Search

There is increasing acknowledgement by psychologists and interculturalists that the ways in which culture influences people’s behaviour are likely to be affected by characteristics of the situation. Over 15 years ago, Smith (2003, p. 68) called for a greater focus on context, arguing: “If the context within which one works with a person from another culture elicits different types of behaviour, then cultural maps will be a poor guide to what happens in such circumstances. […] a sharper focus on more specific settings, events and contexts and indeed the passage of time is needed.” He recently (Smith, 2015, p. 1312) reiterated this call for greater attention to be paid to context. Others have made similar arguments. For example, Leung and Morris (2015) have proposed a ‘situated dynamics framework’ that incorporates the role of the situation and integrates values, schemas and norms in the culture–behaviour nexus. In line with this, researchers (Morris, Hong, Chiu, & Liu, 2015; Zou & Leung, 2015) have drawn attention to the importance of norms and the role they play in linking culture and behaviour. In terms of culture, Leung and Morris (2015, p. 1042) have further argued that the situation is an ”integral part of culture because situations are nested within culture, and the influence of culture cannot be fully understood without considering the situation.” In this special issue we follow up on this trend from a multidisciplinary perspective, with a focus on contexts (especially communication contexts), the norms associated with people’s assessments of those contexts, and their impact on behaviour. More specifically, we aim to introduce sociolinguistic/pragmatic perspectives and insights to move the debate forward. Our approach and perspective is thus very different from that of Zou and Leung (2015) in their special issue on intersubjective norms. Our goal of gaining multidisciplinary insights into the culture–behaviour nexus by integrating concepts and findings from the different fields proved much more challenging than we initially anticipated. Concepts, terms, theoretical starting points, academic goals, and ‘acceptable’ research methodologies all turned out to be different, and researchers from the different disciplines (including within our editorial team!) sometimes had difficulty appreciating the perspectives and contributions of work from the ‘other’ discipline. It turned out to be an intercultural endeavour in its own right. In this introduction, therefore, we not only introduce the articles in this special issue, but we attempt to explain the different conceptual approaches with social psychology and sociolinguistics/pragmatics to key facets of the culture–behaviour nexus, particularly context/situation, norms and behaviour. We start by considering the concepts of contexts and communicative situation.

Most schemes that rank universities for their level of internationalisation are based on compositional criteria, such as the numbers of international students and staff, and student mobility numbers. Yet if such diversity is to be meaningful beyond financial benefits and enhance the quality of education and research, including stimulating growth in (inter alia) intercultural competence, other measures are needed. Research in the intercultural field indicates that two foundational elements are required for this stimulation: (a) positive attitudes (e.g. openness and curiosity) towards diversity and motivation to learn about/engage with it and (b) experiences of difference that challenge people’s viewpoints, ideas and ways of doing things. Yet these variables are rarely probed simultaneously in higher education research. This article reports a study that used a tool to probe both of these elements in combination, in relation to three facets relevant to internationalisation: social integration, academic integration and global opportunities and support. The study draws on data from 2360 students, gathered from four different countries, to explore how the opportunity benefits offered by diversity are being perceived and exploited by the respondents. The interconnections between the variables are explored, along with similarities and differences in ratings across regional groups. The article ends by discussing the conceptual and strategic planning implications of the findings.

Integration is a concept that is referred to very widely in relation internationalization, yet its meaning is rarely explored and its benefits are often assumed. In this article, we start by reviewing the conceptualization of integration across different fields, notably education and the internationalization of education, intercultural communication, health psychology, and organizational studies. We propose that the varying interpretations within and across these fields can be synthesized by considering the different levels at which integration can be analyzed—individual level, community level, and institutional level. We then review the multiple benefits that integration can bring at these different levels, while acknowledging their interconnections, and noting the potential risks from ignoring integration. We end by proposing a framework to help universities and all of their members (staff and students) develop their own strategies and priorities for enhancing integration.

This study investigates participation problems in teams with mixed language proficiencies. Utilising an in-depth single case study approach and drawing on interactional data and interviews, it explores participation in team meetings. It takes a positioning theory approach, and analyses how the least proficient speaker is subtly positioned in various ways: as silent, different, difficult and incompetent. It argues that these positionings contribute to the marginalisation of his contributions in team meetings and in effectively silencing him and that this occurred through interactional patterns in which his contributions were a) ignored, b) dismissed outright and c) treated with only token interest. The paper ends by considering the range of factors, both interactional and attitudinal, that seem to have contributed to this silencing, including cultural stereotypes that seem to influence the dynamics of the interactions.

Sociopragmatics is a rapidly growing field and this is the first ever handbook dedicated to this exciting area of study. Bringing together an international team of leading editors and contributors, it provides a comprehensive, cutting-edge overview of the key concepts, topics, settings and methodologies involved in sociopragmatic research. The chapters are organised in a systematic fashion, and span a wide range of theoretical research on how language communicates multiple meanings in context, how it influences our daily interactions and relationships with others, and how it helps construct our social worlds. Providing insight into a fascinating array of phenomena and novel research directions, the Handbook is not only relevant to experts of pragmatics but to any reader with an interest in language and its use in different contexts, including researchers in sociology, anthropology and communication, and students of applied linguistics and related areas, as well as professional practitioners in communication research.\ud \ud

This paper analyses postings made by student applicants on Korean online communities about how best to handle interactions with potential future PhD supervisors at UK universities. The questions they posed reveal the lack of relevant contextual information they experienced, especially around the rights and obligations of supervisors. This paper thus analyses students’ metapragmatic comments and argues for greater attention to be paid within interpersonal and intercultural pragmatics to interactional goals and conceptions of role relations, especially the rights and obligations associated with them. The analysis has revealed that background information on role relations is of great importance for relational management and communication planning in high stakes intercultural interaction. This suggests that potential cultural variation in the perceived rights and obligations associated with a given role (in this case, PhD supervisor) and their implications for assessments of role relations are of central concern.