of their cross-cultural dialog on their reflections about the citizenship goal of social studies. Data is based on a Black Board-based threaded dialog, over two different semesters, between preservice social studies teachers in the two countries. The discussions focused on the meanings each group held about what it means to be an effective citizen. Data was analyzed around themes of knowledge, skills, and values. The conversations provided some insight into the similarities and differences in conceptions of citizenship held by these two groups of preservice teachers. Across both groups and both years, the dominant view of the "good citizen" expressed by participants was that of the "personally responsible citizen." While many similarities were evident, there were also clear differences which the facilitators attributed to differences in disciplinary grounding and cultural contexts. Participants reported that the cross-cultural dialog had encouraged them to think more deeply about the concept of citizenship and the goals of social studies.

Framed from positioning theory and dynamic systems theory, the paper reports on a naturalistic study involving four Chinese participants and their American peers in an intercultural asynchronous computer-mediated communication (ACMC) activity. Based on the moment-by-moment analysis and triangulation of forum posts, reflective essays, and retrospective interviews, this study charts out participants' positioning trajectories and identifies five discursive practices (pronouns, epistemic phrases, evaluative phrases, emoticons, and posting style) as control parameters of participants' positioning systems. The study also reveals that positioning in ACMC is multiple, emergent, and contested, defying preconceived roles and identities. Therefore, the success of ACMC can be attributed to the participants' ability to make sense and make use of discursive practices to negotiate positions and achieve positioning alignment. The pedagogical implications of positioning interrogation and positioning intervention in ACMC are also discussed.

The main objective of this study is to explore how students who participate in virtual intercultural exchanges use evaluative language to build rapport and encourage collaboration. Data were gathered from 211 email messages sent by 40 Spanish and American university students and were tagged following Martin and White's Appraisal model. Quantitative and qualitative analyses of the lexico-grammatical tokens revealed that the participants used mostly Affect tokens in their interaction. This suggests that the students preferred expressing their own feelings and emotions rather than judging their partners' behaviour or evaluating phenomena as a strategy to construct a positive and appealing personal identity.

This study analyzes the conversational styles of two dyads who engaged in a semester-long, video-mediated telecollaboration between Japan and America. While one dyad expressed the greatest satisfaction and developed the autonomy to continue the project beyond the curricular requirement, the other dyad expressed the greatest frustration, requiring a pedagogical intervention. To examine how the two dyads' different experiences could be attributed to turn negotiation patterns, the English portion of the second interaction session was analyzed. The results showed that for the unsuccessful dyad, silence, which was used by the Japanese EFL learner as a contextualization cue, triggered the American student's hyperexplanation to get the Japanese partner involved in conversation. However, such a high-involvement strategy, only resulted in producing fewer opportunities for the Japanese partner to contribute to the conversation (i.e. vicious cycle). In contrast, successful turn negotiation of the other dyad enabled them to share knowledge schema, improve recipient design, and adjust their speech accordingly. Such personalized speech, in turn, led to the co-construction of conversation (i.e. virtuous cycle). Based on these observations, I conclude that "missed communication" may entrench attribution of negative personal traits unless appropriate scaffolding/intervention is provided.

Set within the context of a global pursuit towards the internationalisation of higher education, this paper critically examines student discourse in a globally connected classroom between learners in the USA and Singapore. It makes salient some of the cultural assumptions and tensions that undergird students' discourse in collaborative international exchanges. We argue that technological innovation can enhance campus internationalisation efforts by providing opportunities for groups of students to intersect and interact across cultures. Such opportunities for social connection can bring about a transformative third space wherein domestic students and their international peers can engage in meaningful and productive dialogic exchanges. However, as this analysis suggests, the mere opportunity for connection will not necessarily manifest outcomes consistent with ideals of internationalisation and may instead result in superficial exchanges and reified stereotypes. Specifically, findings from this study demonstrate several tensions in US students' discourse, revealing ways in which they simultaneously reject and represent American identity, challenge and reify national stereotypes, and pursue open-mindedness while maintaining "strong convictions". Finally, as a practical application of findings, we suggest training students to self-reflect through critical examination of their own and others' discourse as a means for pushing beyond the superficial towards genuine cultural learning.

This paper examines how intercultural communication (ICC) and the notion of culture are framed in on-line promotional discourse of higher education (HE) ICC courses. It analyses a specialised corpus comprised of 14,842 words from 43 course websites of master's programmes in ICC in the UK and the US--internationally, the two largest providers of such programmes. Through combining corpus tools with a "situated meaning" approach, the analysis reveals that while a small number of courses acknowledge cultural "complexity", culture is still very often reduced to an essentialised and static notion, despite growing criticism against such an approach in ICC literature. ICC is valorised as a combination of desirable skills and knowledge conducive to effective communication of different cultural groups and for those working in international arenas. Significant differences between the UK and US courses are identified with regard to the extent of associations with diversity-related social categories. The lack of interpretive, critical, and constructivist positions on culture in promotional discourse is discussed in the context of neoliberal discourse and the current thinking towards professional competences dominant in Britain, North America, and other parts of the world.

Internationalisation is high on the agenda of higher education institutions across the world. Previous research on national and local policies surrounding this phenomenon has identified different discourses of internationalisation which may have an effect on practices such as student mobility. In order to understand better the role of student mobility in practice, the article analyses responses to an inquiry about internationalisation to a group of academic staff involved in intercultural education from universities around the world. Informants, all members of the research network Cultnet, working at 28 different universities in 15 countries, describe internationalisation within their practice, and their understanding of the role which student mobility plays in relation to this. Data were collected through questionnaires and interviews over a period of six months. The findings locate student mobility within discourses of internationalisation. They also raise questions in relation to the need for an intercultural dialogue approach in internationalisation. We argue that institutions and their staff should be aware of the discursive field of internationalisation in Higher Education, take a critical stance and analyse their own role in student mobility. How mobility fits within the field of intercultural education for incoming, outgoing and "home" students should be highlighted and clarified in internationalisation agendas.

In this study, the author investigates the dynamics of dialogue among teachers in different national contexts based on their responses to different cultural practices. Employing Pierre Bourdieu's sociological theory of practice and his concept of habitus, the author shows that, as the teachers' responses are not entirely context-specific, they are not autonomous either. In the final section, the author discusses the importance of attending to limits and barriers of dialogue across differences. Moreover, she further posits that recognizing the difficulties involved in productive dialogue is essential for achieving the transformative educational goals that promote a less dominating and less hierarchical approach. The assumptions implicit in this work are that the scholars and practitioners from diverse backgrounds bring unique perspectives to teaching and learning; and, therefore, productive dialogues among teachers from various backgrounds can open up a generative space that enables the active co-construction of new perspectives.

This paper explores the pedagogical and conceptual issues that accompany the integration of intercultural communication skills into the secondary curriculum by analyzing the interactions of 102 adolescents in Spain and the USA during a 15-week, classroom-based, international online exchange. Focusing on the skills of discovery and interaction within a model of intercultural communicative competence, I examined the ways in which adolescent students displayed these skills through their online comments as well as the extent to which participants themselves perceived that their partnerships were successful. The findings from this study demonstrate that the adolescents displayed a range of interactional features that have been previously documented as interculturally strategic in research with post-secondary students engaged in similar online exchange projects. Such skills form part of a larger construct of intercultural communicative competence that, in turn, folds into the types of new literacy skills needed to write, read, communicate, produce, consume, and critique in a digital age. This kind of critical engagement with literacy fosters contexts in which students can grapple with authentic intercultural interactions and better understand how the words and symbols they send and receive position them as their own representatives and as representatives of their immediate communities and larger cultural groups.

This qualitative study explores the impact of potential linguistic, technical and educational hegemonies on the learning outcomes for English language students in Hebron, Palestine, and Padova, Italy, who were involved in the Soliya Connect Program, a telecollaboration project developed to explore critical issues that divide the "West" and the "predominantly Arab and Muslim world." The project is organised around weekly synchronous moderated video discussions between students from the U.S., Europe, and the Middle East and North Africa. The authors first discuss the hegemonies that might be at play in this telecollaboration project and examine the specific power imbalances on the macro-, meso- and micro-levels that students in Hebron and Padova might experience. Then, drawing on data from learner diaries and reflective papers, facilitator reports, and questionnaires, the authors provide evidence for the emergence of a third space conceptualised as a site of struggle and conflict, but also a dialogic, fluid and evolving space. The aspects of the project that seemed to contribute most to the creation of a third space were found to be: (a) the role of trained facilitators in addressing power imbalances, (b) the dialogic approach to conflict that the program is based on, and (c) the use of audio-video conferencing which humanises the experience and increases empathy among students. (Contains 1 figure and 3 notes.)

In these days of ubiquitous tweeting, language teachers must consider whether microblogging is an activity that will bring benefits to the learning experience. Recent research (Junco et al., 2010; Messner, 2009, among others) indicates that Twitter is becoming increasingly popular in classrooms, but few studies (see for example, Borau et al., 2009; Junco et al., 2010) have empirically examined the linguistic, attitudinal or content-based outcomes of such implementation. This paper discusses the role of Twitter in an intermediate French class (4th or 5th semester of French at the University level), in which students tweeted weekly with each other and with native French speakers. The goal for using Twitter was to build community among learners in the U.S. and in France and to provide opportunities for creative language practice outside of class time. Data suggest that participants quickly formed a collaborative community in which they were able to learn, share and reflect. Attitudinal data and discourse analysis findings are presented to discuss the use of this medium in language learning. (Contains 4 figures and 4 tables.)

"Happy Chinese" or kuaile hanyu is an educational melodrama produced by the Chinese TV channel CCTV in 2009. Aiming to improve foreign learners' Chinese language skills, the plot revolves around Susan, an American, staying with her former Chinese classmate's family. "Happy Chinese" proposes both language and cultural learning. In this paper, the authors are examining the first seven episodes marking Susan's arrival in China for the Spring Festival. Basing the study on a postmodern and critical approach to the "intercultural," as well as on a critical view towards Orientalism and Occidentalism, the authors are interested in how the programme constructs the arrival of the American and the way she is perceived and represented by the "locals." The authors are also looking into what the Chinese family teaches Susan about being Chinese and, at the same time, the tensions that a certain tendency to "keep up appearances" and appear "real Chinese" before her trigger in the family, across generation and gender. The research tools used to analyze the data are derived from discursive pragmatics.

Based on Byram's (1997) definition of intercultural communicative competence (ICC) and on specific types of discourse analysis proposed by Kramsch and Thorne (2002) and Ware and Kramsch (2005), this article explores how online exchanges can play a role in second language learners' development of pragmatic competence and ICC. With data obtained from an intercultural exchange between students learning German in an American university and students studying English at a German university, we illustrate how culture is embedded in language as discourse, how "language learners have to negotiate new ways not only of interpreting the content of utterances, but also of navigating interactional pragmatics" (Ware & Kramsch, p. 201), and how advanced learners of German as a foreign language and English as a foreign language employ different discourse styles in their online postings as they seek to understand the discourse genres of their partners. (Contains 19 tables.)

This study examines if and how collaboration and intercultural learning took place during telecollaboration by exploring the linguistic features of the discourse used by the participants, as well as the patterns and types of interactions between intercultural interlocutors. EFL students in Taiwan were paired up with pre-service teacher education students in the US for the project. The data collected included online forum entries written by participants from both sides after they read two articles and the end-of-project reports written by the Taiwanese participants. The findings of this study add to the small but increasing body of literature about online learning and collaborative behaviors. In particular, the linguistic-grounded examination of intercultural discourse adopted by this study echoes a previous assertion that such an approach could provide insights into the complex and multi-layered social interactions in telecollaboration. The new and unexpected findings about intercultural learning between Asian and US university students deserve further study. (Contains 6 tables and 6 notes.)

This article analyzes how semantic differences between English and Japanese affect the discourse when Japanese speakers engage in negotiation in English, and how and to what degree English-language proficiency affects discourse. Results of the study show the importance of language and cultural knowledge in cross-cultural negotiation. (Auth/JL)

Copyright of Revista de Lingüística y Lenguas Aplicadas (RLLA) is the property of Universidat Politecnica de Valencia, Department of Applied Linguistics and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Los Angeles and Southern California have become the hub of the United State's economic, political, and cultural connection to the Pacific Rim. This region comprises large numbers of individuals, businesses, and cultural institutions with international linkages to China, South Korea and Japan. As a result, multicultural work teams of Asian and American origin are increasingly becoming a norm rather than an exception in the modern business climate of Southern California. Our study examines such multicultural teams and compares the interactions of four types of teams: homogenous teams composed of U.S.-born students; homogenous teams composed of Asian-born students; heterogeneous teams composed of a majority of U.S.-born students and a minority of Asian-born students; and heterogeneous teams composed of a majority of Asian-born students and a minority of U.S.-born students. Other studies have shown that personal variables and value diversity predict greater satisfaction and contribution levels than minority status alone. Our research further explores these concepts by looking at the effect of group composition on group performance and examines six non-verbal communication elements that are important for the functioning of multicultural groups. These are number of turns taken, number of words spoken, turn length, number of cooperative overlaps, number of backchannels, and latching per team member. We hope to contribute to the existing body of research in two ways: our study will add to our understanding of the influence of culture on decision making in cross-cultural teams composed of U.S.-born and Asian-born members and will have pedagogical implications regarding the way group work is taught to diverse student bodies and business professionals. [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]