Chapter published in:
Language Learning, Discourse and Cognition: Studies in the tradition of Andrea Tyler
Edited by Lucy Pickering and Vyvyan Evans
[Human Cognitive Processing 64] 2018
► pp. 11–36

Culture, gender, ethnicity, identity in discourse

Exploring cross-cultural communicative competence in American university contexts

International teaching assistants in charge of undergraduate classes in American universities present the anomalous situation of the non-native speaker in the role of higher authority, but the native-speaker having greater communicative resources and cultural knowledge. This interactional sociolinguistic case study of a facilitated negotiation of discourse style in conversations between a Chinese teaching assistant and an African-American undergraduate explores the situated enactment and interpretation of identity in relation to culture, gender, and ethnicity. A multilayered analysis involves videotaped role-plays based on a prototypical teacher/student interaction with conflicting goals, guided feedback, repeat enactments, playback sessions, and reverse role-plays. It explores the situated presentation of self and the attempt to exercise power, and reveals difficulties in the development of cross-cultural communicative competence when a discourse style is associated with values incompatible with presentation of self and thus emotionally unacceptable (in this case, to the African-American undergraduate).
Keywords: American university discourse, international teaching assistants, pragmatics, role-plays
Published online: 20 December 2018
https://doi.org/10.1075/hcp.64.02dav
References

References

Bateson, G.
(1972) Steps to an ecology of mind. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Bremer, K. & Roberts, C.
(Eds) (1996) Achieving understanding: Discourse in intercultural encounters. New York: Longman.Google Scholar
Canale, M. & Swain, M.
(1980) Theoretical issues of communicative approaches to second language teaching and testing. Applied Linguistics, 1(1), 1–47.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Celce-Murcia, M.
(1995) The elaboration of sociolinguistic competence: Implications for teacher education. In J. Atlatis, C. Straehle, B. Gallenberger & M. Ronkin (Eds.), Linguistics and the education of second language teachers: Ethnolinguistic, psycholinguistic, and sociolinguistic aspects: Georgetown University Roundtable on Language and Linguistics (pp. 699–710). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Davies, C. E.
(2004) Developing awareness of cross-cultural pragmatics: The case of American/German sociable interaction. Multilingua: Journal of Cross-Cultural and Multilingual Communication, 23(2), 207–231.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Davies, C. E., & A. Tyler
(1994) Demystifying cross-cultural (mis)communication: Improving performance through balanced feedback in a situated context. In C. Madden & C. Myers (Eds.), Discourse and performance of international teaching assistants (pp. 201–220). Alexandria, VA: TESOL.Google Scholar
Davies, C. E., & Tyler, A.
(2005) Discourse strategies in the context of cross-cultural institutional talk: Uncovering interlanguage pragmatics in the university classroom. In Bardovi-Harlig, K. & Hartford, B. S. (Eds.), Interlanguage pragmatics: Exploring institutional talk (pp. 133–156). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Davies, C. E., Tyler, A., & Koran, J.
(1989) Face-to-face with English Speakers: An advanced training class for international teaching assistants. English for Specific Purposes, 8, 139–153.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Gass, S. M., & Mackey, A.
(2015) Stimulated recall methodology in second language research (2nd Edition). New York: RoutledgeGoogle Scholar
Gumperz, J. J.
(1982) Discourse strategies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Gumperz, J. J., & Roberts, C.
(1980) Developing awareness skills for inter-ethnic communication (Occasional Paper No. 12). Singapore: SEAMEO Regional Language Centre.Google Scholar
Hymes, D.
(1972) On communicative competence. In J. B. Pride & J. Holmes (Eds.), Sociolinguistics: Selected readings (pp. 269–93). Baltimore: Penguin.Google Scholar
Kramsch, C.
(1993) Context and culture in language teaching. Oxford: Oxford University PressGoogle Scholar
Scollon, R. & Scollon, S.
(1991) Topic confusion in English-Asian discourse. World Englishes, 10 (2), 113–125.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Shaw, P., & Bailey, K.
(1990) Cultural differences in academic settings. In R. Scarcella, E. Anderson, & S. Krashen (Eds.), Developing communicative competence in a second language (pp. 317–328). New York: Newbury House.Google Scholar
Smitherman, G.
(2006) Word from the mother: Language and African Americans. New York: Routledge.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Tannen, D.
(1984) Conversational style: Analyzing talk among friends. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Thomas, J.
(1984) Cross-cultural discourse as ‘unequal encounter’: Towards a pragmatic analysis. Applied Linguistics, 5(3), 226–235.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Tyler, A.
(1994) Effective role-play situations and focused feedback: A case for pragmatic analysis in the classroom. In C. Madden & C. Myers (Eds.), Discourse and performance of international teaching assistants (pp. 116–133). Alexandria, VA: TESOLGoogle Scholar
(1995) The co-construction of cross-cultural miscommunication. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 17(2), 129–152.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Tyler, A., & Davies, C. E.
(1990) Cross-linguistic communication missteps. Text, 10(4).385–411.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Tyler, A., Jefferies, A., & Davies, C. E.
(1988) The effect of discourse structuring devices on listener perceptions of coherence in non-native university teachers’ spoken discourse. World Englishes 7(2), 101–110.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 1 other publications

Attardo, Salvatore & Lucy Pickering
2018.  In Language Learning, Discourse and Cognition [Human Cognitive Processing, 64], ► pp. 301 ff. Crossref logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 20 october 2021. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.