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Empathy, broadly defined as the ability to experience another's emotions and perceptions, is one of the major attitudes and actions underpinning an individual's participation in dialogue across diversity. The goal of this methodological paper is to operationalize empathy as a discursive construct, manifested in children and adolescent dialogic interactions. A coding scheme is developed based on three distinct steps. First, a review of the operational definitions of empathy is carried out, to capture how its related values, skills, and dispositions have been detected thus far. Second, the definitional elements resulting from this overview are represented in the dialogical notion of other-orientedness, which can be manifested, actually and potentially, in discourse. Moves are distinguished in 8 categories based on their disposition to be potentially other-oriented (dialogicity), which becomes actually manifested depending on their relevance to the discourse they are used in. Dialogicity and relevance are captured by the coding scheme proposed in this paper, which is validated and used to illustrate how it can reveal dialogical empathy and the development of common ground in interactions. • Providing a validated coding scheme for capturing the manifestations of dialogical empathy in dialogues. • Operationalizing empathy for the purposes of discourse analysis. • Showing the relationship between dialogical empathy and other-oriented moves. • Reviewing the operational definitions of empathy in psychology, discourse studies, and rhetoric. • Providing a tool for analyzing conflicts of "common" grounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims and objectives: To understand the interprofessional and intraprofessional communication patterns of overseas qualified nurses as they coordinate care for patients in Australian hospitals. Background: Numerous studies have informed the transitioning experiences of overseas qualified nurses with non‐English‐speaking backgrounds working in English‐speaking workplaces. Only a few observational studies have involved examining the intercultural communication experiences of overseas qualified nurses, and none have considered their intra‐ and interprofessional communication patterns. Design: A qualitative design was adopted, using participant observation and discourse analysis. Methods: This study was from January 2017 to March 2017. Thirteen overseas qualified nurses working in acute, subacute and interventional cardiology settings in a Melbourne metropolitan hospital were shadowed over a period of 12 weeks to collect data that inform their communication patterns. The COREQ checklist was used. Results: This observational study informed by genre analysis revealed that intra‐ and interprofessional communication occurred more commonly under the clinical communication goals of coordinating care and less commonly under facilitating intervention. Communication strategies ranged from structured interactions with use of communication tools to unstructured ad hoc interactions. Analysis of the discourse patterns demonstrated that effectiveness of interactions was affected by hesitancy, lack of assertion and few strategies to manage inadequate or aggressive communication by other team members. Poor clinical communication with peers was not always caused by the nurses from non‐English‐speaking backgrounds. Positive interpersonal interactions with laughter, language‐switching and small talk were evident in interactions with nurses from similar cultural backgrounds but were rare with local colleagues. Conclusion: The linguistic evidence from this study shows variations in communication competency between participants, which emphasises the importance of not viewing overseas qualified nurses' communication training needs as homogenous. With the growing multicultural nature of healthcare teams, this study underscores the need for intercultural communication training for team integration and patient safety. Relevance to clinical practice: Continuous professional development should incorporate intercultural communication training to ensure team effectiveness within nursing teams as well as interprofessional teams. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents a genre-based approach to the study of negotiation within EAP classes and reports on results obtained using a negotiation model meant to increase students' awareness concerning the generic features of this communicative activity. The presented model is based on the Pragma-dialectical theory of argumentation, which offers a double perspective on the argumentation discourse analysed, namely a descriptive and normative perspective. The paper, based on desk and field research, aims to help business language students improve their abilities in argumentation and negotiation by developing discourse skills beyond a simple stage by stage negotiation strategy. In order to do so it examines the advantages and disadvantages of traditional teaching of negotiation skills and introduces the Pragma-dialectical theory of negotiation developed by van Eemeren and Grootendorst (1992) at the University of Amsterdam. The author demonstrates how the practical application of this approach has improved the performance of MA students in Romania. [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]

Objective: Patient education is an important part of nurses' roles; however the inconsistent quality of communication skills, including those of registered nurses (RNs) from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds, risk patient safety. Empowerment in patient education has been found to influence patients' self-efficacy and participation in decision-making. Discourse analysis of a whole interaction is used in this paper to trace the consequences of patient education where empowering discourse is displayed by an RN from a CALD background.Methods: Ethnographic techniques of participant observation and audio recordings of naturally occurring interactions between nurses from CALD backgrounds and their patients were conducted and analysed using interactional sociolinguistic (IS) and theme oriented discourse analytic approaches.Results: The interactional consequences of the nurse's empowering approach are readily observable in the data. The RN addresses the patient's education needs through a respectful encounter that illustrates the patient's active involvement.Conclusion: Examining the interactional consequences of empowering discourse demonstrates its effectiveness, and illustrates how empowering behaviour can be integrated into patient education, thus offering an alternative to traditional approaches.Practical Implications: Greater awareness of how to use empowering discourse will offer an alternative and consistent approach that enables nurses to facilitate patient-centred education. [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 study investigates and compares the use of discourse markers (DMs) by native speakers and learners of English based on a corpus of adolescent intercultural exchange students. The study employs a discourse analytical approach, in which Fung and Carter's (2007) multi-category framework is applied with a view to examining DMs used by a group of Taiwanese and British adolescents in an intercultural setting. The analytical framework contains four main functional categories: Interpersonal, referential, structural and cognitive DMs. Each DM was analysed qualitatively and quantitatively in order to identify the functions it serves in its original context and to further reveal the different uses of DMs between Taiwanese and British participants. The findings demonstrate that the DMs used by both groups of participants serve the four central functions, and in particular Taiwanese participants display a significant use of interpersonal (e.g., yeah, oh) and structural DMs (e.g., so, okay), while British participants have a significantly higher usage of referential (e.g., coz/because, and) and cognitive DMs (e.g., like, well). The results of this study have direct pedagogical implications that can enhance the teaching of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) to better prepare learners for real life communication scenarios. [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]

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]

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 examined whether a short training in grounding strategies could improve intercultural communication. Forty intercultural dyads (Anglo-Canadians and Mainland Chinese) were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. Prior to their conversations the experimental groups received 10–15 min training on grounding while the control groups received no training. The trained dyads performed significantly better than the untrained dyads in grounding, speaker presentation and listener recall, thus documenting that the 10–15 min training on grounding was fruitful in improving intercultural communication. Grounding training may open a new avenue for reducing intercultural miscommunication, thus improving information transmission. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates level of formality in international students’ emails sent to academic staff. National cultures have different traditions when it comes to adopting an egalitarian or a more distant student–professor relationship. Hofstede's cultural dimension of power distance (PD) is used to distinguish between relatively high and relatively low PD cultures. The students’ choice of initial greeting and complimentary close is discussed with respect to PD ranking, rapport management and the sociopragmatic conventions set out in business communication literature. The analysis is based on 344 emails written by 110 students in Norway, a low PD culture. The findings indicate that students from relatively high PD cultures are more likely to opt for formal alternatives, concluding that national culture is an aspect to take into account when analysing lingua franca English communication. [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]

Interactive discourse structuring is used to guide listeners through on-going speech and has been shown to have a positive effect on lecture comprehension, particularly in L2 settings. As mobility increases in the academic world, there are more opportunities for lecture events characterized not only by linguistic/cultural diversity, but also by unfamiliarity between lecturers and audiences. In these situations, interactive discourse structuring may have an especially important role. This study compares interactive discourse structuring used by guest lecturers (both L1 and L2) versus L1 classroom lecturers. Using corpus methodology, interactive discourse structuring was found to be most frequent among L2 guest lecturers, least frequent among L1 guest lecturers, with L1 classroom lecturers falling in the middle. The results suggest that linguistic/cultural diversity has more influence on discourse structuring than participant unfamiliarity. In addition, the analysis revealed other trends, particularly the very wide range of vocabulary used in discourse structuring expressions by all speakers. The findings can be implemented towards developing more authentic academic listening materials, as well as guidelines for both native and non-native guest lecturers who interact with international audiences. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]